Every Christmas, Christians celebrate the birth of a child born into oppression—an occupied land, a climate of political fear, and a government quick to crush anything that threatened its authority.

“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the ...

As familiar as the Christmas story of the baby born in a manger might be, it is also a cautionary tale for our age. The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be ...