Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen testifies before the Senate Finance Committee, March 16, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. She said the American banking system remains sound.

As banking turmoil ripples around the world, government officials in many nations are suddenly confronting a two-pronged problem: how to fight inflation with one hand while bolstering financial system stability with the other.

These tasks are hard enough on their own. Added difficulty stems from the fact that typical solutions for them can work at cross-purposes. Raising interest rates to fight inflation can slam banks in some circumstances. Keeping rates low may calm financial institutions but fuel the fire of rising prices.

That’s left regulators from Frankfurt to Washington facing a clash of values. Is one of these problems worse than another? Must they be fought separately? Can they be addressed together?

To this point one thing seems clear: Central banks are reluctant to roll back anti-inflation measures, as prices haven’t been tamed as much as they would like. On Thursday the European Central Bank announced it was going ahead with a half-point interest rate increase. U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, appearing before the Senate Finance Committee, said the American banking system remains sound.

Recent bank failures may have made it more difficult for the U.S. Federal Reserve to raise rates, says Dave Schabes, a University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy expert on banking and finance. But currently the Fed seems determined to forge ahead.

“I have found [Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell] and most other Fed board members very clear that rates may have to rise higher and longer than the market might like,” says Professor Schabes in an email.

Michael Probst/AP

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde speaks during a press conference in Frankfurt, Germany, March 16, 2023, after a meeting of the ECB's governing council. She announced that the bank was going ahead with a half-point increase in interest rates, despite some investor sentiment to delay the hike.

An uneasy equilibrium

On Thursday world financial markets seemed to have settled into an uneasy equilibrium.

Investors appeared encouraged that Credit Suisse, a struggling Swiss bank whose outlook deteriorated earlier this week following the collapse of two U.S. banks, had secured a $50 billion lifeline from the Swiss National Bank. Also, big U.S. banks agreed on a $30 billion rescue package for First Republic, a smaller American institution that, like Credit Suisse, has been battered by a decline in investor confidence.

Meanwhile, Secretary Yellen told senators that the U.S. depositor rescue plan, which permitted the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) to guarantee deposits at banks that collapsed in recent days beyond the $250,000 limit per customer, had stemmed fallout from the sudden shake-up in the banking system.

No matter how strong government regulation is, a bank can face failure if it is subject to an “overwhelming run” on its deposits spurred by social media, Ms. Yellen said. Regulators stepped in following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank to prevent other banks from facing similar runs.

In Frankfurt, Germany, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde announced at a press conference that the bank was going ahead with a half-point increase in interest rates, despite some investor sentiment to delay the hike.

Recent data on inflation has shown that prices are still climbing faster than regulator targets, said Ms. Lagarde.

“Inflation in Europe is quite high. And it’s important for the ECB ... to be seen as a strong fighter of inflation,” says Jon Danielsson, director of the Systemic Risk Centre at the London School of Economics’ department of finance.

If the bank had canceled the hike it might have signaled to the markets that the banking system is in worse trouble than it seems, says Dr. Danielsson.

“The best way not to panic the markets is to go ahead with an interest rate increase that had already been expected by everybody,” he says.

The bank unraveling, explained

But raising interest rates can stress banks, particularly if they are not properly prepared. That is one of the reasons that Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in New York were seized by U.S. financial regulators in recent days.

Consider a notional bank that has grown very fast in recent years, as did SVB. It takes its flood of new depositor cash and invests a large percentage of it in long-term Treasury bonds – again, as was the case with SVB.

Treasury bonds are the gold standard of investment, backed by the U.S. government. So, this notional bank would be gold itself, right?

Maybe. However, until relatively recently the interest on long-term bonds has been very, very low. Since the pandemic, that’s changed. The Fed has quickly ratcheted up rates to try to cool the economy and thus cool inflation.

That erodes the value of older long-term bonds, because newer bonds are offering higher rates of return. If the bank has a lot of them, and they have to sell them quickly to raise cash, they will start to lose money. They can be in trouble, fast.

That’s a simplistic description of what happened to SVB. The addition was a core of herdlike, well-informed, wealthy tech and venture capital depositors. Some of them noticed that the bank had troublesome Treasury bond investments. They took their money out, and told others about the problem. Suddenly the bank had a run – and had to sell more Treasury bonds, incurring more losses, to raise cash to pay depositors.

SVB was clearly an outlier. But there might be other financial institutions with similar problems, says Dr. Danielsson.

“There are quite possibly a lot of other banks, not quite as extreme, but also vulnerable to increasing interest rates ... on both sides of the Atlantic, even more in Europe,” he says.

Probably not another 2008 crisis

This does not mean the United States and the world are necessarily headed toward another 2008 financial crisis, or anything like it.

The largest U.S. and European banks are much better capitalized than they were going into 2008, says Professor Schabes.

“The issue that will likely be revisited will be smaller banks’ capital and risk management requirements,” he says. “It seems that at least in the case of SVB, inadequate interest rate risk management was part of the problem.”

In the real world banks use many tools to spread the risk of bond holdings, from “laddering” by mixing in Treasury bills of different maturity dates, to diversifying into other types of assets entirely.

