Back in February, when the United States and Israel went to war with Iran, most of us did not know much about the Houthis, that stateless militia in Yemen backed by Iran, let alone the straits on either side of the Arabian Peninsula. Now Iran and its Houthi allies control the two main routes for shipping oil out of the Middle East—the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.
Rachel Canter is the Director of Education Policy for the Reinventing America’s Schools project at the Progressive Policy Institute and the founder of Mississippi First, an advocate for education initiatives in Mississippi. She recently wrote a piercing account of the state of American education, giving special focus to the success of the state of Mississippi.
I have addressed the subject of marijuana several times on Issues in Perspective. Clearly, American culture has been moving in the direction of full acceptance of marijuana and its full legalization. But the accommodation to marijuana is not simply an issue of freedom and autonomy—doing whatever you want without the restrictions or regulations of the state. Marijuana is dangerous and we need to frame the issue not around the freedom of the individual, or what Carl Trueman calls “expressive individualism,” but around the issue of the public good.
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.
