Do not pass the plow: The danger of declaring a golden age without repentance



I live in Montana. Driving in snow is simply part of life here.

When the storm is heavy and the road is bad, you do not pass the snowplow. You go at its speed. You let it clear the way. Trying to rush past does not make the road safer or the journey faster. It only increases the risk.

Does God wink at sin in order to bless a nation — or does Scripture teach the opposite?

I have watched people try anyway. Confidence surges, patience thins, and effort begins to feel like wisdom. Some get away with it. Some do not. Either way, the plow keeps moving — unhurried and unmoved by urgency.

The rush to declare victory

As we approach a new year, I find myself thinking about that lesson while listening to Christians talk about the future of our country.

Some are already calling 2026 a coming “golden age of America.” Others argue that Christian nationalism offers the corrective path forward — that the nation must reclaim explicitly Christian leadership, laws, and identity. Christians, they say, must take the reins.

Christians should care deeply about their culture. Scripture calls us to be salt and light. Many believers already serve faithfully in the highest offices of the state, and we should encourage and equip more to do so. The question is not whether Christians should serve, but what posture we bring with us when we do.

Scripture is remarkably clear about order. In 2 Chronicles, healing and restoration are promised only after God’s people humble themselves, pray, seek His face, and turn from their ways. The sequence is not optional. Humbling comes before healing.

So why does the language of a coming golden age seem so detached from the language of repentance?

There is no denying that our culture has lost moral traction. Christians are not imagining the collapse. And more than 60 million abortions since 1973 are not a statistic a nation simply absorbs and leaves behind. Scripture never treats the shedding of innocent blood lightly.

Outrage is easy. Obedience is harder.

When sin is not merely tolerated but established as policy, what is the response of the people of God?

Outrage may be understandable. Indignation is certainly warranted. Resistance, in some form, may be necessary. But resistance to what — and by what means?

Scripture tells us plainly that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood. We say we believe that. The question is whether we act like it. If the battle is spiritual, why do so many of our responses rely almost entirely on human strength, political leverage, and cultural power?

If we are not fighting flesh and blood, why would we expect victory through our own understanding rather than by seeking God’s? And how can we presume upon His wisdom while bypassing the very repentance Scripture says must come first?

Where is the snowplow in this moment?

Prosperity is often treated as evidence of God’s blessing, but Scripture never makes that equation automatic. Drug cartels are prosperous. Entire industries built on sexual exploitation generate staggering wealth. So the question is not whether something flourishes, but why.

Does prosperity always signal God’s approval — or can it also reflect restraint removed, a people being given over to what they insist on pursuing? If abundance alone proves blessing, how do we account for how easily sin thrives?

Invoking God does not obligate Him

We frequently say, “God bless America,” but what do we mean when we invoke God’s name publicly? In 2013, a sitting U.S. president closed a speech to Planned Parenthood by saying, “God bless Planned Parenthood, and God bless America.”

That raises a serious question for Christians. When a national leader invokes God’s blessing in that way, does the language function merely as personal sentiment, or as representative speech? And more importantly, can those appeals be reconciled biblically? Can the same God who condemns the shedding of innocent blood be invoked to bless both its defenders and the nation at large without contradiction?

Does God wink at sin in order to bless a nation — or does Scripture teach the opposite?

This question is not aimed at unbelievers, who feel no obligation to repent. It is aimed squarely at the church.

Throughout Scripture, when God’s people finally grasped the weight of their sin, the response was not triumphal language or claims of destiny. It was confession. Leaders did not announce renewal. They acknowledged guilt. Only then did rebuilding begin.

So why does so much talk of a coming golden age contain so little talk of repentance?

The passages often cited to support Christian political dominance proclaim Christ’s authority. That authority is not in dispute. What is less often examined is how Christ exercises it. Jesus said His kingdom was not of this world. The early church did not secure influence through force or control, but through obedience, suffering, prayer, and faithful witness.

And through that path, it changed the world.