Some experts blame the Federal Reserve for not noticing the risk of banks like SVB that were heavily invested in Treasury bonds when interest rates began to rise. Dror Goldberg, an expert in monetary economics and author of “Easy Money: American Puritans and the Invention of Modern Currency,” says the turmoil of the past week could, and perhaps should, pave the way for more government “stress tests” for banks in the future.

“These are really critical days,” he says, which is why the Fed, FDIC, and Treasury are doing all they can to reassure the population.

Mr. Goldberg believes that the U.S. should avoid the understandable temptation to give up the fight against inflation. Some other experts believe that framing the current moment as a two-horned dilemma between fighting inflation and stabilizing the financial sector is misleading.

“The Fed should not be doing these [interest] rate hikes anyway,” says Robert C. Hockett, law professor at Cornell Law School focused on financial and monetary law.

That is because what the U.S. is dealing with now, says Mr. Hockett, is a shortfall of production since the pandemic, including supply chain bottlenecks, and profits that are rising faster than inflation. Those issues require other types of responses to incentivize production and prevent price-gouging, he says.

He also supports raising the current $250,000 limit on federal deposit insurance – one of the few banking reform proposals currently drawing some bipartisan support in Congress.

The reality, though, is that interest rate hikes remain the go-to tool of government regulators around the world to battle the resilient inflation problem.

In the U.S. the Fed remains committed to raising rates and promoting financial institution stability simultaneously.

“The Fed is going to try to treat the two threats in parallel. It’s a titanic task,” says Santiago Bulat, economics professor at the University of Buenos Aires.

The underground basement of the Soviet-era apartment block was never meant for human habitation. At the bottom of a dingy flight of stairs, the decades-old storage area has narrow, musty corridors, unwelcoming concrete cells hung with metal doors, and an uneven dirt floor.

But when Russian invasion forces seized this town in northeast Ukraine last May – accompanied by weeks of bombardment that wrecked houses and endangered lives above ground – residents raced to the tight confines of this bunker-like sanctuary.

In the coming months of Russian occupation, up to 60 people lived down below in the fusty air, cooking on gas cylinders, lining walls with split wood for heating, and stringing up lights for moments of electricity.

Ukrainian troops liberated Lyman more than four months ago. But living underground has become a hard habit to break, especially with the front lines no more than a few miles away and Russia regularly targeting the area with artillery and rocket fire, lending a steady soundtrack of ominous explosions.

“Of course, we feel so tired, and apathy comes,” says Iryna Dmytrenko, the head of the residents here, who boils water in a makeshift kitchen as the rumble of a tank penetrates from above.

“We ask, ‘How long can you hide, and sit here and be afraid?’” says Ms. Dmytrenko. “We had that feeling before, but now it comes back more and more often.”

Some 24 people – including a teenage girl, whose New Year decorations taped to the concrete walls continue to raise spirits – still reside in the makeshift bunker.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A man looks into the crater left by a Russian missile that slammed into a residential area overnight in Lyman, Ukraine, Feb. 17, 2023, several miles west of the Donbas front line. Virtually every building in the village has been damaged, and the sounds of the front, and of shelling, are constant.

They say their sense of community has grown more than they thought possible before the Russian invasion, just over a year ago. Living so closely together, they have demonstrated to each other a reassuring “reliability of neighbors,” says Ms. Dmytrenko.

The dynamic is replicated across Ukraine, especially in areas liberated from Russian occupation, where a communal cohesion has grown even as a year of gnawing conflict has made returning to prewar normal life a challenge.

In this Lyman basement even the dog, named Diana, is concussed by the amount of shelling she has experienced, say those who dwell here.

And they have good reason to stay below: Just hours before a recent visit, for example, a Russian rocket landed a few blocks away, leaving a large crater in a residential courtyard and damaging scores of apartments.

That is on top of the now steady nuisance of melting snow and rain leaking into war-damaged apartments, which residents say makes anything but modest repairs – never mind moving back home – pointless before spring.

“If we knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel, it would be better,” says another basement resident, who gives the name Yana. “Now we go to bed each night, worried that a missile will come. It feels safer underground, but it’s still bad when your whole house is trembling above you.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Residents cover broken windows with wood panels, after a Russian missile slammed into a residential area overnight, several miles west of the Donbas frontline in Lyman, Ukraine, Feb. 17, 2023.

Those living in this basement, and many others in Lyman, rely on charitable organizations for food and hygiene kits. The railway – once the lifeblood of this crossroads town, and a big employer – is not yet working again, because of damage to the lines, and proximity to the fighting.

And that has also slowed down rebuilding efforts. Residents say Western aid groups that specialize in wholesale rebuilding visited for a survey, but told them they could do nothing unless the front lines were at least 40-plus miles distant – seven times further away than they are.

Filling the gap with emergency supplies are Ukrainian citizens, who flooded to this northeastern Kharkiv region after a lightning counteroffensive last fall pushed Russian troops back from swaths of occupied territory.

