As Israel launched a new bombardment of Lebanon on Tuesday, its far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, suggested that it was trying to derail ongoing peace negotiations between US President Donald Trump and Iran. To read this article in the following … The post Ben-Gvir Says Israel ‘Will Not Allow’ Trump to Make a Peace Deal With Iran as IDF Kills Dozens in Lebanon appeared first on Global Research.

… The post A Nation Held Hostage by Impunity: Why Corruption Continues to Flourish in the Philippines appeared first on Global Research.

What began as an ordinary school excavation ended with an extraordinary discovery when a 12-year-old boy uncovered a rare gemstone believed to be at least 1,500 years old beneath the ruins of Korazim, an ancient Jewish village in the Galilee mentioned in the Bible. The mysterious blue “Nicolo” stone, a prized gemstone associated with Roman-era The post 12-year-old makes stunning discovery beneath ancient Galilee ruins appeared first on World Israel News.

What began as an ordinary school excavation ended with an extraordinary discovery when a 12-year-old boy uncovered a rare gemstone believed to be at least 1,500 years old beneath the ruins of Korazim, an ancient Jewish village in the Galilee mentioned in the Bible. The mysterious blue “Nicolo” stone, a prized gemstone associated with Roman-era The post 12-year-old makes stunning discovery beneath ancient Galilee ruins appeared first on World Israel News.

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir reaffirmed Israel’s unwavering alliance with the Druze community during an Eid al-Adha visit, while delivering a clear message to Hezbollah: the IDF will continue striking its terrorist infrastructure with full force. Speaking after a visit to southern Lebanon, Zamir said he witnessed Israeli troops in action against Hezbollah, stressing The post IDF chief vows to keep crushing Hezbollah, honors Druze heroes appeared first on World Israel News.

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir reaffirmed Israel’s unwavering alliance with the Druze community during an Eid al-Adha visit, while delivering a clear message to Hezbollah: the IDF will continue striking its terrorist infrastructure with full force. Speaking after a visit to southern Lebanon, Zamir said he witnessed Israeli troops in action against Hezbollah, stressing The post IDF chief vows to keep crushing Hezbollah, honors Druze heroes appeared first on World Israel News.

Israel is reportedly pressing the United States to approve a dramatic expansion of IDF operations in Beirut as Hezbollah continues its attacks on northern Israel and diplomatic efforts show little sign of success. The request comes as Israeli forces push deeper into southern Lebanon, capturing strategic positions in the Beaufort Ridge and Wadi al-Saluki areas The post Hezbollah’s sanctuary at risk as Israel eyes Beirut offensive appeared first on World Israel News.

Israel is reportedly pressing the United States to approve a dramatic expansion of IDF operations in Beirut as Hezbollah continues its attacks on northern Israel and diplomatic efforts show little sign of success. The request comes as Israeli forces push deeper into southern Lebanon, capturing strategic positions in the Beaufort Ridge and Wadi al-Saluki areas The post Hezbollah’s sanctuary at risk as Israel eyes Beirut offensive appeared first on World Israel News.

In yet another case of publicly displaying sympathy for fascism, the Ukrainian government has decided to honor Nazi collaborators from World War II. An elite Ukrainian unit has been renamed in memory of radical nationalist militants who fought alongside the … The post Kiev Regime Honors Nazi Criminals appeared first on Global Research.

Palestinians in Gaza City on Wednesday mourned the deaths of senior Hamas military commander Mohammed Awda, his wife, and two of his children after an Israeli airstrike targeted a residential apartment in the al-Rimal neighborhood late Tuesday evening. To … The post Israel Escalates Airstrikes Amid Gaza Suffering Despite Ceasefire appeared first on Global Research.

Fake intelligence as well as plagiarized quotations had been slipped into an official intelligence report on Iraq's WMD presented to the UN Security Council by Secretary of State Colin Powell in February 2003. The post Colin Powell and the “The Sloppy Dossier”: Plagiarism and “Fake Intelligence” Used to Justify the 2003 War on Iraq: Copied and Pasted from the Internet into an “Official” British Intel Report appeared first on Global Research.

A Santa Clara County jury found the father guilty of murder after prosecutors said he fatally struck his 8-month-old daughter in 2020. SAN JOSE, Calif. — A California man was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after being convicted of murdering his 8-month-old daughter, whose fatal injuries prosecutors said were caused by a powerful blow to the face that left a hand-shaped bruise and severe brain trauma. The sentence closes a case that ... Read more

Criticism of Israel has remained a central theme of Avila Chevalier’s political message. The post Mamdani endorses former Columbia encampment organizer in congressional race appeared first on World Israel News.

Criticism of Israel has remained a central theme of Avila Chevalier’s political message. The post Mamdani endorses former Columbia encampment organizer in congressional race appeared first on World Israel News.

Mamdani is the first NYC mayor not to attend the Israel Day Parade since 1964. The post ‘You will not intimidate us’: Knesset Speaker and delegation attend Israel Parade amid Mamdani boycott appeared first on World Israel News.

Mamdani is the first NYC mayor not to attend the Israel Day Parade since 1964. The post ‘You will not intimidate us’: Knesset Speaker and delegation attend Israel Parade amid Mamdani boycott appeared first on World Israel News.

Pezeshkian asked to leave office immediately, arguing that he had been excluded from major policy decisions. The post Iranian president Pezeshkian reportedly resigns, citing IRGC control over state decision-making. appeared first on World Israel News.

Pezeshkian asked to leave office immediately, arguing that he had been excluded from major policy decisions. The post Iranian president Pezeshkian reportedly resigns, citing IRGC control over state decision-making. appeared first on World Israel News.

Iran has reopened 50 of 69 tunnel entrances at 18 underground missile sites that were struck during the campaign. The post Satellite imagery shows Iran reopened most access points to underground missile sites. appeared first on World Israel News.

Iran has reopened 50 of 69 tunnel entrances at 18 underground missile sites that were struck during the campaign. The post Satellite imagery shows Iran reopened most access points to underground missile sites. appeared first on World Israel News.

The 17-year-old suffered a severe head injury after falling from a moving vehicle during postgame celebrations in San Antonio. SAN ANTONIO, Texas — A 17-year-old San Antonio Spurs fan has been declared brain dead after suffering catastrophic head injuries when he fell from a moving vehicle during celebrations following the team’s Western Conference finals victory, authorities and family members said. The incident occurred Thursday night after the Spurs defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game ... Read more

The two more seriously wounded are a 17-year-old female injured with trauma to her limbs and a 15-year-old female who was moderately wounded, suffering a facial injury. The post Ramming attack in Gush Etzion, four wounded, one seriously appeared first on World Israel News.

The two more seriously wounded are a 17-year-old female injured with trauma to her limbs and a 15-year-old female who was moderately wounded, suffering a facial injury. The post Ramming attack in Gush Etzion, four wounded, one seriously appeared first on World Israel News.

The 62nd Israel Day Parade has kicked off in Manhattan, New York, with notable politicians and activists joining the march, while newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani boycotts the event. The post WATCH: Israel Day Parade kicks off in Manhattan, Mamdani a no-show appeared first on World Israel News.

The 62nd Israel Day Parade has kicked off in Manhattan, New York, with notable politicians and activists joining the march, while newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani boycotts the event. The post WATCH: Israel Day Parade kicks off in Manhattan, Mamdani a no-show appeared first on World Israel News.

Drone assembly in Argentina, cybersecurity hubs in Chile, and light-weapons manufacturing in Paraguay could yield cutting-edge parallel supply chains. The post How Israel can crush Iran in the Western hemisphere appeared first on World Israel News.

Drone assembly in Argentina, cybersecurity hubs in Chile, and light-weapons manufacturing in Paraguay could yield cutting-edge parallel supply chains. The post How Israel can crush Iran in the Western hemisphere appeared first on World Israel News.

Fiji’s prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, will attend this week’s event in the Fijian capital of Suva. The post Israel to open embassy in Fiji appeared first on World Israel News.

Fiji’s prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, will attend this week’s event in the Fijian capital of Suva. The post Israel to open embassy in Fiji appeared first on World Israel News.

IDF forces struck three Hamas weapons facilities across Gaza, destroying rifles, explosives, and roughly 10 military pickup trucks, with secondary explosions confirming the presence of the munitions stockpiles. The post WATCH: IDF strikes Hamas weapons depots across Gaza appeared first on World Israel News.

IDF forces struck three Hamas weapons facilities across Gaza, destroying rifles, explosives, and roughly 10 military pickup trucks, with secondary explosions confirming the presence of the munitions stockpiles. The post WATCH: IDF strikes Hamas weapons depots across Gaza appeared first on World Israel News.

The State Financial Officers Foundation claims to be a nonpartisan, neutral body representing the guardians of state finances. In truth, the corporate donor–dependent nonprofit pushes a right-wing austerity agenda under the guise of fighting fraud.

The comments came after reports that Trump held a special meeting in the White House Situation Room over the weekend and asked to introduce several changes to the draft agreement reached through mediators. The post Iran to Trump: No deal appeared first on World Israel News.

The comments came after reports that Trump held a special meeting in the White House Situation Room over the weekend and asked to introduce several changes to the draft agreement reached through mediators. The post Iran to Trump: No deal appeared first on World Israel News.

Argentina has undergone a 180-degree shift from serving as a safe haven for Nazis after the Holocaust to becoming, under Milei, one of the staunchest supporters of Israel in the world. The post US antisemitism envoy calls Argentina’s Milei ‘model for the world’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Argentina has undergone a 180-degree shift from serving as a safe haven for Nazis after the Holocaust to becoming, under Milei, one of the staunchest supporters of Israel in the world. The post US antisemitism envoy calls Argentina’s Milei ‘model for the world’ appeared first on World Israel News.

The Temple Mount, a place where Jewish worshippers were once rarely seen, has witnessed a dramatic uptick in visits from the Jewish community, with groups like this singing the Israeli national anthem and proudly displaying Israeli flags. The post WATCH: Jewish activists sing Hatikvah on Temple Mount, display Israeli flags appeared first on World Israel News.

The Temple Mount, a place where Jewish worshippers were once rarely seen, has witnessed a dramatic uptick in visits from the Jewish community, with groups like this singing the Israeli national anthem and proudly displaying Israeli flags. The post WATCH: Jewish activists sing Hatikvah on Temple Mount, display Israeli flags appeared first on World Israel News.

The IDF announced that troops crossed the Litani River and seized control of the Beaufort Ridge and the nearby Wadi al-Saluki area. The post Northern Israel under heavy Hezbollah fire as troops push deeper into Lebanon appeared first on World Israel News.

The IDF announced that troops crossed the Litani River and seized control of the Beaufort Ridge and the nearby Wadi al-Saluki area. The post Northern Israel under heavy Hezbollah fire as troops push deeper into Lebanon appeared first on World Israel News.

With Bernie Sanders no longer leading the charge, Medicare for All has slipped from the spotlight. But a new state-level single-payer bill in Georgia — where Republicans refused to expand Medicaid and 1.2 million people are uninsured — shows signs of life.

A jury convicted a Birmingham woman of capital murder in the 2023 killing of a pregnant mother. BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — An Alabama woman who was eight months pregnant when she fatally shot another pregnant woman in 2023 has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a jury found her guilty of capital murder. The case drew attention because both women were expecting children at the time of the shooting and ... Read more

Russia’s war economy has this year suffered some of its worst setbacks since the invasion of Ukraine. An under-strain Russian society isn’t revolting yet. But Russians’ doubts about the war are growing.

Capitalism’s recurring crises have long fueled predictions of its inevitable demise. Vivek Chibber explains why breakdown isn’t guaranteed — and why political agency, not historical laws, will determine what comes next.

In Britain, left-populist Green leader Zack Polanski has emphasized cost-of-living issues. While his party has won over parts of the working class alienated by Labour, broadening this base remains an uphill challenge.

Authorities said two experienced jumpers collided during a group skydiving operation in Adams County. RITZVILLE, Wash. — A Washington state skydiver died and another was seriously injured after the pair collided in midair during a scheduled group jump Sunday evening, according to investigators and the skydiving company involved in the operation. The fatal accident occurred during a jump organized by West Plains Skydiving in Adams County. Authorities identified the deceased jumper as Randy Hubbs of ... Read more

Claude Lemieux, a celebrated former player in the National Hockey League (NHL) and a four-time Stanley Cup winner, has tragically passed away in what appears to be a suicide, as reported by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. The 60-year-old hockey icon was found by one of his sons in the warehouse of their family’s furniture business, Andros Home, located in Lake Park, Florida, early on a Thursday morning. Lemieux, a revered figure in professional ... Read more

On about 20 September 2001, just ten days after the destruction of the World Trade Centre buildings on 9/11, recently retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark was visiting the Pentagon The post War in the Middle East, the Rothschilds, the Confidential Pentagon Memo: “Take Out 7 Countries… Finishing off Iran.” Resisting War appeared first on Global Research.

This article by veteran war correspondent and GR associate editor Felicity Arbuthnot was first published in 2015.  While the world trembles under the crescendo of bombs, “billionaires are laughing somewhere in America.” —Global Research, January 14, 2026 *** “If I … The post “And the Billionaires Are Laughing Somewhere in America” appeared first on Global Research.

First published on May 15, 2026   One of Donald Trump’s most persistent promises since entering politics has been to revive the American economy. He always understood that the United States doesn’t have much left of its once-massive real (i.e., … The post Trump’s Failed Attempts to “Reindustrialize America”. A One Trillion+ + Military Budget to Supercharge America’s “AI-run Drone Wars” appeared first on Global Research.