Conservatism is not holiness. Holiness runs deeper than alignment, platforms, or policy wins. Scripture places the deepest problem of any nation not in its laws, but in the human heart. Legislation may restrain behavior, but it cannot regenerate souls. That work belongs to the gospel.

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Photo by: Philippe Lissac/Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

God is not in a hurry

As a caregiver, I have learned the hard way that effort is not the same as health. When the pressure is high and the outcome uncertain, urgency can feel responsible. Control can masquerade as diligence.

But we do not get credit for effort if it lands us in a ditch. Trying to pass the plow does not create progress. It creates wreckage.

God is not rushed. He moves at His pace, not ours.

Repentance is not the abandonment of influence; it is the only ground on which influence survives.

If God is who He says He is, what wisdom is there in rushing ahead of Him?

Which leaves a final question for the people of God: Are we asking the Lord to bless what we refuse to repent of?

Scripture’s order has not changed. Humility precedes healing. Repentance comes before restoration. And when we declare a golden age without repentance, we should not be surprised if what we have built turns out to be a golden calf.

Herod promised moderation — and then he slaughtered the innocent



Everyone loves the three wise men at Christmas. Gold, frankincense, myrrh, the star, the long journey — these are the images we place on mantles and church bulletins. But almost no one pauses to consider the politics happening behind the scenes. Matthew’s Gospel is not merely a nativity story; it is a collision of kingdoms. At the center of that collision is a tyrant who sounds far more familiar to modern ears than we might like to admit.

Herod is remembered for one thing: He murdered infants. That is the brutal fact we cannot ignore. But before he unsheathed the sword, Herod did something else — something more subtle, more political, and more recognizable.

Just as Herod spoke the language of worship to mask his intentions, the Democrats speak the language of ‘common sense’ to mask theirs.

He promised moderation. He promised cooperation. He promised unity.

And he lied.

“Go and search carefully for the Child,” Herod told the wise men, “and when you have found Him, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him also.” It was a trap. A manipulative plea for compromise. A tyrant asking the righteous to meet him halfway.

Herod never intended to worship Christ. He planned to kill Him. And that is where the story begins to sound painfully modern.

False moderation

Herod’s modern-day heirs still use the same script. Every election season brings a fresh wave of polished slogans: “Commonsense reproductive health care.” “Protecting basic rights.” “Defending freedom.” “Stopping extremism.”

The tone is moderate. The goal is not.

These same Democratic voices champion abortion through all nine months, fund the industry, defend it in court, and celebrate each victory that preserves the so-called right to end a child’s life. Behind the rhetoric of calm reason lies a fixed reality: Every restriction — no matter how small — is treated as an existential threat.

President Donald Trump proved this. He rejected national restrictions, announced he would not sign a bill banning abortion, and embraced the state-by-state approach, even calling a heartbeat bill too restrictive. And the left still branded him a radical intent on a national ban and criminalizing abortion.

The charge did not depend on his position. It depended on leftists' strategy. If the destruction of the innocent is nonnegotiable for them, then every effort to restrain it is labeled “extremism.” Herod does not distinguish between cautious men and bold ones.

The illusion of safety

Many have assumed that careful posture protects influence. The evidence says otherwise. No matter how tempered the proposal, no matter how limited the step, no matter how deliberately “reasonable” the tone, the same accusations appear: “Outlawing women.” “Criminalizing health care.” “Taking away rights.” “Extreme.”

The strategy is simple: Anything that restricts the regime’s power is given the same label. If the political cost is identical regardless of the position taken, then the logic of compromise collapses. Because what, precisely, is being purchased?

If moderation brings no peace, if restraint brings no goodwill, if cautious measures earn the same condemnation as courageous ones, then moderation is not a shield. It is simply paying the price for a position you do not hold.

Herod offered cooperation. The wise men showed respect. On the surface, it looked like stability, but when God revealed the truth, the wise men acted decisively: “Being warned in a dream ... they departed for their own country another way.”

They did not return to negotiate. They did not report back with updated information. They simply refused to play the tyrant’s game. And that refusal protected the Christ-child. Their greatness was not in their gifts but in their clarity. When a ruler is committed to killing the innocent, cooperation is complicity.

