Sunday, 21 January 2024, was centenary of the death of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of Soviet communism and the leader of the bloody Bolshevik Revolution that brought communism to Russia. There were no parades or stirring speeches in Red Square. The obvious reason is that one of Lenin’s most strident critics is Vladimir Putin, “who appears far more enamored with the empire that Lenin’s revolutionaries overthrew.” “In my opinion, the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s death creates an opportunity to try to move away from the endless passionate and meaningless bickering around the dilemma: is he an angel from heaven or a monstrous antichrist, the embodiment of absolute world evil?” said Vladimir Lukin, a Russian senator who formerly served as a human rights commissioner.

One of my favorite Christian authors is Gene Edward Veith, Provost and Professor of literature at Patrick Henry College. Cleverly, Veith has put together a Catechism written by advocates of our secular culture. He follows the typical catechism questions found in many Reformation documents.

Within the Christian church, broadly speaking, the LGBTQIA movement and the growth of same-sex marriages have caused controversy, division and divisiveness.

As year 2024 begins, wars are raging in Africa, Israel and Gaza and Ukraine. These are indeed explosive and most troubling. In addition, the US presidential race has begun, with two diametrically opposed political parties. The isolationist tilt of some in the Republican Party is worrisome. This will be a “make-or-break year for the post-1945 world order.” The new dynamic is one of increasing instability. The Economist argues that “In the 1990s many countries aspired to a self-reinforcing cycle of freedom, market economics and rules-based globalization. Now there is an unpredictable cycle of populism, interventionist economics and transactional globalization. As a result, three threats loom in 2024.”

A new poll from YouGov/The Economist points out that young Americans appear to be remarkably ignorant about one of modern history’s greatest crimes. Some 20% of respondents aged 18-29 think that the Holocaust is a myth, compared with 8% of those aged 30-44. An additional 30% of young Americans said they do not know whether the Holocaust is a myth. “Many respondents espouse the canard that Jews wield too much power in America: young people are nearly five times more likely to think this than are those aged 65 and older.”

I have been reading Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik’s Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship. It is a remarkable read, for in it he surveys the leadership qualities of King David, Queen Esther, Benjamin Disraeli and Abraham Lincoln, among others. He makes two profound observations that are so helpful for 2024

What motivates the rulers of Iran? Why do they invest billions of dollars in arming themselves and their proxies (e.g., Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen, etc.) against Israel? Is it simply to destroy the growing acceptance of Israel by several Arab nations? Was the 7 October genocidal attack designed to thwart the seemingly imminent recognition by Saudi Arabia of Israel? Or was it something more egregious, more dastardly?

Columnist Daniel Henninger correctly observes that “There was a time when most American schoolchildren had a functioning knowledge of the Holocaust and the camps. No longer. Universities’ hiring and enabling of activist left-wing professors—proponents of the anti-Israel movement called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—has affected a generation of students. A Quinnipiac poll found 51% of Democrats younger than 35 don’t support sending military aid to Israel after Hamas’s attack.”

The ethical case against abortion rests on the proposition that life begins at conception—and that killing a baby in the womb is ethically wrong. The life of the baby in the womb is as valuable in the eyes of God as that of the mother. However, since the 1970s, abortion has been defended on the grounds of privacy and bodily autonomy: “my body, my choice.” The legal and philosophical debates that culminated in Roe v. Wade (1973) considered abortion in terms of competing rights: the woman’s right to control her body against the baby’s right not to be killed.

We live in a world where one of the few constants in life is change. I recently read media theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s book, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. It captures quite effectively the unsettledness and disorientation many feel in our postmodern, post-Christian, media-saturated culture. Rushkoff’s analysis is brilliant, but he offers few solutions and little comfort in a world of religious skepticism, moral/cultural progressivism and animosity toward traditional values and religious convictions.