In much of the US, Democrats’ reputation is utterly toxic to working-class voters. Running independent candidates may be the way forward for labor and the Left in many regions — potentially planting the seeds of a new party.

Protests are exploding outside of a New Jersey immigrant detention center after detainees say they are being “treated like animals” and are engaged in a work stoppage and hunger strike.

Colombia proved that a nation could ban energy shipments to Israel’s war machine. Fossil capital is trying to ensure that no other state dares to do the same.

Authorities say a 13-year-old boy was fatally shot by a relative during a gathering in Memphis. MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Tennessee mother celebrating her birthday away from home learned that her 13-year-old son had been shot and killed, and police say the suspected shooter was the son of her brother. The death has left a Memphis family grieving while investigators work through the circumstances surrounding the shooting. Police identified the victim as 13-year-old Ladarrius Payne. ... Read more

The far north of the globe is seeing new maritime routes open as the Arctic ice sheet melts, shortening the distance between China and Europe. Beijing has seized the opportunity and expanded its operations in the region. The Northern Sea … The post Arctic Route, Far From Tensions, Could Be Alternative to Hormuz appeared first on Global Research.

"Former senior Canadian intelligence officials say Canada needs to be on the lookout for campaigns aimed at destabilizing the country amid U.S. President Donald Trump's escalating 51st state threats." The post President Trump’s Ultimate Intent: The Annexation of Canada, The Annexation of Greenland, the Militarization of the Arctic. Militarization of the Western Hemisphere appeared first on Global Research.

84.4% of cancer patients taking ivermectin + mebendazole for 6 months reported either CANCER DISAPPEARANCE, TUMOR REGRESSION, or CANCER STABILIZATION. * The largest real-world human study to date evaluating ivermectin and mebendazole in cancer patients is now peer-reviewed and published … The post BREAKING: Largest Human Cancer Study of Ivermectin and Mebendazole Is Now Peer-Reviewed and Published in a Major Cancer Journal appeared first on Global Research.

Two members of the US Congress—Rep. Rosa Delauro and Rep. Sean Casten—have been in the forefront of drawing attention to the violations of rights of the people of West Bank. At a time of a visit to West … The post Is the USA Backing Away Further From the Protection of Palestinian Rights? appeared first on Global Research.

Graham Platner has traversed a long and unlikely road to become the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Maine. Can he beat longtime GOP incumbent Susan Collins and live up to the promise of his firebrand populist campaign?

A resolute and uncompromising rejection must be directed at the claim that humanity stands helpless before the machinery of war, condemned to submit to its advance under the sanitized language of political and military necessity. Such a claim is not … The post Against Trump’s Unhinged War Machine: Pope Leo XIV and the Uncompromising Revolt of Conscience Against Violence appeared first on Global Research.

Ottanta anni fa, il 5 marzo 1946, Winston Churchill annunciava in un discorso negli Stati Uniti riferendosi all’Europa: “Una cortina di ferro è scesa attraverso il continente“. Il discorso di Churchill, concordato col presidente degli Stati Uniti Harry … The post La Nuova Cortina di Ferro appeared first on Global Research.

O Irã pode ser o próximo alvo dos terroristas do Estado Islâmico (ISIS). Militantes que lutaram ao lado dos terroristas na Síria estariam sendo usados ​​por serviços de inteligência ocidentais para realizar ações de sabotagem contra inimigos geopolíticos de Washington, … The post EUA planejam usar militantes do Estado Islâmico contra o Irã appeared first on Global Research.

The right-wing party Reform UK outperformed Labour in elections this month across Britain. Labour has mainly been shedding support on its left flank, but the party’s current leaders have no desire to win those voters back with left-wing policies.

Police said the suspect created a makeshift living area complete with food, bedding and cooking equipment inside the hidden section of the residence. GREENWOOD, Ind. — Police in Indiana said a man secretly lived inside a family’s townhome crawl space for months before officers discovered him surrounded by knives, personal belongings and a makeshift kitchen after residents repeatedly reported hearing unexplained noises inside the home. Authorities said the investigation began after residents of the Greenwood ... Read more

Police say a dispute over an additional work assignment ended with a manager being shot and killed. TAMPA, Fla. — A Florida tow truck driver has been charged with murder after police said he shot his manager to death when the supervisor asked him to respond to another service call near the end of his shift. Investigators said the shooting occurred at a towing company facility, where employees were preparing to wrap up the workday. ... Read more

A man has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder following a shooting at a birthday party at Ramona Lake, which resulted in one fatality and three injuries. The incident, which occurred on Thursday evening, also led to a chaotic scene as attendees attempted to flee, with one car ending up submerged in the lake. The accused, Devion J. Sneed, is also facing eight additional charges related to the shooting, according to St. Louis County ... Read more

Investigators say an 8-year-old child suffered extensive injuries before she was found unresponsive in a Bakersfield hotel room. BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — An 8-year-old girl was found dead inside a motel room in Bakersfield after authorities said she suffered severe injuries during what investigators described as days of abuse, leading prosecutors to file murder and torture charges against her father and stepmother. The case has drawn intense attention in Kern County as investigators work to reconstruct ... Read more

[This article was first published in April 2020, at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.] The following episode of the Simpsons was released in 2010. It is a satire. But at the same time it reveals the unspoken truth. The … The post Video: “The House Cat Flu” Pandemic Is Coming. The Meow Apocalypse… appeared first on Global Research.

If Catholic social thought (CST) is to be an instrument of evangelization, as the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, citing Centesimus Annus, 54 says, then surely it must place “the human person and society in relationship with the light of the Gospel.” This cannot be done without reference to man’s sinful nature. Coherent notions of dignity, justice, social concerns, and all the rest of it cannot be articulated rightly and realistically without contending with who we are as humans. Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas is billed as the “AI encyclical” but it is much more than that.  CST begins with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things,” 1891). One can think of CST as principles for the application of the Gospel to social concerns in the modern world. The popes since that time have contributed to this corpus, as each era poses new challenges. As the years passed and new technologies appeared, the popes in “continuity and renewal,” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis 3) have added to this teaching by reminding the world of the dignity of the human person and what must be done to advance a world conducive to human flourishing. For example, in Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII addressed not only the conflict between labor and capital in the Industrial Revolution, but also refuted socialists who were “working on the poor man’s envy of the rich.” Their solutions, Leo XIII wrote, would be more “unjust” to the workers, they would “distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.” Most importantly, “the remedy they propose is manifestly against justice,” he wrote. And so, taking on the changed societal structure and the dehumanized workers, he gave the Church a way to correct the dysfunctions and harms of that day. He did this in the light of the reality of the human condition:  Pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must accompany man so long as life lasts. To suffer and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity; let them strive as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills and troubles which beset it. If any there are who pretend differently—who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment—they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present. Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is, and at the same time to seek elsewhere, as We have said, for the solace to its troubles. (18) In his historical review, Pope Leo recounts each of the encyclicals that have contributed to this corpus. Notably absent, however, is Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae. The second chapter of Pope Leo’s encyclical is a combination of theological anthropology and an explanation of the principles of Catholic social thought: the dignity of the human person, the common good, the common destination of goods, solidarity, subsidiarity, and the preferential option for the poor. Magnifica Humanitas gives a different set, and with this new set, Pope Leo XIV has added the principle of “social justice.” The principles of CST according to Magnifica Humanitas are now: the common good, the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity, and social justice. Under this newly-added principle of social justice he subsumes the preferential option for the poor, (defined by Pope John Paul II as “a special form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity” Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 42).  He adds technological disadvantages and the treatment of migrants and refugees as elements and “litmus tests” of social justice. In a letter dated Saturday 4, December 2004, Pope John Paul II wrote to the Vatican Foundation Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice, a group he had created in 1993: “It is therefore truly important to have a precise, motivated and complete approach to making the Church’s social teaching known so as to avoid stressing any one aspect more than another, swayed by preconceived emotions or views, thus losing sight of its integral structure and using it instrumentally.” Chapter two does a few subtle things: First, it reclassifies what have been known as “principles” into two categories, what the pope now calls foundations and principles. He moves the principle of human dignity to what is now called a foundation of CST. In the foundations he also includes “the image of the Triune God,” and “the supreme value of human rights.” There is no mention of the Fall, original sin, or man’s sinful nature, giving us an unrealistically high view of man. Second, it ensconces “social justice” as a principle of Catholic social thought moving forward. This label, and all it entails, historically has been attached to the idea of class struggle. Magnifica Humanitas then moves to a discussion of the recent technological developments, particularly artificial intelligence. My two favorite analyses from this angle are by my Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague, George Weigel, and AEI’s Yuval Levin. Throughout the encyclical there are discussions of how corrupting, exploitative, degrading, and unjust modern “systems,” “structures,” “mechanisms,” are, especially to the poor and migrants, which he says are the “cornerstone” of the Gospel. He writes, Like Nehemiah, let us pray, plan wisely and work perseveringly, placing God at the forefront of our actions and the human person at the center of our choices. Thus, the “rejected stones” — the poor, the sick, the migrants and the least among us — will become the cornerstone, and a solid, welcoming common home will emerge on the earth, where love and faithfulness will finally meet, and righteousness and peace will embrace. (16) Human sin in Magnifica Humanitas seems collective, outside the control of man, and certainly not the responsibility of the poor, the vulnerable, migrants, etc. Even the ever optimistic John XXIII, who thought the nations could join together in a new global order, ushering in peace on earth, pointed out—although still setting the root of the sin outside of man—the racism of minorities in Pacem in Terris (97). This is not to say there are not structures of sin (there are), but those come from people. As Pope John Paul II wrote in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: If the present situation can be attributed to difficulties of various kinds, it is not out of place to speak of “structures of sin,” which, as I stated in my Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, are rooted in personal sin, and thus always linked to the concrete acts of individuals who introduce these structures, consolidate them and make them difficult to remove. And thus they grow stronger, spread, and become the source of other sins, and so influence people’s behavior. Our problem today is not that our view of man is too low, but that it is too high. An encyclical praising humanity while decrying “systems that produce inequality” and “structures of sins” advances a conception of man as essentially good and untarnished by sin. If man sins, it is due to the society and conditions around him—a perspective directly contrary to the biblical view which says man rebelled against God, fell from grace, and from Adam we inherit original sin, and that we participate in acts of sin. Every single person on the planet who ever was, is, or will be, is fallen and sinful. The poor, migrants, and refugees are not just objects that passively have things done to them; they are volitional, accountable human beings just like the rest of us. They are not sinless because they are poor, migrants, or refugees. St. Paul wrote in Romans 3:10-12: There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one. Psalm 14: 2-3 says: The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, They have together become corrupt There is none who does good, No, not one. Now, thanks be to God that He does not leave us in this state; He came and saved us. This is why personal conviction of personal sin is essential to declaring the Gospel. Let us not fool ourselves into thinking we are perfected—or would be—if it wasn’t for all those pesky “structures.” THE ABSENCE OF HUMANAEVITAE AND TURNING TOWARD “SOCIAL JUSTICE” As previously noted, absent from this document is any reference to Humanae Vitae. A missed opportunity, especially in our inverted times where men claim to be women and vice versa and where two men can exploit a woman and buy themselves a baby through surrogacy. The list of such degradations is long and dark; we live in a world where the “slippery slope” is more prophecy than fallacy, and if the Pope believes new technologies are morally fraught, a focus on how our personal decisions and use of technology could be sinful would be a welcome admonition. Humanae Vitae, as Pope Paul VI wrote, deals with “new questions,” regarding the transmission of human life, and the rise of the new technology of contraceptive methods. Although unlike Populorum Progressio he does not overtly situate it in the line of the “social encyclicals,” he is most definitely responding to the “new things” of that era, which were prompting questions about love; marriage; sexual relations; the dignity of husband and wife; the dignity of women in society; the family; contraception. Even though it is not normally listed as one of the social encyclicals, Humanae Vitae is integral to the Church’s social doctrine, hence it was included in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. The lack of any reference to Humanae Vitae in Magnifica Humanitas is significant—especially if Leo is attempting to further develop CST. This is unsurprisingly in line with the general turn of “social doctrine” being replaced by “social justice,” away from the overt moral theology that has historically been the language of CST. This is a grim development, since so much of our social problems are the effect of moral breakdown. The new technologies the Pope seeks to address have already been shown to be a new mode of sexual moral breakdown, with internet pornography rapidly adopting tools of artificial intelligence to enhance its ability to counterfeit sexual relations. When social questions are not placed within the Christian moral framing, they lose spiritual potency and become no different than a de-Christianized “social justice.” This was a missed opportunity for evangelization and moral clarity. I believe going forward from this encyclical many in the Catholic Church will set Humanae Vitae outside of Catholic social thought, and therefore it will lose authority over how issues of marriage and family are resolved. It is the only encyclical within the constellation of social encyclicals that deals directly with human sexuality, which has been the object of the greatest spiritual and cultural attacks, and which have only accelerated in the age of the internet and artificial intelligence. There are spiritual and cultural elements in this world that would love nothing more than to see the Catholic Church de-emphasize sexual morality, and it would be tragic if this somehow indicates a readiness to surrender on these matters.  The majority of the world is outside the Christian framework utilized by Magnifica Humanitas. The audience of a papal encyclical obviously includes the Church, but it is also respected by the broader world. Every encyclical is an opportunity to preach the Gospel, to point out sin, and to call every last person on Earth to repent and receive the grace of God in forgiveness and union with Christ. The “new things” of artificial intelligence and associated technologies will undoubtedly present mankind with new temptations to new sins, and couching this hazard as primarily structural, merely a new facet of social justice, rather than personal, may leave believers and nonbelievers alike unprepared to fight these temptations. Man is magnificent, yet he is fallen as well. We will never realize our magnificence unless we are confronted with our fallenness. 

