Providence Magazine: As Memories of WWII Fade, Americans Must Choose to Learn Its Lessons

My thoughts on the 80th Anniversary of the end of the World War II

“Founded in 2015, Providence examines global statecraft with Christian Realism. We are inspired by Christianity & Crisis, the journal Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr founded in 1941 to argue for the moral and geopolitical imperative of American leadership against totalitarian aggression. We believe American Christians have a special duty to interpret America’s vocation in the world today. We seek to uplift the best of historic Christian political theology, to foster wider conversation about spirituality in politics, and to create a community of serious Christian public thinkers serving America and the world.”

That is Providence Magazine, the journal of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) based in Washington, D.C. It may be the closest thing the US has to an old American Whig or European style Christian democratic think tank. My latest piece published on Providence covers the fact that:

The Second World War ended four generations ago. We are as far from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1945 victory in the Second World War as he was from Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1865, and both men died in April of their final year of conflict, leaving to their successors to sort out the peace they promised to the American people. To remember Pearl Harbor, we must accept that we can no longer simply recall it. It is now like the recollection of Fort Sumter was for the men who stormed Normandy. History does not play favorites and everything that is not deliberately passed down will be forgotten.

Read the entire essay on Providence

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash