By appealing to the noblest religious impulses, the West can stop violence against Christians.

Remember when anti-Americanism was all the rage?

Why did a penniless, itinerant rabbi from a backwater district of the Roman Empire, executed in disgrace, exert such a powerful influence on Western civilization?

The contrast between political rhetoric and everyday reality is often stark, even in democracies, where politicians are free to speak the truth about the ills facing their societies.

In the 1830s a young French intellectual, Alexis de Tocqueville, travelled to the United States determined to learn what a great republic looked like.

“With a decade of experience to draw from, now is the time to ask ourselves hard questions — about the nature of today’s threats, and how we should confront them.”

In what seems a curious way to begin a book advancing a more “principled” and “morally defensible” approach to religion in public life, Leiter makes little effort to conceal his contempt for people of faith.

As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Easter, they reflect on God’s purposes amid suffering and death. Yet there is another aspect to the Easter story that should be as important to the skeptic as it is to the believer: its message of religious toleration.

One of the great themes of the Christian Easter story is that the love of God can overcome the worst of human folly, wickedness, weakness — even death itself. This idea, if taken seriously, would be a tonic in many parts of the world today, but perhaps nowhere is it more desperately needed than in the Muslim world.

President Obama likes to refer to himself as a “student of history.” As he prepares his State of the Union Address, he might bear in mind the history of another great republic: Rome.