Joseph Loconte

How J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis defied the spirit of the age.

The British human rights advocate has worked to hold China accountable as the regime reaches "well beyond its borders to silence critics," he says.

Reflecting on the prominence of the art.

The presidency of Donald Trump, nearly a year old, has revived a political debate that began in earnest in sixteenth-century Europe: does a nation require leaders of good moral character in order to flourish?

A new one-man play about one man's spiritual pilgrimage, C.S. Lewis on Stage: The Most Reluctant Convert, opens with a riff against a cruel, indifferent, and seemingly meaningless universe reminiscent of a Woody Allen monologue. "And what is 'life'?" the protagonist asks in defending his youthful…

Ventotene, Italy

Ventotene, Italy

At 7 a.m. on July 1, 1916, the British Army unleashed a hellish assault against German positions on the Western Front in France, along the River Somme. The roar was so loud that it was heard in London, nearly 200 miles away. The barrage​—​about 3,500 shells a minute​—​was designed to obliterate the…

Istanbul

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the controversial Muslim-turned-atheist, told a National Press Club audience last week some hard facts about Islam and its propensity toward violence. But her remarks about Christianity—about its capacity to soften sectarian hatreds—may prove an even tougher pill to swallow.

Seventy years ago, on March 1, 1945, Franklin Roosevelt assured a war-weary nation that a new era of international peace and democratic government was at hand. The accords signed just weeks earlier at the Yalta Conference, he told Congress, laid the foundation for postwar cooperation between the…

If liberal and secular-minded people want a glimpse into the dark and baleful agenda of American evangelical Christians, they should read this book. What they’ll find may shock many of them to the core. 

In the mid-1990s, a severe famine brought millions of North Koreans to the brink of starvation. Floods precipitated the crisis, but the failed economic policies of Kim Il Sung—the paranoid dictator intent on maintaining a vast military machine and acquiring nuclear weapons—were the real culprit.…

The Rage Against God

The celebration of American Independence has a way of illuminating the Anglo-American relationship, especially during times of war. Although July 4, 1776 marked the date when the American people dissolved "the political bands which have connected them" with Great Britain, July 4, 1940 signified…

The Obama administration recently announced the results of its long-awaited Burma policy review. On the face of it the outcome is sound. The United States will maintain existing sanctions on Burma's brutal regime, while attempting a dialogue with the generals. The combination of engagement plus…

Ever since the triumph of China's communist revolution--sixty years ago yesterday--left-leaning intellectuals have convinced themselves of cheerful falsehoods about the regime. Visitors to China, even during the heyday of Mao Tse-tung's ruinous economic policies, saw a "uniquely creative" and…

One of the most embittered complaints from critics of George W. Bush was his use of religious imagery to promote a domestic agenda. Religious liberals lamented that God and the Bible had been "hijacked" by Bush and his social conservative allies. Self-styled "prophets" such as Jim Wallis of…

A few years ago at a meeting in Amman, Jordan, a Bush administration official suggested the time might be ripe for an Arab "democratic spring"--a flowering of democratic institutions in the Middle East. Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, delivered the predictably gloomy forecast:…

Foreign intervention isn't what keeps Arab countries lagging behind. A few years ago at a meeting in Amman, Jordan, a Bush administration official suggested the time might be ripe for an Arab "democratic spring"--a flowering of democratic institutions in the Middle East. Amr Moussa,…

Today marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, the French theologian who helped carry the Protestant Reformation into the heart of Europe and shatter the spiritual hegemony of the Catholic Church. Though Calvin was never the theocratic thug of popular imagination, neither was he a…

Earlier this week we began to see the stirrings of a second Iranian revolution, as hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iranians defied a government ban to publicly protest what appeared to be a rigged presidential election. Despite the regime's often times violent crackdown, the protests have…

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama assured voters that his personal biography gave him a unique capacity to engage the Islamic community and challenge Muslim states to address their social and political troubles. "I have lived in the most populous Muslim country in the world, had…