The persecution of Russian public figures in Europe is escalating. Russophobic paranoia in the EU seems to target any Russian national, even religious individuals with no connection to the government. In yet another recent episode of this kind, a prominent … The post Russophobic Paranoia in the EU: Czech Police Arbitrarily Arrest Russian Orthodox Bishop. Accused of Trading in Illicit Drugs appeared first on Global Research.

A perseguição a figuras públicas russas na Europa está se intensificando. A paranoia russofóbica na UE parece visar qualquer cidadão russo, mesmo religiosos sem qualquer ligação com o governo. Em mais um episódio recente desse tipo, um proeminente clérigo da … The post Autoridades checas prendem arbitrariamente clérigo russo appeared first on Global Research.

Os interesses dos EUA no Ártico continuam a representar uma ameaça significativa à arquitetura de segurança europeia. Washington segue avançando com seus planos de expansão da presença militar e econômica no Ártico, apesar da comprovada incapacidade do atual aparato naval … The post Trump avança sua estratégia para o Ártico appeared first on Global Research.

D. K. Renton’s new book tackles the thorny subject of revolutionary forgiveness. Few can accept preemptive forgiveness of their persecutors: we have to have some faith in the future, that there will be a little less pain when we build the world to come.

Executive Summary: Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed a pared-down version of a special defense budget bill on May 8. The special budget was designed to oppose the rising military threat from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and boost Taiwan’s indigenous production of asymmetric weapons while providing funds to procure U.S. weapons systems. The revised $25 billion The post Taiwan’s Special Defense Budget Bill Passes with Drastic Cuts appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: On May 22, the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) released the “Opinion on Implementing the Provision of Basic Public Services at Place of Permanent Residence” (国务院关于推行常住地提供基本公共服务的实施意见), directing local governments to deliver education, public rental housing, social insurance, basic medical insurance, employment services, and a range of social assistance to the The post Beijing’s Hukou Reform Is Not Welfare-Oriented appeared first on Jamestown.

After nearly a quarter century of AKP dominance, Turkey’s main opposition party, the CHP, remains unable to name its program, organize its social base, or break with the political culture that has made it so easy to defeat.

Executive Summary: On March 10, the People’s Daily ran an article by Jing Ge (靳戈) of Peking University’s Institute for Area Studies on how the “regional and country studies” (区域国别学) discipline should serve the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) international communication strategy (People’s Daily, March 10). The same day, the China Scholarship Council (CSC; 国家留学基金管理委员会) opened its The post Beijing’s Regional Studies Push Risks Campaign-Style Overreach appeared first on Jamestown.

First published: September 2024 The first thing which was denied to Palestinians was water and food. It was the onslaught of the genocide against the People of Palestine.  Netanyahu ordered a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip starting on October … The post Gaza’s 2023 Polio Vaccine Project: “Bill Gates Comes to the Rescue of Palestinian Children” appeared first on Global Research.

Executive Summary: In January 2026, Wu Xian, owner of JK Patrol, a contract security firm employed by the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Los Angeles, pepper-sprayed eight peaceful protesters outside the consulate, sending three to hospital (X/@hrichina, January 2). Wu, a naturalized American born in the PRC, was arrested on felony The post Beijing’s Emerging Corps of Foreign Service Nationals and Proxies appeared first on Jamestown.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Co-chair Bill Gates, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan and Independent Monitoring Board chairperson Sir Liam Donaldson. BMGF/J.Morgan (Source: Global Polio Eradication Initiative) Global Research Introduction and Update This carefully documented article by renowned author Margaret … The post Privatized Ebola: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the World Health Organization’s Boss, Not Governments appeared first on Global Research.

Nobody wants to join a boring movement. Socialists can’t change the world if we aren’t providing people with a good time.

Gad Saad is a staple of the anti-woke dark web. But his new book, Suicidal Empathy, is proof that the supposedly “intellectual” wing of the New Right is running on fumes.

When the establishment journalism of Nicholas Kristof of that most establishment of papers, The New York Times, draws the ire of a foreign regime, and an unnaturally allied foreign regime at that, a pulse might be detected in the moribund … The post Blood Libels and Sexual Violence: Israel, Palestinian Prisoners and The New York Times appeared first on Global Research.

A wave of tour cancellations. Ticket website crashes. Iran war fuel surges. Fans going into debt to attend festivals. Welcome to the misery that is live music in 2026.

Executive Summary Beijing has dramatically ramped up its belligerence toward Japan since Prime Minister Takaichi entered office in October 2025. In the economic sphere, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has tightened its export control regime since the turn of the year, banning the export of dual-use items to Japan on January 6 before blacklisting 40 Japanese The post PRC Cognitive Warfare Targets Japan’s Security Normalization appeared first on Jamestown.

Scandals Rock US Intel Agencies as Tulsi Gabbard Resigns, CIA Official Arrested for Fraud By Drago Bosnic, May 29, 2026 Gabbard’s tenure as DNI has been marred by tensions with various intelligence services, particularly the CIA, which has fervently … The post Selected Articles: Scandals Rock US Intel Agencies as Tulsi Gabbard Resigns, CIA Official Arrested for Fraud appeared first on Global Research.

Executive Summary: In early May 2026, Taiwanese military officials confirmed reporting from January by announcing plans to deploy U.S.-supplied M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Taiwan’s offshore islands, remarking that “offense is the most effective defense” (攻擊就是最有效的防禦) (LTN, January 28; May 9). This followed approval from Taiwan’s legislature, which on March 13 voted to allow The post Taiwan Weighs HIMARS for PRC Counterstrikes appeared first on Jamestown.

The Scottish National Party’s former chief executive Peter Murrell has pled guilty to embezzling £400,000. While the Scottish independence movement promised deeper democracy, the SNP leadership has operated like a cartel.

I have somewhat eased off from the enthusiasm I initially felt with the rise of the current version of the Alberta independence movement. It began gathering momentum in 2023 and 2024. The roots of this movement go back at least … The post Looking Beyond Canada-Alberta Squabbles. The 51st State? appeared first on Global Research.

“Energy is eternal delight.”  — William Blake What Passion Actually Feels Like We all want more passion. Passion makes us come alive. How often have we had an experience that gives us a tingling sensation when we remember it? Try … The post How to Embrace Your Passion appeared first on Global Research.

