Essays

A growing resource reflecting on the Syrian refugee crisis and Christian and American responsibility

Another post to “Response & Responsibility: A Symposium on the Syrian Refugee Crisis

After Paris, Muslims need Americans – certainly, American Christians – to celebrate and strengthen the magnificence of the constitutional arrangements of the USA that welcome Muslims as Muslims to be loyal citizens in this country’s robust democracy.

After months of warnings, the White House finally ordered the Navy to sail within 12 miles of an artificial island built by China. President Obama’s hesitant response to China’s aggressive behavior suggests he doesn’t grasp that there’s nothing new about the Navy challenging this sort of mischief. America has been keeping the open seas open for 215 years.

While showing how a war between the U.S. and China would play out, P.W. Singer and August Cole’s Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War is a highly-recommendable read that has already helped focus minds on this topic, both inside the Beltway and beyond.

A Christian approach to the human catastrophe of the Syrian refugee crisis—partially instigated and immeasurably worsened by Mr. Obama’s floundering foreign policy—must reject legislation rooted in fear, bigotry, and nativism. We need a mature debate about how to respond with prudence and compassion to this crisis. Yet we also have an obligation to expose the intellectually and morally bankrupt arguments that cascade unceasingly from the mouth of this president.

After Paris America needs Muslims to show and tell how Islam enables them to be loyal citizens in a robust democracy as Muslims.

Guest Editorial: “It is excellent / To have a giant’s strength, but tyrannous, / To use it like a giant”

A year before America entered World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt shared his vision of “a world founded upon four essential human freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom from fear, freedom from want and “freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.”