The results of India's month-long elections, expected this weekend, will clarify at least one political fact: the world's largest democracy faces a disruptive cultural force that will not easily fade away, a tidewater of Hindu nationalism. Popularly known as "Hindutva," it is a political ideology…

On the eve of the United Nations World Conference on Racism, Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, delivered a sharp warning about the problem of racially motivated hate speech. She recalled the effect of radio broadcasts in Rwanda, 15 years ago this month, which dehumanized its Tutsi…

During the 2008 presidential campaign, vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden cryptically warned voters that Barack Obama "will be tested" in the early days of his administration. The latest test arrived barely 10 days ago when, in defiance of the United Nations Security Council, North Korea…

April is Genocide Prevention Month in the United States--marking the anniversaries of six genocides around the world--and the month has gotten off to a dismal start. Arab leaders have just concluded their annual summit by showing solidarity with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the Arab dictator…

President Barack Obama's diplomatic overture to Iran, delivered last Friday to mark the start of the Persian new year, could hardly have been more conciliatory. He spoke of the "shared hopes" and "common dreams" between Americans and Iranians. He promised a style of political engagement that was…

When, in the throes of his presidential bid, Barack Obama cast off his controversial pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his campaign advisers began soliciting for more acceptable replacements. There was no shortage of willing applicants. In a provocative essay called "The Inner Ring," C.S. Lewis…

Brushing aside warnings of retaliations against vulnerable refugees, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant this week for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for atrocities committed in Darfur. A three-judge panel charged Bashir with war crimes and crimes against humanity for…

On February 5 President Obama announced the creation of a White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, a revamped version of the Bush administration's contested program to expand the reach of religious charities fighting poverty and other social problems. Like George Bush,…

DURING HIS 39-YEAR rule as Libya's undisputed dictator, Muammar Qaddafi has picked up various titles, including "Brotherly Leader," "Guide of the Revolution," and "king of kings." The latter title was recently bestowed by 200 African kings and tribal rulers in a ceremony whose pomposity was…

London

Barack Obama's invitation to evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation on Inauguration Day not only has stirred the fury of the political left. In a way that team Obama never intended, it has created a challenge to liberalism's secular ethos--but only if evangelical leaders such as…

Sixty years ago, when the United Nations was debating the creation of an international statement on human rights, Eleanor Roosevelt, then serving as head of the Human Rights Commission, delivered a caustic speech at the Sorbonne. "We must not be deluded by the efforts of the forces of reaction to…

World of Faith and Freedom

London

IF THERE IS A DEFINING mood about the catastrophe that has engulfed Burma, it is the sense of denial. When a devastating cyclone ripped through the country over the weekend, the military regime reported that the storm had killed 351 people. While residents of Rangoon, the largest city, scrambled…

London

EARLIER THIS WEEK PRESIDENTIAL hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama got a chance to brandish their religious credentials before a conservative Christian college in rural Pennsylvania, site of the next Democratic primary contest. The Compassion Forum, hosted by Messiah College and CNN, allowed…

WHATEVER THE ACTUAL results of Egypt's municipal elections yesterday, the fix is in: President Hosni Mubarak made sure that even the most moderate and reform-minded candidates would be shut out of the process. The charade of democratic elections in Egypt typifies the Bush administration's faltering…

JOHN MCCAIN'S FIRST MAJOR foreign policy speech as the presumed Republican nominee for president, delivered last week in Los Angeles, was widely viewed as an effort to distance himself from President George W. Bush. The Washington Post said his agenda "contrasts sharply" with the "go-it-alone…

WHEN TELEVANGELISTS Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed the 9/11 attacks on "gays, feminists and the ACLU," their obscene remarks were used like a club to bludgeon George Bush and his "fundamentalist" base right up to the 2004 elections. For media elites such as The New York Times and CNN, it…

