Ideas · Essay
Pastors are using AI to draft prayers. The pulpit is changing
Roughly 24 percent of U.S. pastors use AI to help write or edit sermons, and Josh Code says he spoke to some of the early adopters. One churchgoer says he heard AI's fingerprints in a prayer from the pulpit, raising a plain question about authorship, trust, and the line between help and substitution.
The Front Page
Ideas · Essay
Putin’s message in Ukraine is fear. The West should stop pretending it is harmless.
A Russian drone nearly hit a train in Ukraine as Niall Ferguson traveled near the Polish border, and he says the strike sent the same message aggressors have used for centuries: 'Be afraid.' The episode points to a wider campaign of drone incursions, sabotage, and cyberattacks against NATO members.
By Tessa Vaughan · Sep 18
Ideas · Essay
When antisemitic claims enter a friendship, the cost is trust.
A reader asks where 'agreeing to disagree' ends after a friend shares posts calling Zionism 'Satan worship' and repeats claims tied to Jews, Israel, and the Talmud. The line is not politics; it is whether a relationship can survive contempt dressed up as debate.
By Tessa Vaughan · Sep 17
U.S.
New York is holding $19.3 million that belongs to a Kentucky order of nuns
The Sisters of the Congregation of Divine Providence sold a Manhattan home after unaffordable repairs forced a closure. New York attorney general Letitia James approved the sale, but she has not released the remaining proceeds.
By Ruth Barrow · Sep 18
Ideas · Essay
The strange new politics of AI. Plus, the old problem of doing nothing.
A Washington conference drew an unlikely coalition warning that artificial intelligence could become an existential threat. The larger question is more familiar: whether institutions will act before the incentives turn into a disaster.
By Tessa Vaughan · Sep 17
Ideas · Essay
Dara Horn says antisemitism is about power, not just hatred.
The author says Jewish suffering is often sentimentalized while Jewish life is ignored. Her new book extends that argument and asks what Jew-hatred reveals about institutions and incentives.
By Tessa Vaughan · Sep 17
Ideas · Essay
America still has not done justice for 9/11. Twenty-five years later, the accused remain in pretrial limbo.
The surviving 9/11 defendants have still not faced final judgment, and the long delay has turned a promise of justice into a lesson in institutional failure.
By Tessa Vaughan · Sep 17
Ideas · Essay
Tax-exempt nonprofits and the terror problem. The record is public.
Two new reports say MyFundAction and the Islamic University of Minnesota use charitable status while advancing the ideological mission of terrorist groups like Hamas. The larger issue is not one charity or one campus group, but how easily tax exemptions can become a vehicle for radical politics.
By Tessa Vaughan · Sep 17