New actors, same script

The modern Democratic regime does not offer moderation. It claims moderation while rejecting every limit placed before it.

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Photo by: Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

A heartbeat bill? Extreme. An ultrasound requirement? Extreme. Parental notification? Extreme. A 20-week ban? Extreme. Nothing is ever reasonable unless it preserves abortion without limits.

Just as Herod spoke the language of worship to mask his intentions, the Democrats speak the language of “common sense” to mask theirs. The tone is polished, but the aim is unchanged: keep the machinery of death running while demanding that others surrender the moral clarity that might restrain it. Herod promised a partnership he never meant to honor. The Democrats promise moderation they never intend to practice.

The question that returns every year

We have no shortage of latter-day Herods. They still promise moderation, still demand cooperation. They still insist that if only convictions are tempered, peace will come.

But Christmas testifies otherwise. Herod was never going to worship Christ.

The Democrats who champion abortion are never going to tolerate restrictions. The accusations will fall on anyone who lifts a finger for the unborn, no matter how small the effort may be. If the cost is the same either way, then only one path honors God, protects life, and is politically wise: Let us refuse the tyrants by avoiding the negotiation altogether.

If the weight of truly treating abortion as murder is inevitable, then let us play the wise man and embrace our convictions.

How Christians honored a truce the left never accepted



It’s Christmastime, and you can feel the shift in the air.

Something has changed in the nation’s mood. People smile more easily. Familiar music returns. And — quietly but unmistakably — you can say “Merry Christmas” again without apologizing for it. The president of the United States quotes the Gospel of John when he speaks about Jesus.

Christians need to face a hard truth: The truce was a mistake.

For a few short weeks, Americans remember what this season is actually about. Not a generic winter festival. Not a vague celebration of “light” or “togetherness.” But the birth of Jesus Christ — a real event in history that changed everything.

For centuries, Christians have marked this season to reflect on the incarnation of the Son of God. “Christ is the reason for the season” is not a slogan; it is a confession. God entered history. He took on flesh. He came to save sinners. Christianity is not built on myth or metaphor but on eyewitness testimony to what actually happened.

America is now remembering — haltingly, imperfectly — the central role of Christ in its own history. That recovery follows decades of effort by atheists and secular ideologues to banish Christ from the public square. Unfortunately, Christians largely agreed to the truce that made this possible. They kept their faith private while Marxists were happy to occupy public education.

In the 1960s, American Christians accepted what amounted to a truce. I half-jokingly call it the Madalyn Murray O’Hair deal. The now largely forgotten atheist activist sued to remove prayer and biblical instruction from public schools. Christians acquiesced. Public education, they were told, would be “neutral.” Religion would be kept out. Faith would be private.

Christians kept their side of the deal.

The Marxists did not — because they never agreed to one. They announced their intentions openly. They promised to march through the institutions, and they did. Universities filled with faculty who identify as left or far left and who teach Marxist frameworks as settled truth.

Today, it is easier to find a committed Marxist on campus than a practicing Christian.

For 60 years, Marxist philosophy crept into K-12 education and then saturated higher education. What was once smuggled in under euphemism is now proudly declared. Professors announce their ideology on syllabi and use taxpayer dollars to teach students that America is structurally racist and that “whiteness” is a form of oppression.

There was never neutrality. There was only a vacuum — and Marxism rushed in to fill it.

I saw this emptiness firsthand on my own campus at Arizona State University.

At ASU’s West Valley campus, administrators recently installed a “winter wonderland” display. Not Christmas lights — “winter” lights. Decorations carefully stripped of any reference to Christ. The existential meaninglessness was almost overwhelming.

Lights were strung up to flicker briefly in the darkness before being taken down and discarded. What did it mean? What did it point to beyond itself?

Or, as Hemingway wrote, was it simply nada y pues nada y pues nada — nothing, and then nothing, and then nothing?

This is what happens when you preserve form while evacuating content. Ritual without meaning. Celebration without hope. Light without truth.

Christmas is the opposite of that.