The Challenge Western Civilization is reeling. The fusion of Judaean ethics (Jerusalem) and Greco-Roman  governance (Athens) that sprang to life in Christianity is under attack. From one side, utopians have deployed an entirely new metaphysics that mocks traditional faith, inverts Biblical morality, and pushes toward a successor civilization. From the other, religious supremacists assert that their monopoly on theological correctness buys them not only favor in the Kingdom of God, but also favored legal status and a unique right to rule here in the realm of man.   While utopians set their sights on a future whose morality they see as far more enlightened than Judeo-Christian ethics, supremacists reach back into history, seeking to resurrect religious intolerance, inequality, discrimination, and hierarchy. Both camps have posted significant twenty-first century gains. The combined effect has been brutal. A core Judeo-Christian belief, however, is that God provides solutions capable of meeting all challenges—if only we can muster the courage and wisdom to find them. The solution to today’s challenge lies in the American founding—not in its revolution in temporal governance, but in its underappreciated revolution in spiritual governance. America’s founding introduced an entirely new “spiritual platform,” preserving Biblical metaphysics and ethics while embracing theological ecumenicism. This innovative American model provides the West’s best (perhaps only) chance for survival. America’s turn away from this platform in the post-WWII era has led to our current morass. No society can survive without metaphysical glue binding its members together and marking them as distinct. Bible stories defining Western Civilization have faded from public consciousness, educational curricula, and childhood awareness. Their removal has obliterated the most effective way of instilling the shared morality necessary for American society to cohere. We’ve collapsed into a values divide stemming from the very different moral codes of Biblical and utopian metaphysics. The supremacists accept the utopian claim that this collapse is inherent in the American system, and thus seek to squelch the ecumenicism they identify as its root.  Our national malady is spiritual; temporal politics is but a symptom. Yet only through politics can we reclaim the spiritual platform that positioned America to save Western Civilization from the twin evils of utopianism and supremacism. Athens needs Jerusalem to provide moral foundations unavailable from reason alone. Jerusalem needs Athens to translate divine wisdom into temporal governance structures. Both need the American spiritual platform enabling equality under temporal law while deferring theological judgment to God. Jerusalem Meets Athens  Western Civilization’s foundational metaphysics began with God’s Adamic, Noahic, and Abrahamic Covenants—steps toward His Mosaic covenant forging the Israelite nation around Torah. Though the Israelites understood that the Torah’s rituals and theological commandments were unique unto their nation, they believed that all of the world’s people would eventually accept the One True God and hew to His moral code.  For nearly a millennium, God’s prophets directed and exhorted the Israelites—through the destruction of their Temple, Babylonian exile, return to Zion, rebuilding of the Temple, and promises of Messianic deliverance. Long after the prophecies ceased—more than 300 years after Alexander’s conquests began the cross-pollination of Athens and Jerusalem—Judaean culture hardly seemed compelling. Factional infighting was rampant. Roman occupiers ruled, often with a heavy hand. Hellenizers sought assimilation into Greco-Roman culture. Sadducees clung tightly to Temple rituals. Pharisees emphasized scholarship and law. Messianics believed that deliverance was imminent. Samaritans, Essenes, zealots, and various other groups rounded out the picture—along with the inevitable disputes and divisions within each broad camp.   Jesus of Nazareth preached to a troubled nation. Many messianics resonated to his message; most Judaeans did not. Within decades, however, his followers had jettisoned the distinction between Jew and gentile, announced that the Torah’s ritual and theological commandments were no longer applicable, and brought the good news of God’s New Covenant to the world at large. Three centuries later, Constantine’s embrace of Christianity marked the true founding of Western Civilization. His Council of Nicaea canonized official Roman Christianity. Founded as an adjunct to imperial governance, the emergent Church’s universalism (i.e., catholicism) gave it a monopoly path to salvation through Christ; its orthodoxy rendered all competing Christian denominations heretical. Though Islam’s later emergence as history’s second great universal, monotheistic empire helped make this combination appear normative, its fourth-century arrival marked a revolution in governance.  Like all empires, Christian Rome was multi-ethnic and supremacist. Imperial laws always place conquered peoples beneath those that the Emperor considers his own. As Rome became increasingly Christian, that handed legal primacy to Church adherents.  That imperial governance structure proved robust. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Pope eventually emerged as de facto head of a loose, decentralized Christendom. In the East, church governance remained intertwined with the Emperor. This divergence in governance structures eventually led to the Great Schism—leaving the successors to the original Church as the two most important institutions of Western Civilization. For more than a millennium, the Church enforced its theological supremacism. Pagans were killed or converted. Muslims—Christendom’s only temporal peer, perpetual enemy, and necessary trading partner—received the predictable combination of fear, loathing, curiosity, and respect. Internal Christian challengers arose every few generations, anchored in scripture and complaining that the Church had corrupted the faith. From Nicaea until Luther, the Church coopted some as reforms and squelched others as heresies, forcing advocates to recant or die. Jews, while no temporal threat, posed the greatest theological quandary. The adoption of the Jewish Biblical canon as the Christian Old Testament guaranteed a perpetual intertwining of the faiths. For the Church, belief in an eternal, covenantal God posed a conundrum: If the Mosaic Covenant retained viability, Jewish fidelity to Torah evaded the Church’s monopoly. If it did not, then the eternal covenant of an eternal God could be less than eternal—a disquieting thought to all living within God’s other covenants.  How should the Church understand—and of greater practical importance, treat—the Jews? Replacement Theology argued that the New Covenant fulfilled and superseded the Mosaic Covenant but provided no practical guidance. St. Augustine’s Witness Doctrine filled that gap, proclaiming that God had preserved a unique but degraded role for the Jews as subjugated witnesses to Christ’s Truth. With that, Western Civilization assumed its full structure: A dominant, imperial Church plus a permanent Jewish subclass. Every important juncture in Western history thus mandated an asterisk posing what eventually (and dangerously) became known as “The Jewish Question:” The effects on Christendom may tell the primary story, but what about the Jews? The effect on the Jews was clear. Unlike Europe’s defunct pagans, Jews survived long centuries chafing beneath theologically supremacist imperial governance structures. Ironically, their status did bear witness to Christendom—though almost the inverse of the testimony Augustine had anticipated. One of the best indicators of the health of a Christian society was the welfare of the Jews living in its midst. Jew-hatred and anti-Jewish violence tended to flare under two sets of circumstances. During a spiritual challenge, whether a Christian heresy or a Holy War, the Jews’ theological incorrectness assured that they’d become collateral damage. During material crises—war, famine, economic collapse, epidemic—Jews were useful scapegoats. In between, notwithstanding their perpetual degradation, Jewish communities flourished, Jewish learning advanced, Jewish life often thrived, and the Jews proved loyal contributors to their host societies.  The asymmetric relationship, however, ran far deeper than the power disparity. Christians obsessed over Jewish metaphysics, agonizing over how God’s chosen people could reject His only Son. Jews rarely returned the fascination. They saw Jewish identity as unique and affirmative, giving Jesus little reference in their self-conception. Jews cared deeply about how Christians behaved—particularly toward Jews—but not about what Christians believed.  Each community thus spent centuries studying its own morality as it stood in theory and exhorting adherents to comply. Christians then focused on Jewish theology rather than the Biblical moral code, while Jews focused on Christian morality in practice (i.e., behavior) rather than in theory. Neither could fully appreciate that the two moral codes differed largely at the margins. The morality of Athens has long been defunct.  Jerusalem bears primary authorship for nearly all of what Western Civilization considers moral. From Westphalia to Utopia The imperial structures Rome bequeathed to Christendom eventually collapsed. The Treaties of Augsburg (1555) and Westphalia (1648) ended the Church’s temporal dominance. The new Westphalian system didn’t force any denomination to accept any other denomination as anything other than heresy. It simply acknowledged that pragmatism required accepting heretical and faithful Kings as equals under at least some laws—including the elevation of a King’s chosen denomination to a position of privilege within his realm. The shattering of this longstanding governance structure reverberated. The wars of the next century-and-a-quarter were about nothing other than the momentary allocation of power and wealth. Philosophical debates about society, governance, morality, reason, science, and the proper lines dividing the rule of man from the rule of God raged in the background. The twin revolutions of the late eighteenth century brought them to the fore—precisely when Western Civilization most needed a successor structure. In 1789, utopianism scored its first major victory. The French Revolution sought to obliterate all that came before it, replacing Biblical metaphysics with a new man untarnished by the Fall, a new week untethered to Genesis, a new calendar unrelated to Christ, and a new ethics based in pure reason. Its Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen may have been made “in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being,” but it attributed those rights solely to the wisdom and authority of the French Assembly. Yet the Assembly still felt the need to ask about the Jews—and its answer once again served as a reflective witness: “We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation, but accord everything to Jews as individuals.” Everyone living beneath the Assembly’s enlightened governance was required to relinquish pre-existing identities or communal affiliations to join the newly defined French nation. Imperial theological supremacism was alive and well in this secular utopian republic.  That answer augured what was to come. As knowledge of the physical world grew, the apparent need for metaphysics receded. Athens pushed out Jerusalem. Utopian thinkers, committed to new systems that would elevate humanity, filled the void. Many eschewed objective morality and higher purpose, asserting that only exploitative social structures restrained humanity’s perfection. The most influential of them forwarded ideologies as universal as Christianity and Islam. Their efforts bequeathed the world socialism, fascism, Nazism, Communism, the “End of History” thesis, globalism, and Wokeism. As their utopian infection spread beyond the West, it birthed Islamism, Khomeinism, Maoism, and Third Worldism. Utopianism’s first quarter-millennium has been impressive in scope, bloody in implementation, and soul-sucking to all who’ve fallen beneath its sway. Its conflict with the Judeo-Christian worldview is elemental. The American Spiritual Platform At the very moment that utopianism was gaining its European toehold, England’s American colonies, seeking first independence and then union, had to grapple with yet another challenge. Unlike Europe, where the Westphalian formula had locked in de facto local monopolies, the colonies showed significant denominational diversity. A temporal formula for accepting the legal equality of those you deemed heretical was a practical imperative. Because Christendom’s imperial governance structures provided little practical guidance, America’s founders turned for inspiration to the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Greece—Jerusalem and Athens. Their solution was elegant, powerful and radical. The Declaration of Independence defined the new American nation around the shared belief “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”  It deferred the establishment of a government “instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” to secure those rights. Fifteen years later, the First Amendment to the Constitution establishing that man-made government decreed: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” (the Establishment Clause), “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (the Free Exercise Clause).  The United States thus drew a new, distinct line between the roles that God and man would play in temporal governance. God moved first, as a Creator who bestowed individual rights and the implicit moral code needed to secure them. He then deferred to man, charging us with establishing a government capable of providing that security. That man-made government rested its legitimacy on both popular consent and its ability to secure the divinely-endowed rights. A government that failed at this foundational, God-given task would lose all legitimacy.  Unlike prior Western governments, this new one claimed no role in ushering those living beneath its sway into the realm of God. The Establishment Clause explicitly eschewed theological supremacism; any claim from any denomination of any faith that its theological correctness warrants elevated legal status is inherently anti-American. The Free Exercise Clause recognized that one of those God-given individual rights is the right to choose freely among the many approaches to the intangible, metaphysical, spiritual realms beyond this one.  Stated simply, the new American formulation combined a shared, core, objective morality defining society with individual theological ecumenicism. What might that mean in practice? Once again, the treatment of the Jews revealed the answer. This time, the Jews themselves raised the question. In an August 1790 exchange, George Washington assured the Hebrew Community of Newport: “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”  Note the assumption Washington embedded so deeply that it almost escapes notice: To have any meaning at all, “good” citizenship must rest upon a shared, objective notion of “good,” rooted in natural law and a divine dispensation of rights—core Biblical morality. Acceptance of that moral code is a prerequisite for inclusion in the American nation. Anything further is left to the individual.  The American formulation was never intended as a free-for-all. It broadened Westphalia to include all denominations whose moral codes were consistent with objective, biblically-defined good citizenship. It deepened Westphalia to extend beyond the conscience of Kings to the conscience of individuals. And it rejected all assertions of theological supremacism. All denominations or philosophies that either reject core Biblical morality or assert that their unique correctness warrants legal favoritism are thus inherently anti-American.  This innovative spiritual platform established America as inheritor of the Athens/Jerusalem fusion precisely when Europe began moving toward utopian successors. Was the near-simultaneity of these revolutionary proposals coincidental? Or was God sowing the seeds of a solution while presenting the challenge? Either way, it highlights the danger of our current juncture. The simultaneous attacks from anti-biblical utopians and theological supremacists—emanating from within today’s American citizenry—threaten to undermine the entire American system and the best hope for a stable, non-imperial, liberty-oriented Western Civilization. The platform also proved to be both good for governance and salutary to faith, starting with American Protestantism. Church affiliation and attendance at the Revolution had fallen below 20%, only to skyrocket during the Second Great Awakening.  By the mid-nineteenth century, American Christianity—powered by denominations that mastered evangelism, persuasion,  and moral exhortation—had developed a sociology resembling nothing in European history. Even the deviations from the ideal that arose as America digested its first three sizable non-Protestant faith communities confirmed and strengthened the platform’s character: Anti-Catholic bigotry focused on fear of Papal dominance—resurgent imperialist supremacism. Anti-Mormon bigotry focused on polygamy—an affront to core Western morality. As those specific concerns abated, those faith communities integrated fully into the American melting pot. Jews—for perhaps the first time since Constantine—faced only the social problems of neighborhood, establishment, and employment exclusion, rather than legislated inequality or complaints about theological deficiencies. Deeply unpleasant episodes, but all within the theologically ecumenical contours of America’s founding spiritual platform.  Christianity Transformed The evolution of Christian governance that began as a pragmatic response to Protestantism reshaped Western Civilization. The American separation of church and state freed ecclesiastic and temporal leaders to focus on their distinct spheres of expertise. If theological correctness confers no legal advantages, its enforcement loses much salience. Christian leaders had to emphasize persuasion and evangelism—harkening back to Christianity’s earliest years. The shift was profound, emanating far beyond American shores—and once again, it brought the Jews to center stage. American Protestantism had always had a distinctively Old Testament feel, often seeing this discovered continent as the new Promised Land. Philosophies including covenant theology, dispensationalism, and Christian Zionism opened new lenses through which Christian adherents could reassess the role of today’s Jews. As more Christians drifted toward philosemitism, more Jews could relax enough to appreciate what Christianity had brought the world—and even to ponder whether as degrading as Augustine’s Witness Doctrine may have been, it provided more protection than they might have enjoyed under two millennia of European paganism.  Catholicism followed its own path to an analogous reassessment. After two World Wars, the Vatican finally internalized what it had accepted only grudgingly at Westphalia: In the temporal realm, it had become but the largest denomination among many. Neo-pagan Nazism and atheistic Communism highlighted the Church’s political weakness vis-à-vis utopian ideologies, forcing the reflection and reform manifested in Vatican II. Nostra Aetate reassessed relationships with other denominations and faiths, beginning with Jews. By its fiftieth anniversary, the Vatican could state: “That the Jews are participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery.” This now-widespread rejection of theological supremacism demonstrates contemporary Christianity’s broad embrace of America’s founding spiritual platform—confirming Biblical morality while accepting that theological correctness has no bearing on legal equality. For Jews, these new developments—possible only because of America—were more than welcome. They meant that Christians may have finally accepted the terms Jews have long begged them to take: Judge us by how we act rather than by what we believe. You will find loyal, hard-working contributors to your society. Once again, the status of America’s Jews stands as witness to America: History’s most secure, vibrant diasporic Jewish community helps anchor history’s freest, most prosperous society. This new breathing room also allowed Jews to reassess some of their own preconceptions. Nearly a millennium ago, Maimonides recognized the importance of Christianity and Islam to eliminating paganism, popularizing Biblical morality, and preparing the world for messianic deliverance. His problems were their mistreatment of Jews and their insistence on supersession. Over the centuries, a trickle of Maimonideans—notably the thirteenth century Rabbi Menachem HaMeiri—developed these thoughts further, casting Christianity and Islam as Judaism’s monotheistic partners in upholding human dignity and ethical boundaries on behavior. By the twenty-first century, Christian openings toward Jews allowed Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks to write—not without controversy: “In the course of history, God has spoken to mankind in many languages: through Judaism to Jews, Christianity to Christians, Islam to Muslims.” Thanks to the American spiritual platform,  Jews and Christians could finally begin to see themselves as playing distinct roles in God’s divine plan. The two faith messages can now align in moving the world toward universal monotheism and ethical behavior—even while acknowledging that Jews cannot accept, and Christians cannot deny, the divinity of Christ. That far from all members of either faith embrace this shared narrative is hardly surprising. Divine plans unfold slowly. Whether this nascent reconciliation will flourish or wither remains uncertain. The American platform’s health seems a critical determinant—and that platform is far from healthy. American Abdication  In the mid-twentieth century, America drifted from its founding spiritual platform. Misguided Supreme Court decisions empowered misdirected cultural responses. Their combined effect has been toxic. The misconstruction of the Establishment Clause created an uneven playing field biased against Biblical stories and morals. It prohibited teaching specific religious beliefs as truth in public settings without defining religion—handing far greater latitude to belief systems presenting as ideologies or philosophies. Utopians, who reject the “religion” label, now teach their credal truths as educational and scientific fact in ways prohibited to traditional religions. The misconstruction of the Free Exercise Clause opened the door to all denominations, including anti-American theological supremacists. Islamism—a virulently supremacist twentieth-century Islamic ideology—now dominates American Muslim institutions. Christian philosophies advocating the reintegration of theology into governance structures have recently begun moving from the fringes into mainstream discourse. Taken together, bad Establishment Clause jurisprudence has elevated utopianism while bad Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence has enabled supremacism. Biblically-oriented, theologically ecumenical governance has receded in the face of these twin attacks. Denominations conforming to America’s spiritual platform find themselves on the defensive. Non-religious Americans have turned sharply against the West’s Jerusalem pillar, jettisoning the Bible for utopian mythology and metaphysics—which taught them that the Athens pillar is “too white.” Americans educated in the twenty-first century lack familiarity with metaphors, allegories, parables, and stories that bound together generations of westerners. America’s own mythology—rooted in the Bible, the Classics, and Enlightenment thought—has been targeted for replacement.  Shorn of that foundational mythology, national unity and purpose have crumbled. Today’s sociopolitical writing shows a country divided over basic ethical definitions. Good, bad, evil, justice, compassion, freedom, equality, diversity, acceptance, tolerance, choice, hatred, and love have been deconstructed—often inverted. Until recently, a presumed Biblical familiarity underpinned popular culture. That’s no longer the case. Supernatural tales now favor witches, vampires, and werewolves rather than prophecy or miracle. Morality plays now emphasize Western exploitation of other cultures. Superheroes originating in the 1940s as humans with exceptional capabilities have become immanent gods, traveling through time and parallel realities, altering nature, and experiencing multiple resurrections. The consequences of such cultural drift are dire. Anti-Biblical moral codes are taking easy root among those unfamiliar with even the most basic ethical stories of the Bible. Utopianism has surged to fill the void. German Nazism’s 1940s defeat and Soviet Communism’s 1990s collapse merely nudged utopians in new directions. Critical theorists broadened Marx’s arguments into general theories of struggle, oppression, and exploitation. The Woke devised new metaphysical beliefs, replacing Biblical notions of creation, soul, persistent evil, purpose, and eschatology. Anti-imperialists and decolonizers inverted Western Civilization, casting Europeans, Christians, Jews, and “white people” as satanic. Liberal Democrats declared history had ended, resolving its thorniest questions in favor of their preferred models of economics and governance. The European Union validated the Vatican’s post-WWII assessment, reuniting the continent as utopian rather than Christian. The historical revisionism now attempting to rehabilitate even such contemporary monsters as Hitler, Stalin, and bin Laden—particularly among the biblically illiterate young—conveys a sober message. Humanity has not evolved one iota beyond its brutal instincts. The Bible elevated us. Though other civilizations may have uncovered other elevating sources, Western Civilization has only the Bible.  If left unchecked, America’s abandonment of its founding spiritual platform will end in tragedy.  The jurisprudential disfavoring of religious stories and lessons, and its predictable cultural response, has eroded the glue binding American society. Our proud historical/mythological justification of American exceptionalism has given way to alternative mythologies painting America as evil—and singularly unworthy of survival.  Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and The New York Times’s 1619 Project stand out as preeminent examples. The jurisprudential sidelining of objective good citizenship in favor of a purely subjective free-for-all has enabled the spread of dangerous theologically supremacist denominations. Their toxicity has been particularly destructive to America’s Muslims—a group whose immigration largely postdated our abandonment of standards. Bipartisan (and broad Western) leadership sidelined Muslims who’d fled to the West hoping to foster denominations fully consistent with American ecumenicism in favor of Islamism. The Islam now preached in many American mosques is theologically supremacist, rageful, violent, proudly opposed to Biblical morality, antithetical to good citizenship, and contemptuous of integration into the theologically ecumenical American nation. Worse still, the supremacism of western Islamism, allied as it is with the virulently “anti-white” racism of the utopian Woke, is beginning to infect American Christians. Rising antisemitism—arguing that Jews cannot be true Americans—may be the most obvious manifestation, but it’s not the only one. Interdenominational sniping online and in podcasts harks back to the sixteenth century. Claims that doctrinal theological correctness conveys a right to rule are gaining traction, particularly among those educated in twenty-first century Woke metaphysics. As heartening as America’s youthful post-Covid return to faith may be, it’s not without its perils. Because many remain as biblically illiterate as their anti-religious peers, their newfound faith lacks knowledge, understanding, maturity, and wisdom. The zeal of the new convert often combines deep passion with shallow knowledge. That combination can prove volatile.  Taken together, Biblical illiteracy, utopian dominance of education and culture, rising Islamism, and zealous-if-uninformed new Christians threaten to render America unrecognizable if not unlivable. The resurgence of the Jewish Question—suddenly drawing answers unlike anything in American history—casts a dark shadow. American exceptionalism may be hitting one of its limiting principles. If we abdicate our founding spiritual platform, we will lose all claim to survival as a distinct, moral nation. Restoration America stands at a crossroads simultaneously spiritual and temporal. The utopian rejection of Jerusalem in favor of a new metaphysics embodied in Wokeism, socialism, globalism, and critical theory is driving toward a post-Christian successor civilization. Theological supremacism—the conviction that those committing theological error can be neither trusted nor accepted as equals—is surging, promising to revive dark chapters from the past. The American combination of core Biblical morality and theological ecumenicism is in retreat.  Those of us committed to the American spiritual platform must devise the right strategies and forge the right alliances. We must realign our laws with our foundational spiritual platform. We must return Bible stories to the public square, school curricula, and popular culture. Neither task will be easy. Do we want to retain control of our foundational stories, preserving fidelity and reverential treatment? Or do we want the broadest possible audience to appreciate basic characters, storylines, and morals defining Western Civilization’s metaphysical foundations?  The latter strategy is imperative. To reclaim our culture, we must craft stories and storytelling mechanisms appealing to those with no more reverence for Torah or Gospel than for Olympus or Asgard. We must shout down both the utopians screaming that we’re imposing faith and the faithful decrying us as blasphemers. The stakes are too high to do otherwise. Storytelling has been central to every successful religious and cultural movement; we must brave legal constraints to restore our own to their positions of primacy. Fables and parables are powerful, simple stories illustrating human nature and conveying moral messages. Society’s sustainability hinges far more on shared morality than on shared theology. As to alliances, our faction in this struggle is cross-denominational: Christians and Jews who see ourselves as elements in God’s divine plan; American patriots committed to our founding ideals; adherents of all faiths aligned with the American spiritual platform. We must unite all who see in the Declaration, the Bill of Rights, and the spiritual platform they created the emergence of what Abraham Lincoln called God’s “almost chosen people.” Such a proposal is a radical departure from the way that most people think about faith communities. On matters of faith, the obvious alignments follow theological agreement—fine and proper when the questions involve theology, liturgy, and ritual, but not when they involve governance, societal structure, and faith’s role within them. While denominational differences remain central to the selection of a house of worship or a spiritual leader, alliances in the preservation of American society must cut across denominations and faiths.  In America today, many denominations have utopian factions and/or supremacist factions as well as true American factions. Never mistake your utopian and supremacist co-religionists for allies. Work to minimize their influence. Those praying next to you may agree with your theology, but if they place themselves in a different camp concerning temporal governance, they’re not your allies in this realm. Not for the first time, the treatment of the Jews will stand as witness. The idea that the American founding was an act of providence is hardly new. Its experimental elevation of individual liberty and limited government gets most of the credit. It’s far past time to recognize its revolutionary reformulation of the interrelationship among faith, morality, and governance—the line between the rule of God and the rule of man. That foundational American model provides the only path toward a peaceful, ethical, divinely ordained future.  Athens needs Jerusalem to provide the moral foundation that reason alone cannot generate. Jerusalem needs Athens to translate divine wisdom into governance structures that work in the temporal world. Both need America—the revolutionary spiritual platform that solved the age-old problem of theological diversity while preserving objective morality. The United States will either return to its founding promise as a country that “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance and requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens,” or the American nation will fall.

