History

As Vladimir Putin continues his war of war crimes against Ukraine, there are arguments swirling around—some more serious than others—that this war is, somehow, NATO’s fault. That’s certainly what Putin believes, but the blame-NATO crowd is wrong.

The courage of Václav Havel was grounded in a sense of responsibility for promoting ideals and values that transcend material goods, confront human decadence, and endure beyond our earthly existence.

After visiting Scotland, Reinhold Niebuhr traveled to the Netherlands and offered another correspondence that the journal published in April 1947.

In late winter and early spring 1947, Reinhold Niebuhr visited Europe and wrote short editorials for Christianity and Crisis as he traveled. In the following correspondences, the first coming from Scotland and the second coming from somewhere in the United Kingdom, he offers brief reflections on different current events.

President Roosevelt first enunciated the Four Freedoms in an evening session with his speechwriters. He made them the peroration of his message to Congress and wove them into the Atlantic Charter and the United Nations Charter. They have constituted the basis of American foreign policy ever since. Now is the time to reaffirm them.

Have we any hope and faith for export? In this time of apprehension and pessimism, here as well as over there, have we any hope and faith to spare?

We are told that a policy of firmness must inevitably lead to war, while conciliation could guarantee peace. In the Nazi days this was called appeasement.

How should controversial leaders, after the passing of time, be remembered? With ceremonial execration, a prominent statue, or, perhaps, eventually, both? And what about the victims of history, those who were often forgotten and not publicly memorialized in bronze or stone?

How should democratic governments, as well as Christian citizens, respond to an Olympics held in an authoritarian regime that holds a million Muslim Uighurs in forced labor camps, represses Christians and other religious minorities, and has clamped down on the once-free inhabitants of Hong Kong?