Christmas does not offer a vague lesson about darkness giving way to light. It proclaims that Jesus Christ is the light of the world. It is not a symbolic story to be endlessly reinterpreted but a declaration that Christ was born in history, of a virgin, in fulfillment of prophecy, to redeem a fallen world.

That is why efforts to drain Christmas of its meaning always feel strained. When leftists substitute “winter celebrations” and “seasonal observances,” they do not offer neutrality. They offer emptiness — sometimes dressed up as inclusion, sometimes as bureaucracy, sometimes as pagan revivalism. Light shows without the Logos. Rituals without redemption.

Christians need to face a hard truth: The truce was a mistake.

There is no neutral education. There never has been. Every curriculum conveys values. Every institution forms souls. The only question is whether students will be formed in the light of Christ or in the ideology of those who openly despise Him.

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Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Christmas exposes the lie of neutrality. It reminds us that history has meaning, that truth entered the world, and that human beings answer to something higher than administrative guidelines or ideological fashion.

So this year, I am not whispering, “Happy Holidays.” I am saying, “Merry Christmas” — to students, to colleagues, to anyone who will hear it.

Parents and students should remember something crucial: Universities answer to you. You are not passive consumers. You set expectations. You decide what kind of formation is acceptable.

When you see your professors, say, “Merry Christmas.” Say it cheerfully. Say it unapologetically. What you are affirming is not sentiment but truth: that Christ came into the world, and no amount of bureaucratic rebranding can erase Him.

The lights will flicker and fade. Christ will not.

Merry Christmas.

Christian Almost Murdered Twice By Islamists Finds Home In Canada For Christmas

Michael and his family no longer need fear for their lives, but the same cannot be said for the millions of Christians living in Pakistan.

This Christmas season, Middle East Christians are under threat



Last December, my country finally threw off the chains of a hated, despotic regime. For many Syrians, it was a moment filled with hope — the belief that decades of repression had given way to a chance for renewal. Yet by March 2025, that hope had begun to fade. Parts of the country slipped into chaos. Videos circulated on social media and WhatsApp showing armed Islamist militias attacking civilian Christians, Druze, and anyone they branded as “infidels.”

Homes were burned. Entire families were killed. The first wave of violence was expanding and closing in on Christian communities of Suwayda in southern Syria, where many of my family members live.

While Israel has faced a campaign of withering international criticism, American Catholics and evangelicals are hearing very little about the plight of Christians from Egypt to Iran.

Then the killing stopped. It wasn’t widely publicized, but Israel — Syria’s southern neighbor — stepped in to prevent a massacre. Decisive military action stopped the slaughter of men, women, and children — our own relatives — in Suwayda.

For Arab Christians who have lived through so much war and persecution, it was a moment of relief but also a reminder of how little the world seems to care. When Christians are murdered in the Middle East, it rarely makes headlines.

As we come into the Christmas season and a new year, Christians are vanishing under Islamist violence and official repression.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s control and Iranian power have sent the Christian population into a tailspin. In Iraq, the number of Christians has dwindled to just over 100,000 faithful from over one million barely a decade ago. Even in small pockets of Christian life, supposed “safe havens” like Ain Kawa in Erbil, Iraq, Christians survive only because local authorities offer protection. From Sudan to Syria, ancient Christian communities have collapsed in just a generation.

The cradle of Christianity, with few exceptions, has become a region where believers cannot worship or gather without threats to our lives. Intervention from Israel helped prevent a massacre of Christian communities in Suwayda. But the world needs to pay attention to protect the Christians of the Arab world.

Western interest in the Middle East has mostly focused on Hamas’ brutal attacks on Israel in 2023 and Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza. While Israel has faced a campaign of withering international criticism, American Catholics and evangelicals are hearing very little about the plight of Christians from Egypt to Iran. Legacy media ignores them. TikTok algorithms suppress them.

It is perverse that right now — with Christian communities across the Middle East facing extinction — prominent voices like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes are ostracizing Christian Zionism as “a heresy.” In fact, Israel is the best friend Christians in the Middle East can hope to have. Alone in the region, Israel hosts a growing Christian population; alone in the region, Israel has intervened time and again to save Christian communities from eradication.

