Even now, months past, our nation remains in peril. While America banded together in unity after September 11, we are today in the throes of disunion.

In this week’s episode, the editors discuss Mark Tooley’s response to Sohrab Ahmari’s controversial tweet about a China-led twenty-first century and American decadence. They also recap Mark Melton’s conversation with Steven Howard about the 2021 report from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), along with an article about Pakistan’s justice system.

Our religious freedom is one of these modern privileges that previous generations would have envied. Reviewing religious persecution in the past can help Christians appreciate the freedoms they have now.

Seventy-five years ago, the Samuel Goldwyn masterpiece “The Best Years of Our Lives” premiered to universal critical and popular acclaim. Reviewing the film now, two overarching contrasts between past and present are clear.

The odd thing about Bashir and Erdogan is how little they understand the West, and particularly the United States. There is no condemnation of America, its history, and its actions that foreign regimes can make that Americans did not make first, still make, and made more convincingly.

The Color of Compromise ostensibly promotes a radical new way of approaching politics that rethinks everything about evangelicals and political engagement. But if you can look past Tisby’s critique of conservatism, all of the fundamentals of popular evangelical political thinking in the post-war era are still at work.

Imperfect justice is the best we can hope for in this life because we are not promised more than this. Until the reign of righteousness is brought about, we must be satisfied with this all-too-imperfect justice, looking forward to the day when all justice will be brought to judgment.

Marc LiVecche, Derryck Green, and Keith Pavlischek continue their conversation on race, the church, and politics.

I want to illuminate this conspiratorial approach, which I term “Christian Virtual Reality Politics,” by contrasting it with a more familiar approach, which I call “Christian Religious Politics.”