Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18A Time for Courage E di tor’s L et t e r Dear Reader, It’s proving to be an unsettling year. Words such as “crisis,” “resistance,” and “collapse” pepper headlines, and few dismiss them as mere alarmism. All is not well – on this, at least, there is broad consensus. The political cultures of Western countries are infested with rage. Cold War nightmares such as nuclear conflict are suddenly again imagin- able. On the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, Christian denominations – far from nearing a grand restoration of unity – find themselves riven by half-hidden schisms. Partisan divisions infect private life, hardening barriers and poisoning friendships. At such a moment, being told to “take courage” can sound like a grim joke. No doubt that’s how it sounded to the friends of Jesus who accompanied him on his last journey to Jerusalem, where he would be killed. Yet, as John reports in the sixteenth chapter of his Gospel, “Take courage!” was one of the last things Jesus told his disciples, just hours before his arrest and execution. He added, in a statement that must have puzzled them: “I have overcome the world.” Courage – heart, etymologically – seems to me precisely what we’re in need of today: courage to stand by the truth, and courage to stand by the gospel’s claim that everyone belongs to God, because Jesus has overcome the world. Such courage, according to Augus- tine, is simply a form of love – “love ready to bear all things for God’s sake.” To inspire such love – and to guard against a failure of nerve or of imagination – this issue of Plough highlights lived examples of the virtue of courage. This can take the form of boldness in the face of persecution, as shown by Yu Jie’s firsthand account of the challenges facing the church in China (page 30). It can be the bold decision taken by police officer Steven McDon- ald to forgive the young shooter who paralyzed him, and to spend the rest of his life testifying to the power of forgiveness (page 10). Courage is the willingness of a family and a community to affirm that a young man with severe disabilities was born for a missionary purpose, contrary to the utilitarian creed of our times, as Maureen Swinger recounts (page 18). A synonym for courage favored by the apostle Paul is perseverance. Few have persevered as tirelessly as Dorothy Day, a social-justice radical in the best sense, who gave herself daily in unspectacular acts of love. What was exceptional about Day was her con- sistency in living out the hard demands of