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Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images

Our brethren in Syria and across the Middle East need our help this year more than ever before. Where churches are destroyed and believers persecuted, American Christians must pay attention, pray, and speak out.

More than that — contra Carlson — let us reach beyond our community. We can and must bring together a coalition of conscience in defense of persecuted minorities abroad, including human rights NGOs, brave anti-Islamist Muslims, and friendly governments in the region.

As Christmas approaches, the Christians of the Arab world are desperately calling for our help. This season, let us answer them.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

Killing Of Nigerian Christians Underscores Islam Is Incompatible With Safety And Freedom

Nigeria is the epicenter of the fight for jihadist control and the imposition of sharia law over all of Africa.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination demands your courage, not your sympathy



I have lost grandparents, childhood friends, and college friends. As you age, death becomes familiar. Each loss shakes you briefly, reminds you that life is fragile, and then fades. You drift back into the illusion that tomorrow is guaranteed. That you will have time later to become a better Christian, husband, and father.

That illusion shattered on September 10, the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a leftist.

Charlie Kirk showed us how a Christian lives and how a Christian dies. His race is finished. Ours must now begin.

I did not know Charlie personally. I worked as his publicist last summer for what became his second-to-last book, “Right Wing Revolution,” but we never spoke directly. Still his death devastated me in a way no other loss had.

I had to understand why. Answering that question became the genesis of this book, “For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.”

On the day Charlie was killed, I joined my wife to pick up our 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter from preschool. The day before, she had asked again and again, “Dada in car? Dada here?” This time, I wanted to be there when she came running out.

As we pulled into the parking lot, my phone lit up. Charlie Kirk had been shot. My stomach dropped.

I had felt that dread once before. On July 13, 2024, I was rocking my daughter to sleep when an alert flashed that President Trump had been shot in Butler, Pennsylvania. Minutes later, dread gave way to relief. Trump survived.

This time, the dread did not lift.

While my wife walked toward the school entrance, I sat frozen in the car, refreshing news feeds. Then I saw the video. The moment the bullet struck Charlie.

One look told me no one could survive that wound.

Then my daughter appeared.

Her face lit up when she saw me. Pure joy. The same joy Charlie’s daughter would never experience again.

As my little girl ran toward the car shouting, “Dada!” another child had just lost her father forever. His daughter. His son. His wife. They would never again live a moment like the one unfolding before me.

Nothing had changed for my daughter. Everything had changed for me.

That night, I slept on the floor beside my oldest daughter’s crib. I lay awake for hours, listening to her breathing and thinking of Charlie’s children and of Erika, facing the impossible task of explaining why their father would never walk through the door again.

In the days that followed, I cried more than I ever had. I am not a man who cries. But something in me died with Charlie, and something else was born.

I began studying Charlie’s words, speeches, debates, and sermons. Not as content but as testimony. What I saw changed me. Charlie possessed a maturity beyond his years, a steadiness most men twice his age never reach. He knew who he was and whom he served. He knew his mission and the cost of it. He accepted that cost.

In Charlie, I saw the man I wanted to be. Strong yet gentle. Courageous yet humble. Unmoved by hatred because he feared God more than man. That recognition exposed an uncomfortable truth. I shared many of Charlie’s convictions but not his courage.

I had spoken boldly only when it was safe. I avoided conflict when it was convenient. The wounds of losing lifelong friends in 2020 because I voted for Trump still stung, and I carried a residual fear of losing more.

Charlie did not hesitate. He lived Matthew 5 and Mark 8 not as verses but as marching orders. He carried his cross onto hostile campuses and into debates before crowds that despised him, knowing exactly what it cost.

When that hatred finally culminated in a sniper’s bullet, it ended his life but not the mission that made him a target.

His death exposed my compromises. It forced me to confront the gap between the man I was and the man God was calling me to be. It demanded that I stop postponing courage and start living the truth now. Costly truth. Dangerous truth. Biblical truth.

Charlie’s life and death were not political events. They were spiritual ones.

