The war with Iran, begun by the US and Israel on 28 February 2026, involved Israeli and the US airstrikes on nuclear facilities, military and civilian infrastructure and the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenai—and other key religious and political leaders. It is now in its seventh month. There is little doubt that Iran has suffered enormous losses and is suffering terribly under the economic and financial sanctions imposed by the US. All attempts at negotiations have failed. Most importantly Iran is exercising significant control over the Strait of Hormuz. Traffic through the strait, which before the war averaged around 130 vessels each day, has collapsed to an average of 15 every day in August, according to ship trackers, under Iranian attacks and a U.S. blockade on Iran’s ports.

In mid-August 2026, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reducing federal recommendations for routine childhood immunizations from 17 down to 11. The directive also proposes splitting the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) shot into separate individual doses and spreading visits out over time, while repeating unproven claims linking vaccines to autism.

The phrase “a new world of counterhistory” was popularized by historian Simon Sebag Montefiore. He uses it to describe an era where ideological rigidness causes people to reject both past and present factual truths if those facts conflict with their chosen political or cultural orthodoxy.

Michael Keller, the founding and senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church–Lincoln Square, did his PhD dissertation on computational linguistics as applied to historical theology. As a pastor with his unique graduate training, Keller is well-equipped to help us understand how AI affects all aspects of the human condition. I recently read a lengthy article he wrote on AI in which he related this technology to identity formation and the larger identity crisis so pervasive in America. It is remarkably insightful and worthwhile. In this Perspective, I will summarize salient aspects of the article and then close with a series of conclusions drawn from Scripture.

The blockbuster movie of the 2026 summer is unquestionably Christoper Nolan’s The Odyssey. Over the years I have enjoyed Nolan’s films, for they are not only entertaining; they are provocative and thought-provoking. For example, Nolan’s Joker in the Batman movies is a classic nihilist who simply ”enjoys seeing things burn.” Interstellar was a disturbing movie because it focused on questions of life’s meaning and purpose as well as the stewardship responsibility of humanity. His film Oppenheimer caused me to read Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s masterful, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. But his Odyssey is challenging in other ways.

In 2022 the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the nationally sanctioned constitutional right of an abortion and in effect making it a state issue. The strategy of the pro-life movement was to prohibit abortion in conservative states and work for abortion restrictions in other states. But abortion pills now threaten that strategy. Nearly two out of three abortions in America are “chemical abortions.” They are especially popular in states that prohibit abortion clinics.

The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century reform movement within the church. The Reformers believed that the Bible taught that salvation was based on faith, not good works, and that the Bible was the ultimate authority, not the Pope. In 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther wrote a list of arguments called the Ninety-five Theses and nailed them to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther argued that people cannot buy God’s forgiveness; He believed God’s grace was a free gift appropriated by personal faith in Christ and His finished work on the cross. Thanks to the invention of the printing press, Luther’s ideas quickly spread across Europe, as did other Reformers such as John Calvin, Menno Simons (an Anabaptist) and Thomas Cranmer in England.

Within Western Civilization a disturbing trend is raising its ugly head: The Economist calls it “Gen-Z Socialism”—”A fresh crop of socialists want to remake the economy with price controls, hefty wealth taxes and a spree of nationalizations. Supercharged by fury over Gaza, they are winning voters at a formidable pace. Many rose to prominence only recently, like Zack Polanski, who leads the Green Party in Britain, or Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York. Others are long-standing political fixtures: the septuagenarian Jean-Luc Mélenchon is on his fourth swing at the French presidency . . . Forget weighty collectivist ideals or seizing the means of production. Gen-Z socialism is a me-first doctrine. Climate change and race, preoccupations of the 2010s and early 2020s, are now much more peripheral concerns. So are social issues, barring Gaza. Angst about inflation, housing and artificial intelligence have replaced all that with something cruder.

The war with Iran, begun by the US and Israel on 28 February 2026, involved Israeli and the US airstrikes on nuclear facilities, military and civilian infrastructure and the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenai—and other key religious and political leaders. But wars are judged by how they end, not by successes along the way. Much of the fighting is over, but the consequences—the brutal realties—of the war remain. As we near the end of summer 2026, what can we conclude about this war?

Karl Marx (1818-1883), the founder of ideological communism, was ethnically Jewish and came from a long line of rabbis on both sides of his family. However, his parents converted to Christianity for professional and social reasons before his birth, and Marx himself was baptized, raised without Jewish religious traditions, and later embraced atheism. Marx famously dismissed religion as an illusion, calling it the “opium of the people.” Yet, as Robert Orlando argues, “when his thought is examined carefully, a striking parallel emerges: Marx didn’t eliminate redemption. He translated it into political economy.