LATER THIS MONTH, a Dutch politician is scheduled to release a film that reportedly calls for the Koran to be banished and hints that Muslims might be expelled from the Netherlands. The 15-minute production, aptly called Fitna--Arabic for "strife"--has already generated death threats, security…

PRESIDENT BUSH AND THE First Lady are in Africa this week, visiting five countries--Benin, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, and Tanzania--that have benefited from his $15 billion initiative to combat HIV/AIDS. There is something to be said for a program that confounds liberals, libertarians, and radical…

LAST WEEK THE ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, generated a tsunami of criticism by welcoming the partial adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the United Kingdom. "If what we want socially," said Rowan Williams, "is a pattern of relations in which a…

LAST WEEK GERMANY marked the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, on January 30, 1933. Within a decade the Nazi juggernaut had devoured much of Europe, and its death camps had incinerated millions. No nation in Europe bears the shame of Nazism and anti-Semitism more heavily, yet none…

FOR A FEW FLEETING moments Monday night--what should have been vivid and affecting moments--television coverage of President Bush's final State of the Union address fastened on the image of a mother and daughter from Moshi, Tanzania. They sat, their faces alive with hope, in the first lady's box…

PRESIDENT BUSH MARKED "Religious Freedom Day"--celebrating the 1786 adoption of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom--by acknowledging that the right to worship freely is fundamental to America's democratic creed. "My administration continues to support freedom of worship at home and abroad,"…

AN ARTICLE OF FAITH among many liberals is that religion and tolerance don't go well together. In a recent editorial, for example, the New York Times matter-of-factly derided conservative Christians as "the most religiously intolerant sector of American political life." That's quite a sector. It…

YESTERDAY WAS INTERNATIONAL Human Rights Day, the date marking the adoption by the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948. Not even the most devoted U.N. apologists, however, could be in a festive mood. Even by their own Orwellian standards--in which the…

THE ARREST OF a British school teacher in Sudan last week--amid demands for her execution--had all the earmarks of a Samuel Beckett play, a theatre of the absurd that is attracting sell-out crowds in many parts of the Islamic world. The latest source of Muslim rage: a teddy bear.

REMINDERS OF THE dreadful ambitions of Islamic extremists are not hard to come by. Earlier this month we learned that authorities thwarted a "massive" terrorist attack against American targets in Germany, planned by at least two German citizens who had converted to Islam. Two weeks ago, Osama bin…

LAST WEEK WE LEARNED of another "massive" terrorist plot against American targets, this time thwarted by German authorities, Osama bin Laden has just released another cryptic video threat against the United States, and, six years since the events of 9/11, still we ask: why do they hate us?

MILLIONS GATHERED LAST week to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Pakistan's emergence as an independent state. It was difficult for many, however, to ignore the massive problems that afflict this Islamic republic--from its string of military dictatorships to its rising levels of religious…

IN HIS FIRST MEETING with President Bush as Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown confounded many this week when he unambiguously affirmed "the historic partnership of shared purpose" between Great Britain and the United States. Indeed, when it comes to national security issues such as Iraq,…

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PRESIDENT BUSH used the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks to remind Americans of the nature of the fight against radical Islam. "It's been called a clash of civilizations," Bush said. "It is a struggle for civilization." The president warned that a terrorist victory over the United…

WHEN MOHAMMAD KHATAMI emerged as president of Iran in 1997, many liberals swooned in delight at the appearance of a self-styled Islamic reformer and moderate. The New York Times announced that Khatami was "dedicated to relaxing or eliminating . . . political and religious repression." Here was a…

ON JULY 4, 1918, Winston Churchill chaired a meeting of the Anglo-Saxon Fellowship, an annual gathering to mark the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That year, though, they had a more pressing reason to celebrate: the arrival of a million American soldiers in Europe to revive the…

THOUSANDS OF MOROCCANS were expected to join demonstrations today marking the third anniversary of the May 16 terrorist bombings in Casablanca. The explosions, linked to al Qaeda, killed 41 people, injured 100, and sent shock waves through the small North African nation. Americans ought to pause…