He defended the family because God commanded it. He rejected identity politics because every person bears God’s image. He championed fathers because fatherlessness destroys nations. He defended black Americans by insisting on their dignity as individuals created by God, not as pawns of a political movement. He confronted transgender ideology because lies about human nature are lies about God Himself.

For that, he was vilified, dehumanized, and finally murdered.

The ideology that killed Charlie did not emerge overnight. It grew in the silence of those who knew better but feared the cost of speaking. Evil advances when good men retreat, and too many of us did.

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Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Charlie did not retreat. Now none of us can afford hesitation.

The man I was — cautious and hesitant — died with Charlie. In his place stands a man who understands that truth requires sacrifice, that silence is surrender, and that the only approval that matters comes from God.

My daughter deserves a country where political murder is condemned, not excused. Where truth is spoken even when it is dangerous. Where courage is not outsourced to a handful of men like Charlie Kirk but lived by millions.

That is why I wrote “For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.” Not simply to remember Charlie but because his death demanded my transformation and now demands yours.

Charlie Kirk showed us how a Christian lives and how a Christian dies.

His race is finished. Ours must now begin.

The torch is ours to carry — for Christ, for country, and for Charlie.

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from the author’s new book, “For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk” (Bombardier Books, Post Hill Press).

Trump’s Religious Freedom Nominee Left In Limbo As Persecution Rages Worldwide

President Donald Trump nominated him April 10

What's happening in India demands every Christian's attention — and Trump's action



President Trump’s recent warning to Nigeria over the mass killing of Christians was both overdue and necessary.

At long last, Washington acknowledged what much of the West preferred to ignore — that believers are being butchered for their faith while bureaucrats issue statements and move on to the next photo op. Trump’s threat to strike Nigeria if the slaughter continues signaled a rare thing in modern politics: moral clarity.

Every church burned in India is a warning: Faith without freedom becomes folklore.

Now it’s time for that same clarity to be turned toward another nation, one that calls itself the world’s largest democracy and one that America counts among its closest allies — India.

New data from the United Christian Forum reveals a troubling trend. Attacks on Christians in India have surged by more than 500% since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014. Over the course of a single decade, reported incidents climbed from 139 to 834. Nearly 5,000 individuals, families, and churches have been caught in the crossfire.

Yet these grim numbers tell only part of the story.

Behind the statistics are pastors dragged from pulpits and beaten, churches reduced to ash, and people hunted like animals simply for choosing the Lord Almighty over the golden idols of their tormentors. What was once unthinkable — open persecution of Christians in the land of Mother Teresa — has now become routine.

Twelve of India’s 28 states now enforce so-called “anti-conversion” laws that criminalize anyone accused of bringing others to Christ.

In practice, these laws are less about conversion than coercion. They empower mobs and police alike to harass Christian minorities on suspicion alone. A man caught carrying a Bible can be accused of proselytizing. A prayer meeting can be framed as a plot.

The cruelty is not confined to law but seeps into everyday life.

In the heartland states of Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Christian villagers have been driven out of their homes, denied burial rights, and told to renounce their faith or face starvation. Dalit and tribal Christians — the poorest of India’s poor — endure the worst of it. They are excluded from government welfare programs, denied housing, and forced into reconversion ceremonies designed to humiliate.

The Hindu nationalists behind these acts are not the flag-waving patriots America knows. They are absolute savages who have more in common with Islamist extremists than with any conservative movement in the West. No evil is too depraved for these fanatics in saffron robes. These are men capable of gang-raping elderly nuns in the name of purity. Their mouths recite prayers even as their hands commit sin.

Yet through all this, Washington has remained curiously quiet. India, after all, is an ally — a key counterweight to China, a trading partner, a member of the Quad alliance. And allies, we’re told, must not be offended. India receives tens of millions in U.S. foreign assistance each year, yet continues to slide deeper into majoritarian extremism.

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Debajyoti Chakraborty/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The relationship has become a study in contradiction: America exports democracy while subsidizing the suppression of it.

