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.

When Barack Obama is publicly sworn in for the second time as president on Monday, he will use two Bibles. One belonged to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the other to Abraham Lincoln —two of the most religious figures in American political history.

On the eve of the Protestant Reformation, humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam published a work of satire that set off an earthquake beneath the religious establishment of medieval Europe.

The deadly terrorist attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya represents not just a failure of intelligence. It symbolizes the failure to face unpleasant truths about the hatreds unleashed by corrupted religion.

Ever since Puritans plunged into the New England wilderness, determined to renounce worldly corruptions and establish “a city upon a hill”, American preachers have thundered against the poison of irreligion. So, too, today.

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 latest narrative from Team Obama about their Republican rivals is as straightforward as it is pernicious. We are asked to believe that because of their views about marriage, abortion, and human sexuality, conservatives are waging a “war against women” reminiscent of the Salem witch trials, circa 1692.

Twenty years ago, in the run-up to the 1996 welfare reform law, the United States was in the thick of an argument over how to confront the issue of poverty. Back then, just about everyone agreed that billions of dollars in federal welfare spending had trapped the poor in a culture of government dependency.

The ancient Greeks, especially the frugal Spartans, would probably balk at the commercialism that saturates our modern Olympic Games. And it’s doubtful that either badminton or beach volleyball would satisfy their appetite for blood-and-guts competition.