The Christian challenge is to identify a role for good government to restrain evil alongside other God-given institutions while at the same time establishing robust means to check the evil of government.

From 1945 to 1947 as the United States and Soviet Union moved toward the Cold War, Christian realists writing for Reinhold Niebuhr’s journal, Christianity and Crisis, responded to global dilemmas. Here are five impressions of those articles, along with lessons for today.

After traveling through Europe in 1947—including to Scotland, Amsterdam, and Switzerland—Reinhold Niebuhr wrote some reflections, including on state churches, the Truman Doctrine, Christian political parties, and more.

Late last year, Adrian Vermeule published “‘It Can’t Happen’; Or, the Poverty of Political Imagination,” an article that critiques what he calls the “futility trope” used by conservative critics of postliberalism.