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I arrived at the Bangkok airport at midnight, made my way through customs, and was greeted by an airport information agent who helped me arrange transportation to my hotel. I was astonished when he asked me if I'd be interested in “the company of some ladies” during my stay. I was groggy from traveling and unsure of what I’d heard, so I asked him to repeat himself. Yes, I'd heard him right the first time—he was offering to arrange “something nice” for me.

Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University, uses strong words to describe what is going on in the U.S. He speaks of a “crisis of profligacy,” “collective recklessness” and a “dysfunctional country.” He says our political system empowers an “imperial presidency” and possesses “delusions of grandeur.” This is surprising commentary from a onetime military man who was a soldier’s soldier.

Sabbath keeping: When the late Michael Jackson was a child performer, he longed for time just to play. On the Sabbath he was able to escape the pressures of performance. The elders in his Jehovah Witness church treated him like everyone else. "I still miss the sense of community that I felt there," Jackson said. "I miss the friends and the people who treated me like I was simply one of them. Simply human. Sharing a day with God" (RNS, originally published by Beliefnet in December 2000).

The events of the last two years have been humbling—even for New Yorkers, a breed not easily humbled. When I first moved to Manhattan, I was often startled when someone offered a complimentary comment about another person, saying that he or she was “really smart.” The pride that went before the particular New York fall was, more than any other human frailty, our peculiar brash pride in putative cleverness, savvy and smarts. Now there is no escaping the embarrassing fact that a lot of very smart people in New York never saw the present economic crisis coming, and that many of those smart people had been participating in the foolish decisions that contributed to it.

How should Christians understand—and what should they learn from—the worst economic downturn since the Depression? Does the crisis raise fundamental moral or theological questions about our economic system? Four scholars offer their reflections in this issue of the Century: Dennis P. McCann, Jon P. Gunnemann, Deirdre McCloskey and D. Stephen Long.

Bombs-away: Not so long ago neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz, John Bolton and William Kristol were recommending that the U.S. (or Israel) bomb Iran. Now that there are protests in Tehran against what appears to be a rigged presidential election, some of these same commentators are showing concern for the well-being of the protesters. Blogger Glenn Greenwald says: “Imagine how many of the people protesting . . . would be dead if any of these bombing advocates had their way” (salon.com, June 16).

"You can be a minister. Just don’t marry one,” I heard myself telling a little girl in my church, and then wondered where that came from. I suspect that I meant it as a compliment to my husband, who was standing nearby. Perhaps I had been short-tempered, as I sometimes am on Sunday mornings, so the comment was my way of saying that I know it is not always easy to be married to a minister.

Early on in our marriage, Karen began to decide that even if she believed in some kind of God, she could not accept basic Christian teachings. The faith claims that Christians make about Jesus—about him being the Son of God—seemed unbelievable to her. The Bible is just another book, she began to conclude, and so we cannot grant it any particular authority. She wondered whether she could continue to attend church. This stirred a bit of panic in me. She was not just my wife. She was the minister’s wife.

Longtime advocates of single-payer insurance like me are thrilled, anxious and deflated simultaneously by the state of the debate on health-care reform. The debate that we wanted has finally come, and it is coming with a legislative rush, but the plan that we wanted is being excluded from consideration. Should we hold out for the real thing, or get behind the best politically possible thing? I am for doing both: Standing up for single-payer without holding out for it exclusively; supporting a public option without denying its limitations; and hoping that a good public plan will lead eventually to real national health insurance.