Operating a church in Vietnam just became even more difficult thanks to new government regulations that went into effect over the weekend. Under Decree 95, the government will now require religious groups to submit financial records and allow local government officials to suspend religious activities for unspecified serious violations. 　　Nguyen Ti Dinh of Vietnams religious affairs committee said the guidelines...

　　Personal tragedies transform individuals and families. National tragedies transform nations and international systems. Britain was never the same country, nor the same empire, after the Battle of the Somme came to a grim close in November 1916. Across the Atlantic, eighty-five years later, America’s post-Cold War luxury vacation from history ended abruptly on the morning of September 11, 2001. On...

　　If one wishes to avoid the horrors of a revolution, one must will it and make it oneself.” 　　– Antoine deRivarol 　　The term revolution is one of the most mystified concepts in the modern conceptual lexicon and also one of the most fundamental. The word was originally an astronomical term designating the regular motion of celestial bodies that acquired intellectual...

　　I have written about Denis Villeneuve for some years now, remarking that no other director is given so much money to waste on beautiful spectacles. This might do us honor. Villeneuve is the favored artist of the digital/AI era (Blade Runner 2049 could be a computer game) and yet he cannot make his studios a profit on his blockbusters. Everyone...

　　In his 1889–90 fictional portrait of aspiring Victorian artists grasping for success, Henry James observed that novels of the age were “large, loose, baggy monsters, with their queer elements of the accidental and the arbitrary.” Science, technology, and imperial expansion encouraged Enlightenment thinkers and popular broadsides to rhapsodize about the steady march of “progress” and the supposedly rational, modern subjects...

　　Is God Your Source of Encouragement? 　　By Victoria Riollano 　　Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”- Deuteronomy 31:6 　　En·cour·age- to give support, confidence, or hope to someone. 　　Many of us are looking to be encouraged...

　　This month marks 75 years since the founding of the NATO alliance. Celebrations will include two very capable new members of the alliance, Finland and Sweden, who opted to break from neutrality and join the alliance shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Despite NATO’s recent growth and defiant unity as Putin sought to fracture the alliance in the early...

　　When Influential Trouble Comes in Waves 　　By Meg Bucher 　　“Troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray.” - Deuteronomy 13:13 NIV 　　Much like hard times come in seasons, trouble comes in waves.The tricky part about determining a bad influence is weeding out our assumptions. We may tend to honor older people as wiser, louder...

　　Christian ministries operating in India are continuing to lose the governments authorization to legally collect foreign donations, in what is amounting to a devastating financial blow to many organizations. 　　This March, Vision India, an organization that provides leadership training for Christian young people, was unable to renew its Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) license. 　　A week prior, the government conducted...

　　One of the salutary features of federalism is that different states can govern themselves differently, making them, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, “laboratories” of democracy, free to “try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” Examples of this abound. For example, Nebraska alone has a unicameral legislature. Some states...

　　A Prayer for Choosing to Believe God Is Good 　　By Brooke McGlothlin 　　“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” - Romans 8:28 　　An absolute bundle of nervous energy, she sat across from me in the small counseling room, trying to wrap her mind...

　　Botswana will hold a national memorial service on Thursday for 45 people who died traveling to an Easter event in South Africa. An eight-year-old girl, Lauryn Siako, was the only survivor after a bus bound for Zion Christian Church crashed through barriers and fell 164 feet down a ledge last week. 　　In the days following the deadly accident, pastors in...