LAST WEEK MUCH OF THE WORLD learned of the plight of a lone convert to Christianity, Abdul Rahman, on trial for his life in Afghanistan. Jailed on charges of apostasy, Rahman was released on a technicality and spirited off to asylum in Italy--only after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed…

Hardly anything has infuriated certain critics of the Bush Administration more than the president's vocabulary to describe the war on terrorism. Bush warns of an "axis of evil," in which rogue nations collude with Muslim extremists to acquire nuclear weapons. He regards Osama bin Laden and his…

Charles W. Colson

THE VICIOUS TERRORIST ATTACKS over the last 18 months--in Spain, Egypt, Great Britain, and Iraq--appear to have Muslim organizations in the West on the defensive. It's not unusual anymore to hear clerics in Europe and America say they're prepared to expel extremists from their mosques. More Islamic…

LAST MONTH A GROUP OF Arab intellectuals released their third report in an unprecedented study of the many failures--economic, social, and political--that plague the world's Arab states. The latest report, "Towards Freedom in the Arab World," endorses democracy and laments the "acute deficit of…

SEATED AT THE SAME TABLE in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations in New York last Monday were representatives of Iran and Iraq. Their proximity was a mere artifact of alphabetical order, yet also a symbol of the organization's idealism: If leaders from contending countries--whether…

LAST MONTH A CLASSIFIED UNITED Nations report prompted Secretary General Kofi Annan to admit that U.N. peacekeepers and staff have sexually abused or exploited war refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The worst of the 150 or so allegations of misconduct--some of them captured on…

THE RECENT WAVE of church bombings, kidnappings, and executions of civilians in Iraq seems to support a contested claim by the Bush administration: that radical Islam is the philosophical cousin to European fascism; that it has less to do with politics than with nihilistic rage. As Bush put it in…

AMONG THE COSTS of the Abu Ghraib scandal is the harm it does to America's standing as a champion of human rights--and the distraction it creates, in international circles, from the misdeeds of truly heinous regimes. "Whenever the United States raises a criticism of somebody else, this is…

THE UNITED NATIONS Commission on Human Rights begins its 60th session this week in Geneva. For the next six weeks the 53 member states will generate, if nothing else, a cacophony of moral indignation.

RANDALL TOBIAS, President Bush's pick to oversee his $15 billion AIDS initiative for Africa and the Caribbean, sailed through his recent confirmation vote in the U.S. Senate--only to find himself at the center of a controversial bid to reshape America's AIDS policy overseas. President Bush invokes…

NUMEROUS HAZARDS threaten U.S. democracy-building in Iraq. They include theocratic Shia radicals, mischief and thuggery by Baath party officials, misjudgments by American officials, and--to hear some critics tell it--the presence of Christian relief organizations. Media stories over the last…

RELIGIOUS FIGURES who opposed the liberation of Iraq have a lot of explaining to do. Fashioning themselves prophets of peace, they caustically denounced the "rush to war." Having granted the United Nations an almost transcendent moral authority, they declared Operation Iraqi Freedom an "immoral"…

EVEN WITH THE START of the war to unseat Saddam Hussein, religious leaders continue to oppose the use of force as unnecessary and unjust. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, laments the "failures of heart, mind and will that led to this war." The Church World Service,…

A CENTURY AGO, the psychologist, philosopher, and agnostic William James delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. His 20 addresses were published in 1902 as "The Varieties of Religious Experience," which soon became one of the most widely read works on religious…

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, it seems, the status of marriage now depends on who amends the Constitution first. Marriage either will be radically redefined through a gay-rights strategy of litigation, or it will be preserved as we have known it through legislative deliberation and a formal amendment…

CHRISTIANITY is known for its paradoxes -- the meek shall inherit the earth, the last shall be first, whoever loses his life will save it. Here's another: Evangelicals who complain that government is too secular, suddenly fear it's getting too much religion.