Dirck Coornhert’s 1582 Synod on the Freedom of Conscience speaks to our polarized age.

The bitter sectarianism that enveloped sixteenth-century Europe offers a warning about the tribalism that now darkens American public life.

How G. K. Chesterton stood against an evil that was once frighteningly mainstream.

As Gildor the elf told the Shire in ‘The Lord of the Rings’: ‘The wide world is all about you . . . you cannot forever fence it out.’

The shadow of Russian barbarism has returned — and the impulse toward isolationism will not drive it out.

Remembering the timeless wisdom of President Reagan’s Westminster speech, 40 years ago today.

Perhaps the most undervalued quality of a great mind or, at least, an awakened mind is the willingness to abandon cherished ideas that cannot stand up to new evidence. English philosopher John Locke possessed such a mind.

The Russian autocrat’s dark and violent vision of state power is not without precedent — but neither is the Lockean answer to it.

When George Washington sought to warn Americans about the most fearsome threats to their liberty, he did not cast his eyes toward Europe, where nations were waiting, like vultures, to pounce upon the carcass of a failed experiment in self-government.

In Martin Luther’s age, Erasmus tried to bridge the Catholic-Protestant divide.