Executive Summary: On April 24, Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Transport and Communications announced the successful implementation of a pilot transport project on the Kyrgyzstan–China–Pakistan route. A single truck carrying goods from Kyrgyzstan reached the port in Pakistan’s city of Karachi along the Karakorum Highway via the People’s Republic of China (PRC), bypassing Afghanistan. The Kyrgyz Ministry The post Central Asia Accessing Pakistani Sea Ports by Bypassing Afghanistan  appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: An inevitable byproduct of Russia’s war against Ukraine entering its fifth year is North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) rearmament efforts. Poland, which shares a 144-mile border with Russia, is at the forefront of these efforts. On May 6, Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz told participants at the The post Polish Army Set to be Largest in Europe appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: Moscow has launched a new campaign against Islam in Russia with the arrests for bribery and other crimes of senior officials in many of the country’s Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs). These are the institutions Russian governments have long used in hopes of controlling the followers of a religion without a clergy and clerical The post Moscow’s Arrests of Muslim Spiritual Directorate Officials Likely to Backfire appeared first on Jamestown.

Executive Summary: Cainiao Network Technology (Cainiao; 菜鸟网络科技), Alibaba’s logistics branch, opened a parcel processing center at the U.S.–Mexico border earlier this year (South China Morning Post, January 9). The company already has a global reach, maintaining an expansive e-commerce logistics network outside the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that spans 40 warehouses across 18 different countries The post The Chinese ‘Rules and Future’ of Global Trade appeared first on Jamestown.

Reality show villain and Donald Trump–endorsed Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt has turned his bitter grievances and dark fantasies into a viable campaign. But LA needs a political vision larger than one celebrity’s personal ambition and rage.

Tony Blair’s capacity for malevolence appears to be without limit. Blair’s latest intervention in British politics is yet another bid to make the world an uglier, nastier place, brought to you in association with his tech billionaire sponsors.

Bhaskar Sunkara reflects on the rise, defeat, and possible renewal of socialism — and on the generations of ordinary people who fought to build a world beyond class domination.

Online doctor influencers have enormous audiences, partly built on their criticisms of the dysfunction of America’s health care system. So why do they never discuss Medicare for All, the universal program designed to address the problems they denounce?

On May 10, 1940, Britain’s King George VI summoned Winston Churchill to Buckingham Palace to form a government. The immediate impetus for this move was Britain’s failures in the Norway campaign, especially the failure to hold Narvik. Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, was the minister most responsible for that failure. But, as historian Andrew Roberts has noted, the debate “was as much about appeasement as about Norway, about the past as about the future,” and Churchill had long been right about the failures of appeasement. There was a strong sense in Parliament that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had to go, but members were divided over who should replace him. Whoever was chosen would not only become the defender of the realm, but also the defender of Western, that is, Christian civilization. Prime Minister Chamberlain wanted to stay in office, but the debate in Parliament made it clear that, despite governing with a huge majority, he had lost too much support, even among Conservatives. Conservative MP Leo Amery quoted Oliver Cromwell’s words to the Rump Parliament: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”  The choice for the new prime minister came down to two men: Churchill and Lord Halifax, then Britain’s foreign secretary. As John Colville later explained, Halifax was the “safe” choice—a member of the House of Lords who was known to be steady, trustworthy, and uncontroversial—while Churchill was considered irresponsible, untrustworthy, and reckless. The king wanted Halifax, but Halifax doubted that the empire’s new war leader should come from the House of Lords. So, it was Churchill the king sent for and who in the next three weeks made decisions that saved not only England but what Churchill himself referred to as “Christian civilization.”   On the same day King George VI summoned Churchill, Nazi Germany invaded France and the Low Countries in fast-moving ground and air attacks—the blitzkrieg. May 1940 would be a month of German successes, followed by even more successes in June. What kind of a leader was required to save England and Christian civilization? Biographer William Manchester in the first volume of The Last Lion explained: England’s new leader, were he to prevail, would have to stand for everything England’s decent, civilized Establishment had rejected. … [He would have to be] a passionate Manichaean who saw the world as a medieval struggle to the death between the powers of good and the powers of evil, who held that individuals are responsible for their actions and that the German dictator was therefore wicked. A believer in martial glory was required, one who saw splendor in the ancient parades of victorious legions through Persepolis and could rally the nation to brave the coming German fury. An embodiment of fading Victorian standards was wanted: a tribune for honor, loyalty, duty, and the supreme virtue of action; one who would never compromise with iniquity, who could create a sublime mood and thus give men heroic visions of what they were and might become. . . [A] leader of intuitive genius, a born demagogue in the original sense of the word, a believer in the supremacy of his race and his national destiny, an artist who knew how to gather the blazing light of history into his prism and then distort it to his ends, an embodiment of inflexible resolution who could impose his will and his imagination on his people—a great tragedian who understood the appeal of martyrdom and could tell his followers the worst, hurling it to them like great hunks of bleeding meat, persuading them that the year of Dunkirk would be one in which it was ‘equally good to live or to die’—who could if necessary be just as cruel, just as cunning, and just as ruthless as Hitler but who could win victories without enslaving populations, or preaching supernaturalism, or foisting off myths of his infallibility, or destroying, or even warping, the libertarian institutions he had sworn to preserve. Such a man, if he existed, would be England’s last chance. Churchill proved to be that leader. Churchill hoped it was not too late, but he recalled feeling a sense of relief after becoming prime minister. “I felt,” he wrote in The Gathering Storm, “as if I were walking with Destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” Churchill was, as Andrew Roberts points out, “superbly prepared—in experience, psychology and foresight—for the coming hour and trial.” He had experienced combat himself in Cuba, the Sudan, on the Northwest Frontier of India, in South Africa, and on the Western Front during the First World War. He had led the Admiralty at the beginning of World War I, and served as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, led the Air Ministry, and was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the mid-1920s. And, as Edward R. Murrow once remarked, Churchill had the ability to mobilize the English language and send it into battle.  On May 13th, Churchill spoke briefly in the House of Commons: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” Our policy, he said, “is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength God can give us.” Our goal, he said, “is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road maybe, for without victory, there is no survival.”  Churchill’s words galvanized the British people, but many in the War Cabinet, including Halifax, and in Parliament believed that England should reach a deal with Hitler. France’s impending fall and Hitler’s non-aggression pact with Stalin’s Soviet Union meant that England would soon have to face the Nazi juggernaut alone. Better, perhaps, many thought, to get the best deal possible now before the bombs start falling on London and Nazi hordes land on England’s shores. On May 28th, Churchill called a meeting of the wider Cabinet and announced that he would not “enter into negotiations with That Man [Hitler].” He dismissed the notion that Hitler would agree to better terms if England made peace instead of fighting it out. “We should become a slave state,” he warned them, under a puppet regime controlled by Hitler. “If this long island story of ours is to end at last,” he concluded, “let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” After the fall of France and the “miracle” of Dunkirk in June 1940, Churchill spoke to the nation about what was at stake in the war against Nazi Germany: Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. . . . Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say: This was their finest hour. Western, Christian civilization survives today because of what Winston Churchill said and did 86 years ago. Which is why, like Churchill’s military aide Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, we should “thank God . . . that occasionally such supermen exist on this earth.” 

