Freedom

ANTISEMITISM IS NOT just a Jewish, Christian, or American problem. It’s a global problem, and Christians must stand up to confront it. But the best way to confront antisemitism is not by fighting it as some would urge us to do. “Anti-antisemitism” is redundant and nonsensical. Forcing anyone to like the Jews will never work. 

More than any other period in the last two thousand years, Christians across the globe are facing persecution. From Africa to the Middle East, India to Southeast Asia, China, and North Korea, the global church is undergoing violent persecution. While Christians in America and in the West are aware of the plight of their brothers and sisters abroad, the question remains: do they care?

Headlines stressed French President Macron’s purportedly implied critique of Trump in his address to the United States Congress last week. But more significant is its continuity with the historical American-French friendship, however sometimes bumpy. Macron noted his speech was on the fifty-eighth anniversary of his predecessor President Charles de Gaulle’s 1960 address to the US Congress.

Could Robert Mugabe’s calamitous 37-year reign over Zimbabwe have been averted if America recognized United Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa?

This article, delineating the two kinds of freedom found in the tradition of Western civilization, was originally published in Christianity and Crisis on October 19th, 1942. Editor Henry P. Van Dusen clarifies the two strands of freedom that have developed in European thought. One comes from the Protestant Reformation, a freedom that comes as a result of being created in God’s image and the rights that entail; the other comes from the Enlightenment, a freedom that is intrinsic to man’s nature and “self-evident,” something that is somehow apparent to all.