Trump’s stance toward Nigeria was bold because it rejected the idea that diplomacy must always defer to decorum. He recognized that moral authority is not something declared but something earned and easily lost. The same logic applies to India. If America’s partnership with New Delhi is to mean anything, it must rest on shared principles — not selective blindness.

There is a tragic irony in watching the world’s oldest democracy bankroll the world’s largest, while both ignore their founding creeds. Trump is uniquely positioned to change that. The president has shown a willingness to name the unnameable and confront regimes that others tiptoe around. His threat to Nigeria rattled the corridors of Abuja and forced the international community to pay attention.

A similar message to New Delhi — that America’s friendship cannot be a blank check for intolerance — would carry enormous weight.

To speak out would not be an act of hostility but of honesty. True allies do not flatter; they challenge. India’s leaders must be reminded that religious freedom is not a Western import but a universal right, and any nation that denies it will pay the heaviest of prices. If India wishes to stand shoulder to shoulder with the free world, it must first show it belongs there.

For too long, the West has treated persecution as someone else’s problem. But every church burned in India is a warning: Faith without freedom becomes folklore. The indifference of powerful nations emboldens tyrants and teaches them that human rights are negotiable.

The question now is whether America still believes in the principles it preaches — and whether Trump will demand that its allies do the same.

Because faith, like freedom, dies in stages — first ignored, then excused, and then erased. The erasure has already begun in India. What’s needed now is not another summit or statement, but a voice loud enough to pierce the silence. President Trump has that voice, the rare kind that can still move mountains. I, for one, hope he uses it.

The one virtue America lost — and desperately needs back



Faith is everything to me. I believe in Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, and I’m not shy about saying so. Many Americans feel uncomfortable talking about faith, and many others insist religion should stay out of the public square. I disagree. As a Christian, I want more people to know Jesus, who loves them more than they can imagine.

But I also know that people walk different spiritual paths. Some pray differently. Some worship a different god. Others reject religion altogether. America now holds more faith traditions — and more people with no faith — than at any point in our history. That diversity can spark friction, and as politics fills the void left by declining religious belief, many have turned ideological loyalties into a kind of substitute religion.

America’s diversity guarantees disagreement. It always has. But even in conflict, we can find places to unite.

The risk is obvious: These differences can push us toward a breaking point. The warning signs already surround us. In a moment like this, we need grace.

What grace demands

In Christianity, grace is God’s love poured out freely. Eternal life is His gift — not because we earn it or because we are good, but because God is good.

On Earth, grace takes a more practical form. It means giving each other the benefit of the doubt. It means forgiving mistakes. It means choosing generosity instead of suspicion. And it means approaching someone else’s beliefs with curiosity rather than contempt.

For reasons I still struggle to understand, Americans have stopped trying to understand one another.

Last year, I hosted a meeting of community, business, and faith leaders in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The agenda was full of topics that normally light a fuse: poverty, economic exclusion, racial tensions. Before we began, I admitted that some of the terms we would use carried heavy baggage and that I might say something imperfectly myself. I asked only one thing: a little grace.

That simple request set the tone for the whole day. People pushed through the hard conversations and started looking for solutions. We found common ground in places no one expected. The debate stayed calm because everyone extended grace before they demanded it.

I wish that spirit were more common today.

Why grace is hard — and necessary

Too many people explode at the first sign of disagreement. They judge others more harshly than they judge themselves. They dismiss someone with a different view as beyond redemption. The unspoken thought is always the same: Why bother? They won’t listen to me, so why should I listen to them?

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Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

It’s a natural impulse, but grace calls us to something higher. It reminds us that the person across from us carries the same human frailties we do.

Grace does not mean surrendering your convictions. It does not ask you to dilute what you believe or pretend serious disagreements don’t matter. It simply asks you to respect the strength of someone else’s convictions, even when you oppose them. It asks you to accept that everyone is imperfect — including you. And because each of us hopes for forgiveness when we stumble, grace asks that we extend that same forgiveness to others.

America’s diversity guarantees disagreement. It always has. But even in conflict, we can find places to unite. Recovering that unity starts with a simple choice: showing each other a little grace.