Nigeria’s Christians are among the most persecuted in the world. They face threats from Muslim Fulani herdsmen who have raided villages and killed hundreds of believers. They also face threats from terror groups known around the world for their brutality, such as Islamic State (ISIS), against which a significant victory was recently achieved.  In a joint operation on May 16, U.S. and Nigerian forces killed Abu Musab al-Minuki, a key figure in ISIS and its affiliate, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). The Nigerian military described the raid as a “meticulously planned and highly complex precision air-land operation.” President Donald Trump called al-Minuki “the most active terrorist in the world,” and “second-in-command of ISIS globally.”  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put the matter in a different light: U.S. forces had hunted an ISIS leader “who was killing Christians.” Al-Minuki’s death represents a major achievement in Washington’s ongoing campaign to stem the growing tide of Christian persecution and instability in Nigeria. While ISWAP is neither the only nor the most pervasive threat facing Abuja’s Christian community, killing al-Minuki represents tangible progress. To capitalize on this success, Washington should attend to all threats making Nigeria unsafe for Christians and other citizens alike. Analysts dispute whether al-Minuki was truly ISIS’s global No. 2. What is not in doubt is that one of ISWAP’s most important commanders is dead. His network has helped make Nigeria one of the deadliest countries in the world for Christians. Nigerian reporting tied al-Minuki to the February 2018 Dapchi schoolgirls kidnapping, when ISWAP terrorists abducted more than 100 students from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College in Yobe State. Leah Sharibu, a Christian girl who reportedly refused to renounce her faith, remains in captivity and has become a symbol of Nigeria’s persecution crisis. In December 2019, ISWAP released a video of its terrorists executing 11 blindfolded Christians in northeast Nigeria. The killers called the murders “a message to Christians all over the world.” The next year, ISWAP abducted and executed Ropvil Daciya Dalep, a Christian university student, declaring that Christians “must know that we will never forget their atrocities against us.”  ISWAP also carried out the Pentecost Sunday massacre at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in 2022. Gunmen disguised as worshippers detonated explosives and opened fire during Mass, killing at least 40 people and wounding more than 100. In 2026 testimony before the Federal High Court in Abuja, a witness identified the attackers as members of an ISWAP-linked cell based in Kogi State, operating under the alias “Al-Shabaab,” and tied to the broader command network al-Minuki helped oversee. To describe all this merely as “insecurity” is to miss the point. Nigeria’s Christians are not the only victims of jihadist violence. Muslims in the northeast and northwest have also suffered grievously at the hands of Boko Haram, ISWAP, bandits, and other armed groups.  While organized Islamic terrorists may make headlines, they are not the greatest threat to Christians in Nigeria. Instead, the greatest threats facing Nigerian Christians are from militant gangs of Fulani herdsmen.  This is especially true in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, where armed Fulani militant networks have attacked Christian communities in Benue, Plateau, and surrounding states. The Fulani are an ethnic group of about 25-40 million in West Africa, historically defined by cattle-herding. While many of them no longer practice pastoralism as a way of life, their group identity is still strongly associated with raising livestock. Land, water, grazing routes, and criminality all contribute to the anti-Christian violence perpetrated by some Fulani militants, and yet these factors do not tell the whole story.  Instead, as scholars of international religious liberty such as Baylor’s Paul Marshall have shown, there is a significant element of anti-Christian violence inexplicable by material explanations alone, something a commonly used phrase like “farmer-herder conflict” works to obscure.  In the case of the Plateau State Massacre in 2023, Fulani gangs killed nearly 200 Christian men, women, and children on Christmas Eve while reportedly shouting, “Allahu Akbar, we will destroy all Christians.” Policymakers and journalists should not hide behind sociological euphemisms to explain away attacks that have clear religious motivations. The Nigerian government’s response has also often been a mix of incapacity and denial. Abuja resists the “Christian persecution” label even as it often fails to prevent attacks on communities and subsequently lies about the scale of and motivations behind massacres and kidnappings. Village communities complain that security forces arrive late or not at all.  In the northeast, ISWAP survives because it exploits weak governance, borderland sanctuaries, and inconsistent intelligence coverage. The result is a state that can sometimes strike terrorists but often fails to protect Christians from slaughter. Increased cooperation between Washington and Abuja is a start, but Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s government must publicly and accurately diagnose the challenges facing its people. Killing al-Minuki wasn’t significant purely because he was an archterrorist. He also perpetrated atrocities, including the massacre of hundreds of Christians, though Abuja has yet to highlight this fact. Nigeria’s Christians need a government willing to name their persecutors, protect their villages, rescue their children, prosecute their attackers, and accept help when its own capabilities fall short. The United States cannot solve Nigeria’s religious violence for Nigeria. But it can make clear that anti-Christian persecution is not a peripheral humanitarian concern; it is central to Nigeria’s security crisis and to America’s counterterrorism interests.  The United States should create a Nigeria religious-violence targeting cell inside the embassy in Abuja, linking State, Defense, Treasury, and intelligence officials working with trusted Nigerian civil society groups and church networks. Its job should be to map ISWAP, Boko Haram, Fulani militant, and bandit networks that attack religious communities. It can then identify commanders, financiers, arms suppliers, cattle-rustling facilitators, ransom brokers, and corrupt local officials, and feed that evidence into Treasury and State sanctions packages. The State Department should also make any major expansion of U.S.-Nigeria security cooperation contingent on Abuja producing a public, incident-level accounting of attacks on Christian communities, including listing the perpetrators, the religious identity of victims where relevant, security response times, arrests, prosecutions, and convictions. Al-Minuki’s death will not bring Leah Sharibu home or rebuild every burned church. But it proves the men who organize this violence can be found. The question is whether Washington and Abuja will treat that success as final—or as the beginning of a serious campaign to defend Nigeria’s most vulnerable communities.

In a recent critical essay inveighing against the excesses of the Trump presidency and decrying Christians who presumably glory in those excesses, Taylor University professor Ed Meadors argues that “authentic” Christianity must be differentiated “from the fraudulent practices and deplorable propaganda that daily characterizes the misconduct of President Donald Trump, whose self-worship and ‘Christian’ nationalism definitively disassociate all things Trump from authentic biblical evangelical Christianity.” Meadors’ broadside against President Trump is really two separate essays. The first is a fairly standard overview of Paul’s theology of identity in Christ, which Meadors terms “authentic Christianity” and presents as the core component of the evangelical gospel message. It’s a helpful, if elementary, introduction to a biblical theology of the kingdom of God and our citizenship in it.  Meadors is right to begin with the bold assertion that a Christian conversion leads to a total life transformation, “including one’s politics.” While politics may be a primary identifier to those who have no eternal hope, it plays a decidedly secondary role in the life of the believer. Rather than an end, it becomes a means through which the believer can give evidence of the internal changes wrought by the work of God in their life. So far, Meadors and I agree, as fellow Christians should, about this basic ordering of politics and faith. However, Meadors is working too hard to map Paul’s analogy of citizenship in the epistles to the reality of citizenship in America today and misses critical historical context for understanding Paul’s citizenship message. Contra Meadors, the bulk of Paul’s audiences did not hear his call to citizenship in the kingdom of heaven as an alternative to citizenship in Rome. Rather, it was heard as citizenship in heaven despite having no citizenship in Rome. Unlike Paul, who was a Roman citizen, many of the earliest believers were not, which significantly changes the message of Paul’s citizenship rhetoric. Paul is not conveying that his readers should put aside their Roman citizenship for something better (indeed, that would make Paul out to be a hypocrite!). Rather, Paul writes that the citizenship which conveys rank and privilege in the Roman world, granting access to the halls of power and justice, represents only the smallest fraction of what it means to be an adopted son or daughter of the King. He’s arguing from the lesser to the greater. Where Meadors goes astray in the second part of his essay is by executing the non sequitur of assuming that citizenship in heaven has the practical ramification of disregarding the rights and duties of our earthly citizenship. Again, Paul did no such thing, going so far as to take his Roman citizenship to the grave. Literally. Meadors’ application of Paul’s use of citizenship rhetoric primarily serves to support his strident rejection of Trumpian politics and condemnation of his fellow evangelicals allegedly caught up in an idolatrous Trump cult.  The fact that the vast majority of evangelicals in America agree with Dr. Meadors’ rejection of Trumpian excess seems completely lost on him as he rhetorically asks, “Have politically compromised church attenders repented in reverse by exchanging Jesus’ radical imperative to love one’s enemies (Matthew 5:44) for the self-gratifying entertainment of Trump’s denunciation of Democrats and other shared enemies, his promises to deregulate and thereby enrich the economy, his shared ethnic biases, ‘America First’ nationalism, simplistic platitudes, or all the above?”  For all his denouncements of President Trump’s “poker politics,” Meadors’ single, go-to example of the President’s inauthentic Christianity is that dang Trump-as-Jesus meme. To his credit, Meadors is right to condemn it. Where he goes wrong is to presume that somehow he’s in the minority as an authentic evangelical capable of recognizing Trump’s sacrilege as he asks, “Who is keeping Trump accountable?” Perhaps he missed that the offending meme was rather quickly taken down? Perhaps he missed the wide, wide, wide pushback that meme received by Trump’s Christian supporters? Perhaps he missed the fact that 95% of white evangelicals already believe that Trump is not “very religious” (that is, “authentically Christian”)? Perhaps he’s missing the slipping support for Trump among evangelicals?  In other words, Meadors’ own standards of authentic Christianity as being demonstrated in a behavior set that places allegiance to God above the state to the degree that it will “keep leaders accountable” have been and are being met! Yet, somehow, Meadors does not recognize that. He appears convinced that “Trump trump[s] biblical authority” for the majority of his fellow evangelicals. The cutesy turn of phrase demonstrates that Meadors, though perhaps a serious theologian, is not a credible observer of American political culture and thus an unreliable guide for helping believers integrate their theology with their political thought.  Meadors’ overwrought political jeremiad based on oversimplified biblical analogies is a systemic problem among America’s evangelical thinkers and educators—one which is impoverishing seminaries and undermining local churches’ ability to be effective civil society leaders. Theologians like Meadors, and more high-profile leaders like Russell Moore, are little more than blind leaders of the blind, who will not mourn when a dirge is sung, nor dance when a pipe is played. Like many theologians attempting to both make sense of American politics in the age of Donald Trump and speak for the entirety of evangelicals, Dr. Meadors misses the mark and accomplishes little more than demonstrating the need for theologians to be more serious in their political thought and analysis.

On May 17, 2026, thousands of Americans gathered on Washington D.C.’s National Mall for Rededicate 250, a national day of jubilation, prayer, praise and thanksgiving for America’s 250th anniversary. This date was providential because exactly 250 years earlier the Continental Congress set aside May 17, 1776, as a day for fasting and praying. Continental Congress member John Adams was particularly touched by the sermon he heard that day as he pondered what role he would play in the weeks to come. For months Adams had longed for a critical mass of Americans to arrive at the same decision that he and his wife Abigail had concluded a year earlier: America needed to declare independence from England. They knew, however, that their neighbors weren’t ready to support this step in 1775.  A major shift took place when the blockbuster pamphlet, Common Sense, was first published in January 1776. Charmed by Common Sense, Abigail watched as her neighbors and others came to the same conclusion advocated by the pamphlet: “‘Tis time to part.” Then the sermon John Adams heard on May 17, 1776, revealed that clergymen were also ready for America to declare independence from England. “I have this morning heard Mr. Duffield upon the signs of the times. He ran a parallel between the case of Israel and that of America, and between the conduct of Pharaoh and that of King George,” John Adams wrote to Abigail. Duffield’s comparison between Pharaoh and King George tasted sweeter than manna to Adams. The reason? It made sense of the madness.  “Jealousy that the Israelites would throw off the government of Egypt made him issue his edict that the midwives should cast the children into the river and the other edict that the men should make a large revenue of bricks without straw,” Adams reminded her of the account. Then he explained Duffield’s current analogy. “He concluded that the course of events indicated strongly the design of Providence that we should be separated from G. Britain,” Adams wrote. Indeed. From disbanding their colonial legislatures to taxing the colonists while denying them representation in Parliament, King George III’s oppression and tyrannical actions were Pharaoh-like. The Battles of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill in 1775 had raised the stakes and increased the danger to their lives. Pondering his role, Adams wrote to Abigail: “Is it not a saying of Moses, who am I that I should go in and out before this great people?”  Pressing on Adams’s mind was his own burning bush triggered by musket fire.  “When I consider the great events which are passed, and those greater which are rapidly advancing, and that I may have been instrumental of touching some springs, and turning some small wheels … I feel an awe upon my mind, which is not easily described,” he wrote as he grasped the gravity of the situation in one hand and hope for liberty in the other. “Great Britain has at last driven America, to the last step, a complete separation from her, a total absolute independence, not only of her Parliament but of her crown.” Adams added that there was something very “unnatural and odious” in a government that was “1,000 leagues” away. Whatever role he would play in this separation operation—whether he would speak with the eloquence of Aaron or muster the courage of Moses to face Pharaoh—in that moment on May 17, 1776, Adams knew one thing was certain. “Confederation will be necessary for our internal concord and alliances may be so for our external defense.” By June 1776, Adams was embracing his role. He was playing the part of Aaron, who paved the way for his brother Moses to lead. While serving with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence, Adams recommended that Jefferson write the Declaration because he was an eloquent writer. Adams and Franklin edited Jefferson’s draft and supported Jefferson when the Continental Congress debated and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. In this way, Jefferson was Moses while Adams was Aaron, a champion and supporter. Adams continued to be awestruck by their circumstances that summer of 1776. He predicted that independence from England would “be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations [fireworks] from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”  As Americans rededicated America to God in Washington D.C. on May 17, 2026, they fulfilled Adams’s call to commemorate independence through solemn acts of devotion to God. Adams and the founders planted the seed of liberty on July 4, 1776, while America 250 in 2026 is the harvest, a time to reflect on the freedoms that have blossomed and spread over two and a half centuries of growth.

Part II of a Two-Part Essay Abraham Lincoln understood the covenantal nature of America, which he called “the electric cord.” The 16th president articulated the skeletal form of America’s cultural identity in Chicago on July 10, 1858: We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men. They are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us. But when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. What is the basis of the American covenant? It is the creed, the “father of all moral principles” found in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. In these words lies the summation of the moral premise on which America was founded: that there is a Creator who made man with equal dignity, rights, and obligations. On this foundation our cohesive cultural identity was built and must be maintained. This is the moral law to which we as a people are subject. Without agreement on these fundamentals, we cannot hope for unity on much else.  Today we have a breakdown in both creed and covenant, not only because we have so many immigrants from cultures that do not espouse this understanding of man and the world, but also from years of moral erosion by liberal elites who disdain the covenant and wish to dismantle the creed. The more irreligious we became as a nation, the less meaningful our covenant, bond, promise, and oath became. Once we rejected God—the Truth, the Creator, the Bond of the universe itself—how much easier it became to reject our fellow citizens. The American Heritage The American heritage is the transmission of both creed and covenant from one generation to the next. In the current controversies around the idea of American heritage (or “heritage Americans”), three truths are too often overlooked.  First, the creed is not a list of ideas rattled off by politicians about opportunity and the American dream. The creed, as articulated by Lincoln and Jefferson, is the “father of all moral principles.” Second, properly understood, the covenant model allows for immigrants, such as myself, who take seriously covenant-making and oath-taking to enter into the American heritage. It is not my intellectual or verbal assent to a set of ideas about what America stands for that makes me an American; it is specifically my acceptance of, in Lincoln’s words, the “father of all moral principles” as the creed, and the oath of allegiance that I make and keep. Third, covenant breaking—both by native-born Americans and immigrants—has gone on far too long. Too often, we see native-born Americans who degrade the creed and disregard the transcendent nature of the covenant. And then we have immigrants, legal and illegal, who have no intention of taking seriously the naturalization oath, whether from lack of understanding, ideological indifference, or even outright hostility. One Dominant Culture, Many Subcultures Re-Americanizing America requires reviving American culture, and that begins by acknowledging that the God of America is the Christian God; without Him, the covenants of the colonies, the Declaration of Independence, and our Constitution would not exist, nor make any sense. This does not mean that everyone who lives here must be a Christian—that is an advantage of the capaciousness of the covenant model—but it does mean there can only be one dominant culture, and that dominant culture is the one that was handed down to us from the beginning, from the time of the colonies.  In one of his papers, Alexander Hamilton wrote: “Foreign influence is truly the Grecian Horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its entrance. Nor ought we to imagine, that it can only make its approaches in the gross form of direct bribery. [deletion] It is then most dangerous, when it comes under the patronage of our passions, under the auspices of national prejudice and partiality.” As I see it, one of the methods by which foreign powers can gain entrance into our society, or as Hamilton writes in Federalist No. 68, “gain an improper ascendant in our councils,” is via a multiculturalism that sets itself in competition for dominance. Multiculturalism subverted the American dominant culture in favor of multiple subcultures, raising them and nominally making them “equal,” while in practice setting them in an arena to compete for dominance.  Since the colonial era, Anglo-Saxon culture has been central to American identity. No matter how many immigrants came, from whatever region, the dominant culture held; the relationship between the immigrant subcultures and the Anglo-Saxon culture was hierarchical yet natural. This created an assimilation pathway and what would eventually become a canonical assimilation theory. The twentieth-century sociologist Milton Gordon wrote,  one must make a distinction between influencing the cultural patterns themselves and contributing to the progress and development of the society. Immigrants throughout American history—as Gordon writes—have contributed greatly in all areas of society, something to be acknowledged and appreciated. But to keep America America, there can be only one dominant culture. Subcultures can exist in harmony with the dominant culture (e.g. verbal accents, local customs and fare across the different American states; and yes, even ethnic markets)—but the dominant culture must always act as the reference point. And that dominant culture, as Gordon wrote, is irrevocably rooted in the Anglo-Saxon culture with its particular characteristics. Foreign cultures that pose a challenge to oath-taking and covenant-making—including antisemitism brought here through immigrant groups—threaten the covenant understanding of America—becoming a threat not just to the cohesion of society, but to the very survival of the republic. An example of this kind of challenge to the creed and covenant understanding of America can be seen in Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid’s article “Muslims Shouldn’t Have to Assimilate to Belong.” Like so many today, he asserts that anyone can come to America without expecting to conform at all to mainstream American culture. This is the essence of the tired ideology of multiculturalism. Hamid’s piece is carefully crafted to make one sympathize with Muslims seeking to retain a semblance of their Islamic identity while embracing the core elements of American culture, but in reality he seeks to discredit the growing anti-Sharia movement. Hamid, and other Islamist groups, are attempting to desensitize the broader culture to Sharia as Islamic communities grow and form parallel societies. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood backed–organization, one of the organizations behind Zohran Mamdani, claims that Sharia is no different than Jewish kosher laws. In the end, all this talk presumes that America is just an idea that has created a space for economic success open for the taking. Those who come to America must understand the national covenant that undergirds our country. It doesn’t matter that not everyone in America believes in the Christian God; that has been the case since the beginning. What matters is that no group (including Christians!) attempts to usurp Him, or have the nation itself usurp Him. America—if she is to survive as a self-governing free republic—cannot tolerate parallel societies founded on the idea that “There is no God except Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.” This is why Islam can become problematic under certain conditions. On an ideological level, it cannot tolerate minority status and instead quite explicitly vies for dominance. America is expansive both physically and culturally; it can and has absorbed many subgroups and cultures. But as the concentration of Muslims has increased—coinciding with an increased reluctance to assert the need to assimilate—we now see a subculture unwilling to be a subculture, one that will not live under an American covenant but rather would see its own rise to dominance. A clear example of what this attempt at cultural and political domination begins to look like is the story of Pastor Edward Barham in Dearborn, Michigan. At a city council meeting this American pastor brought up his concerns about renaming a city street after Osama Siblani, the radical editor of Arab American News who has supported Hamas and Hezbollah. In response, the mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, called Mr. Barham an Islamophobe, and said: “Although you live here, I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here. The day you move out of the city will be the day I launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out of the city.” There are certain steps we can take to stop the advancement of this cultural and political corruption of the body politic: The anti-Sharia movement must gain momentum. The Ten Commandments should be allowed in classrooms as a moral and cultural guide and part of the inheritance that made this country possible. Spiritual awakening must be prayed for. Civic education must be implemented. Politicians, writers, thinkers, and speakers should be tutored in American history and its covenantal nature. A rightly ordered patriotism should be encouraged. Every time we speak of our country, our history, our traditions, our identity, our society, our speech should be replete with creed and covenant language. Our creed is that there is a Creator who made man with equal dignity, rights, and obligations, and that America is a country that started when our forefathers (physical or spiritual) made a covenant with that Creator and with each other to combine into a civil body politic and structure a country according to that creed. We must internalize it, act upon it, pass it down to the next generation.  When our children and grandchildren ask us, “What is America?” “Who are we?” “What do we believe?” this is how we answer. Re-Americanizing America is an enterprise; it will take education, creativity, time, and civic courage. As an adopted citizen, I ask my fellow countrymen to join me in this endeavor. 

Part I of a Two-Part Essay Before the “polarization” and the “fractured republic” reality made it impossible to ignore our present condition, Jean Bethke Elshtain was sounding the alarm in the 1990s. In one of her books, Augustine and the Limits of Politics, she writes: As these overlapping associations of social life disappear or are stripped of legitimacy, a political and ethical wilderness spreads. People roam the prairie fixing on objects or policies or persons to excoriate or to celebrate, at least for a time, until some other enthusiasm or scandal sweeps over them. If we have lost the sturdiness and patience to sustain our society over the long haul, then our democracy, as a social world and a culture, is in trouble. She was prescient. Today we are all familiar with this behavior she describes, as for many, America has become “de-Americanized” in recent generations, but I want to believe there is a remnant that is ready to renew and rebuild. Re-Americanizing America will not happen only by purging and clearing. Enforcing our borders, deporting illegal aliens, reforming the current broken immigration system, prosecuting the people who have defrauded the American polis, protecting the American family from the machinations of those who want to harm it—foreign and domestic—are all necessary but not sufficient for the revivification of America.  Our actions have to be toward building something good. That is, we can’t only work against, we must simultaneously work toward something. If we are to renew ourselves as a republic, our enterprise must be to re-Americanize America, taking it back to its “first reputation” and its “first increase,” to use Machiavelli’s words.  Machiavelli, unfairly maligned and dismissed today as a totem of selfish power, speaks with clarity and insight when it comes to the health of a republic. In Discourses on Livy, he writes that renewal is necessary for longevity; a republic must be led back to its beginning. This renewal can happen either through an “extrinsic accident”  or an intentional and ordered “intrinsic prudence.” We can hear echoes of these words in Alexander Hamilton’s assertion in Federalist No. 1 that America is destined to be the proving ground for whether man can “establish good government from reflection and choice,” or be at the mercy of “accident and force.”  A republic cannot last forever, Machiavelli says. It will be corrupted over time; it can, however, renew itself—but it has to be led back to the mark. What are those things that the republic had at the beginning which might be regained by renewal? Goodness, civic virtue, observance of religion, and justice. The longer one waits, the more men corrupt themselves; they behave dangerously and become tumultuous. Transgression against the laws becomes so egregious, and “soon so many delinquents join together that they can no longer be punished without danger.” One need not stray far from our headlines to see the truth in this observation. One of the unpleasant but necessary tools of renewal is to punish those who work for ill in the life of the republic. Without punishing the delinquents, the lawbreakers, the evildoers, there can be no renewal. When the laws are not enforced for a long time, the delinquency grows, and it will take a strong arm and greater resolve to bring the law breakers back to justice. Even words like these are seen as harsh, punitive, and mean-spirited today, but they ought to be—and truly are—born from love of our fellow man and a desire to create a society free to live and prosper. On any given day we see a lot of chaos in the public square, but I see American renewal happening through both modes Machiavelli describes: extrinsic accident, and intrinsic prudence. President Trump was the “extrinsic accident” (yes, domestically produced but historically a wildcard), the shock to the system that broke up the status quo, that opened us to the second mode, “intrinsic prudence”—that is, people from many walks of life committing themselves to working toward renewing the republic. We are operating in both modes concurrently, and sometimes this renewal feels “violent.” The laws of our order have been so transgressed—either deliberately or through complacency—that when one attempts to restore law and order it cannot be done “without danger,” as Machiavelli writes.  Putting it colloquially, people have become so accustomed to the lawbreaking that a return to law and order seems like a form of aggression. The Bond of Creed and Covenant The foremost order of business in re-Americanizing America is covenant renewal. How many times has a dispute broken out about what it means to be an American? Often we see the claim that an American is anyone who assents to certain ideas or values, no matter where they are in the world. Others claim that only Americans who have been here for a certain number of generations can truly be considered Americans. Because of modernity and post-modernity, we have lost Biblical language in the public square; we have lost the language of transcendence, and religious memory. Both sides miss the truly Biblical structure of America: Creed and Covenant. The essence of America is not an idea, but a covenantal bond, and that makes all the difference. It is not assenting to ideas, although that is part of it: it is entering into covenant by vow. It is both creed and covenant, but it is the keeping of the covenant that makes America America. The event of the Mayflower Compact in 1620 sets the precedent of what came after throughout the American colonies: Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience. [Emphasis mine.] This promise and binding of the Puritans, they undertook in the light of the Biblical concept of covenant. Other colonies followed with their own versions.  With a hundred and fifty-six years of covenant making in townships across the colonies, this bond in which citizens “covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick” was part and parcel of the culture in which the Founding Fathers were reared. As Hannah Arendt wrote, “the men who out of the uninterrupted strength of this tradition ‘bid a final adieu to Britain’ knew their chances from the beginning; they knew of the enormous power potential that arises when men ‘mutually pledge to each other [their] lives, [their] Fortunes and their sacred Honour.’” The Declaration of Independence is grounded in the tradition and language of covenant. In a recent address, “Remarks on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said, Nothing in the Declaration of Independence, I now realize, matters without that final sentence. Without that sentence, the rest of the Declaration is but mere words on parchment paper. Nice words, but, nonetheless, just words. What changed the world was not the words, but the commitment and spirit of the people who were willing to labor, sacrifice, and even give their lives—what Lincoln at Gettysburg called “the last full measure of devotion”—for the Declaration’s principles. That devotion is the covenantal promise of the people. The other side of the covenant, the nation’s promise, follows the pattern as “I will be your country, and you will be my people.” Properly understood, this does not compete with or supplant God, but merely echoes His covenant within the civic sphere. This is not the same argument one often hears that America is, or was founded as, “a Christian Nation;” rather it is that America was built on the Biblical model of covenant. I am also not saying that America is “anointed,” or that it inherits the singular weight and authority of God’s Biblical covenants, only that its architects had a particular structure in mind. This is why, in theory, anyone can become an American, by entering into the covenant. The structure is what allows for things like plurality, expansiveness, toleration, and unity, within the covenant. The structure could support a large republic. It is what makes it possible for people from “every tribe and nation” to “become” American.  One can say that the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance that immigrants take during the naturalization ceremony is their binding promise—that they are indeed entering the covenant while reciting the oath: I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God. The degradation of spiritual aspects in our public life have gotten to the point where covenant hardly means more than a contract, and often no more than mere words. Something is seriously broken in our society, in the America of today, if immigrants walk out and do not treat this covenant-making and oath-taking with the solemnity it requires, when it does not change their thinking and acting, when they do not renounce allegiance and fidelity to their land of origin, when they in fact live in a way that reproduces the culture, social rules, and conditions of those lands—this breaks their oath. In which case they become covenant breakers. There are a number of reasons why this is happening: a general sense of transience and impermanence; lack of civic education; lack of language and cultural understanding; disconnection from American people; disconnection from or rejection of American history; holding on to the worldview of country of origin; captivation by a mercantile mindset; espousal of a creed or culture that is antithetical to America’s. All these can put immigrants—even when they juridically become citizens—outside of American society and peoplehood. To re-Americanize America, one of the first things that must be done is to inculcate the language and understanding of covenant into American education and society at large. Helping people understand that the bonds they feel toward this country are real, natural and good. There is no reason to be ashamed of patriotic feelings, they are evidence of the solemn nature of the American covenant. The language of promise and covenant should be used so that people have a framework for a healthy patriotism.  America is not just a set of ideas and propositions which can then be exchanged for another set of ideas at some later date when the first set falls out of fashion.  America is a covenantal nation that “our fathers brought forth on this continent,” and its principles are bound up within it. This is why our Constitution is not “living” in the common legal sense that its meaning and enforcement changes with the times according to updated mores. Yet it is a living covenant, in the way the marriage vow is always alive between husband and wife, that bond that continues to give life to the marriage.

In his 2024 book All Things Are Full of Gods, the renowned philosopher of religion David Bentley Hart wrote a Socratic dialogue unlike any other. The premise? The ancient Greek gods gather together in a beautiful garden to discuss the nature of being in a conversation largely driven and moderated by Psyche, the wife of Cupid. In their 500-page dialogue, they telescope into a whole world of ideas spanning from Greco-Roman antiquity to the Eastern mystics to, eventually, modern philosophers too, all with the aim of proving Hart’s key argument: the things seen are not all that there is. Scientific materialism is a flawed and unnecessarily limited perspective. The things unseen are, in fact, much more real than what we can touch, feel, taste.  Hart’s reflections in that book were the fruit of a lifetime of reading, thinking, and writing much more widely than most philosophers and scholars of religion tend to do. Typically, scholars of Christianity, in particular—of whom Hart is one—are well read in the Western tradition. But Hart, unlike most, has also been attracted to the ideas of Eastern mysticism, seamlessly incorporating them into his writing and, it seems, personal beliefs. Perhaps, given his own conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy as a young man, this is not surprising. The Orthodox Church, since its inception, has generally dwelt with one foot in the East and the other in the West. Besides, as scholars from Michael Horton to Hart himself have noted, the ancient world makes more sense if we consider global antiquity in the Axial Age (roughly 800–200 BC) as a much more coherent whole. Historical evidence increasingly supports frequent interactions between civilizations as reflected by common themes in literature and beliefs. Ideas, like people, are prone to travel. One of the texts that Hart has found his attention returning to, time and again, is the Tao Te Ching, or The Book of the Way, a classical Chinese philosophical poem attributed to one Laozi (a title rather than a real name), who lived and wrote in the sixth century BC. The author is semi-mythical, may have known Confucius, and may have lived to the age of 160—but again, perhaps did not. What matters is the intriguing text he has left. Building on his own forty years of reading and re-reading this text, Hart has now produced his own new translation of it with an introductory essay that is already worth the price of the book.  The Tao Te Ching is notoriously difficult to classify, Hart admits. Its writing style is puzzling, a nearly even-split combination of prose and poetry (Hart settles in his translation for poetic stanzas, some of them more free-verse in their approach than others). But its contents and genre are trickier yet. It is a work of philosophy, but it is also undeniably mystical, a work of religion at its heart:  “One might say that this is a work of metaphysical and spiritual monism, or at least of a philosophical and religious vision of the One and the many that assumes the real participation of all things in their divine or celestial source. It is also a picture of cosmic nature pervaded by living spiritual agencies, divine and mortal. It is a book intended not merely to chart a safe path through the contending forces and perils of worldly life, but much more to transfigure the soul, until even the most spontaneous promptings of its will have only the shape of the Way, because the soul has been perfectly united to its own eternal source and end.”  The focus of the book is the mysterious Way, which refers to dwelling rightly and justly in harmony with the divine and human beings of the universe. Reading repeated reflections on the Way should remind us of one parallel to Christian thought: as early as the days of Saul (later the Apostle Paul), Christians described their belief system as “the Way,” or “hodos” in Greek. In Acts 9:2 this term is used to describe the ones whom Saul is persecuting before his own miraculous encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.  Laozi’s Way is more poetic and elusive, though, as the first line of the text suggests: “That Way that abides forever is not a way that can be trodden…” The book keeps returning to the idea of the Way as “that wondrous mystery,” something that is just as important as it is difficult to comprehend. Language of ordinary and recognizable activities and imagery turns these very familiar ideas on their head, as in this reflection: “A skilled traveler leaves neither wheel-ruts nor footprints; A skilled speaker commits no errors inviting reproach; A skilled tallier does not resort to bamboo tallies; The most adept at sealing a door needs neither bolts nor bars, Requires no key, and yet none can open it; The most adept at tying a knot needs neither cord nor string,  And yet none can unfasten it.” And so, the segment continues, one who is wise will not abandon people but will always care for them. Similarly, the one who is wise and honorable will teach the “debased” (a harsh term here!), attempting to elevate them by his wisdom.  Wisdom, ultimately, is the key, the Tao Te Ching insists. The wise will also be good, honorable, and just. A society of wise people will be a good society, one in which every person can flourish. And because Laozi assumes that those who are not wise can be elevated by those who are, all citizens have a duty to improve themselves and each other.  This is a beautiful vision for civic education in this age of moral failures and degradation that we can see all around. Indeed, the Tao Te Ching is just the exhortation to moral growth needed for the moment, as vices once broadly recognized as inimical to a well functioning society proliferate, serving only to alienate us further from one another. If vice festers in and contributes to isolation and loneliness, the key to good citizenship and growth in the virtues is the community of other citizens, those who are wiser and more virtuous. We can certainly benefit from thinking more about the need to grow, not only for our own sake but for that of our country. Indeed, part of the wisdom that the Way insistently teaches is that we do not belong to ourselves alone. And yet, as genuinely constructive as the Tao Te Ching is for thinking earnestly about the difficult questions of our own day, its message falls short of the Gospel. Its spirituality, for all its references to “Heaven,” is obviously not informed by Christ. And so, while Christians will benefit from reading this text and being reminded of the universality of its message, we must remember that to follow Christ is not equivalent to merely growing in wisdom. Indeed, sometimes to follow Christ looks like foolishness to the rest of the world (1 Cor. 1:18). But then, to be good and virtuous citizens in an age of vice is still good testimony for the cause of Christ. 

On July Fourth 1779, Congress went to Mass. One newspaper reported that on “the day which gave freedom to the vast republic of America, the Congress, the president and councils of state, with other civil and military officers” attended “Roman chapel” at the invitation of “His Most Christian Majesty” Louis XVI’s emissary. “A Te Deum was performed,” giving “great satisfaction to all present.” Protestant American rebels worshipping with Catholic French monarchists elicited cross-confessional interest in another country: Ireland.  The above report comes from the Presbyterian Londonderry Journal in the north of Ireland. Writing for the Anglican Freeman’s Journal in Dublin, Catholic polemicist Father Arthur O’Leary wondered how “banishment and proscription, on account of religious systems” still prevailed in Ireland when “Presbyterians and Catholics chant the Te Deum in the same chapel in America?” Irish interest in Franco-American worship suggests that the American Revolution was a war with not only global implications but religious ones too. Irishmen and Irish-Americans—Anglican, Presbyterian, Catholic—provided essential manpower for both rebels and royalists alike. How Crown and Congress respectively managed religious tensions in mobilizing Irish troops helped decide the war’s outcome. The Continental Army overcame sectarian tensions to become a multiconfessional force. In contrast, King George’s army saw religious animosities hamper recruitment, strain soldier-officer relations, and polarize the war in Ireland.       Nearly half a million Irish immigrated to British North America in the eighteenth century. Outside New England, one in six white Americans were of Irish descent. Two-thirds were “Scotch-Irish” Presbyterians, the rest mostly Catholics. The American colonies appealed to Irishmen because they lacked the religious hierarchy that restricted liberty and opportunity in Ireland. Sectarian and dynastic wars in seventeenth-century Ireland produced a “Protestant Ascendancy” that prescribed privileges for Anglicans but led to dispossession for Catholics and discrimination against Presbyterians. While Catholics owned two-thirds of Irish land in 1640, they retained only a tenth of it sixty years later. “Penal laws” deprived Catholics of civil rights. Largely of Scottish descent, Presbyterians provided invaluable settlers and soldiers to the Ascendancy, yet remained second-class subjects. The Sacramental Test Act excluded most Presbyterians from politics. The linen industry, lifeblood of Presbyterian Ulster, suffered trade fluctuations exacerbated by British commercial rules. Presbyterians resented Anglican attempts in the 1710s to nullify their marriages and collect tithes. New Light minister John Abernathy’s call for “every man” to “enjoy the freedom of following the Light of his Conscience” resonated with Presbyterians. Unavailable in Ireland, economic and religious liberty proved plentiful in America.   “The Irish in America, with a few exceptions, were attached to independence,” observed a South Carolina patriot.. Irish Presbyterians constituted a fifth of Pennsylvanians and a quarter of South Carolinians and Georgians.. Frontier fights against the French and their Native American allies reinforced Presbyterian attachment to ideals of liberty and property. Many Irish Presbyterians had preferred to emigrate than to pay tithes supporting an exclusionary Ascendancy.  Their descendants preferred to fight than to pay taxes imposed by a remote Parliament. If the first shot at Concord was likely discharged by a New England Puritan, many future volleys fired in freedom’s name came from Irish Presbyterians.  The molding of Irish Catholics into American patriots faced more obstacles than for Presbyterians. Thomas Paine associated “popery in religion with popery in politics.” Samuel Adams declared “our forefathers threw off the yoke of popery in religion; for you is reserved the honor of levelling popery in politics.” Congress branded Catholicism a religion that “dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world.” And yet, as often occurs in times of expediency, military imperatives softened anti-Catholic prejudice. During the invasion of Canada in 1775, congressional overtures to Canadian Catholics stressed religious liberty. The invasion’s commander, Irish-born Protestant Richard Montgomery, earned Catholic goodwill for his generous treatment of Montreal. Although Canada remained royal, patriot appeals to Canadian Catholics facilitated Irish Catholic participation in the revolutionary cause.   Irish Presbyterians and Catholics contributed to a multiconfessional Continental Army. Both featured in senior ranks. Henry Knox, an Irish Presbyterian bookseller, delivered the artillery to Boston that forced the British to evacuate that city. He rose to chief of artillery and served as Washington’s first Secretary of War. Irish Presbyterian physician James McHenry served as a regimental surgeon and Washington’s aide. Postwar, he attended the Constitutional Convention and helped create the Navy Department. Two Irish Catholics, Stephen Moylan and Thomas Conway, became major generals. Moylan and another Catholic, James O’Hara, served as quartermaster general. John Barry, the first commander of a U.S. warship, was a Catholic from Ireland’s south coast. Irish troops abounded down the ranks. Pennsylvania’s “common soldiers,” one American observed, “were for the most part natives of Ireland.” A British officer believed “the chief strength of the Rebel Army at present consists of Natives of Europe, particularly Irishmen.” In the Carolina backcountry, Irish Presbyterians sustained insurgent resistance after the British captured the principal towns. These “Back-Mountain men,” Lord Cornwallis complained, “showed themselves to be our most inveterate enemies.” Their resistance helped persuade him to quit the Carolinas for Virginia, a road that ended with his defeat at Yorktown.  On the British side, a sixth of the King’s soldiers and a third of his officers were Irish. Yet, the religious-political hierarchy that compelled so many Presbyterians and Catholics to quit Ireland for America also impeded royal efforts to leverage Irish manpower in reconquering America. Until 1774, it was illegal to recruit Irish Catholics. Despite subsequent Cabinet requests for “regiments from Irish Roman Catholics,” many British officers were contemptuous of Irish troops. Irish artillerymen were “lower than serpents” according to one English commander. Irish officers, scions of the Anglican elite, also disliked Irish troops. One Anglican Irish colonel placed a bounty on Irish deserters: five guineas taken alive, ten dead. British commander-in-chief Henry Clinton was moved to complain that “the real or fancied oppression” Irish-Americans attributed to their former Anglican overlords discouraged them from joining loyalist regiments. Trouble also brewed on the Irish home front. Catholics and Presbyterians proved reluctant recruits. Enlistment went “very slowly,” a British minister worried, and the number of annual recruits in Ireland seldom exceeded that of deserters. Attacks on recruiting parties were common. Parts of the press opposed recruitment. “It was merely for the purpose of slaughtering our troops,” alleged one Presbyterian newspaper, “that this wicked war with America is continued.” British ministers feared that Irish opinion favored the Americans. “Dissenters are almost all Americans,” fumed one official. Another believed Irish “papists” were “connected by interest” and Presbyterians were “attached by principle” to the Americans. Presbyterian-populated seaports like Belfast were accused of smuggling with the rebels. Gaelic-Catholic poets celebrated “stalwart Washington.” French entry into the war stimulated British fears that Catholics would welcome a Bourbon invasion of Ireland. As the conflict in America lengthened, discontent deepened in Ireland, absorbing the energy of Britain’s overstretched government.  The Irish were essential to both the royal and revolutionary war efforts in the American Revolution. Yet only one side maximized Irish support. Aversion to religious hierarchy first motivated the immigration of Irish Catholics and Presbyterians to America and then facilitated their support for American independence. On the British side, the same aversion created tension between Anglican officers and Irish troops, restricted enlistment among Catholics and Presbyterians, and seeded unrest in Ireland. The promise of liberty and opportunity in America offered many Irish a refuge from their troubled country. Irish exertions in the patriot cause helped to further realize that promise through American independence.

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