“What amazed me the most was that people would come [to help] from Bucha, from Borodyanka and Irpin, because they know what it is like to go through this,” says Ms. Dmytrenko, referring to northwestern Kyiv districts where retreating Russian occupation forces left behind a trail of brutal killings and destruction early in the war.

“It’s very bad that people, children especially, have to go through this. We start at the smallest sound, if the dog barks. There was so much stress,” says Ms. Dmytrenko. “Citizens’ organizations are offering their help – we can’t complain.”

Still, the result today is a town in limbo, with citizens torn between their relatively safe but severely constricted life lived underground, and the freedom that beckons on the surface above, where Ukrainian officials back in control since October have struggled to provide services.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian troops riding an armored vehicle to the Donbas region front-line village of Torske, 10 kilometers to the east, pass through Lyman, Ukraine, Feb. 17, 2023.

“Most people were happy that Ukrainian forces came back, but people were disoriented,” says Oleksandr Zhuravliov, the mayor of Lyman, who worked outside the town, along with the rest of the original Ukrainian administration, during the months of Russian occupation.

Asked about pro-Russian sympathies among some residents, he says most people “want to live under the rule of law.”

“A lot of people now know what is the ‘Russian World.’ They felt it,” says the mayor, referring to Moscow’s stated ambition to absorb Ukraine into a broader, pro-Russian empire based on Russian culture and language.

The greater Lyman district includes 40 different villages and towns, with levels of destruction as high as 90%. The initial plan was to restore electricity and gas within three months, “but the war is so close, it will take time,” says Mr. Zhuravliov.

He describes how electrical repairs have been short-circuited by shrapnel stuck in cables, and how gas pipes, too, have been pierced by tiny pieces of shrapnel, making them difficult to seal. Municipal workers, rather than focusing on the large-scale rebuilding of infrastructure, form teams to cover roofs to minimize water damage.

Up to 10% of the former residents who left have returned, with more promising to come home in the spring.

On his phone, the mayor shares videos of himself evacuating citizens as the Russians approached. He also shows pictures of his farm and his horse, which he says was shot dead by Russian troops, along with his dog.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A Soviet-era bust of Lenin, with its head smashed in, in the middle of a snow-covered road in Lyman, Ukraine, on Feb. 17, 2023. Months after Ukrainian troops liberated the town, virtually every building has been damaged and many people still live underground.

Mayor Zhuravliov puts his head in his hands when told of a Lyman resident fervently trying to convince people passing by the crater formed by the missile the previous night that it was a Ukrainian missile fired into the residential area, and not one from Russia.

“There are categories of people who are waiting for Lenin, who are waiting for [Soviet leader Leonid] Brezhnev,” says Mr. Zhuravliov. “I don’t know where they get this information. First, we try to change this [pro-Russian] mood by the real deeds of what we do. We provide food and medical supplies, candles, clothes.

“And we explain: ‘Before Feb. 24, you had everything, electricity, internet, a gas connection,’” he says. “‘You had it, and it was all taken from you. Before Feb. 24, no one was shooting at you from Ukraine, right?’”

For those living in the basement, one reminder of their uncertain prospects lies directly above: their shrapnel-scarred building, missing most its windows since the first Russian missile fired at Lyman landed just a few yards away, across the courtyard, last April 25.

“Of course we are concerned; we are just sitting here and listening to what is going on,” says Yuri, who wears the uniform of a railway worker, during an upstairs break for fresh air. “Sometimes it’s quiet. Sometimes it’s loud. It’s hard to understand.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.

Iranian Presidency Office/AP

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi (left) shakes hands with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing. The Chinese government's role in brokering a diplomatic deal between Iran and longstanding rival Saudi Arabia, announced last week, is seen as an indication of broader diplomatic ambitions.

China’s successful brokering of a rapprochement between Middle East rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran is a milestone in a far grander plan, both to counter what Beijing views as U.S.-led containment and to reshape the world order to better serve its interests.

In a bold departure from its trade-dominated policy in the oil-rich region, China entered the fray of Middle East peacemaking by mediating an accord – unveiled in Beijing on Friday – by which Iran and Saudi Arabia pledged to reestablish diplomatic ties and reopen embassies closed in 2016.

China has a strong interest in advancing stability and influence in the region that supplies most of its crude oil; its economic clout and solid relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia put Beijing in a position to clinch the deal that the two countries had been negotiating for two years.

But the diplomatic coup is also a concrete illustration of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s pursuit of a broader and more ambitious agenda – to free China from the isolation it believes the West is imposing, and to build a power base in the Global South from which to challenge U.S. hegemony, China experts say.

Mr. Xi launched a rare public attack on the United States in a speech last week, blaming Washington for economic setbacks. “Western countries – led by the U.S. – have implemented all-around containment, encirclement, and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development,” said Mr. Xi, according to state media.

Facing U.S. pressure in Europe and Asia, “this is China pushing back … saying, ‘We have alternative theaters [where] we can promote our leadership and our credibility,’” says Yun Sun, a senior fellow and co-director of the East Asia Program and director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, in Washington.

China’s leaders are “pointing towards an alternative global security vision” – led by Beijing – that “has already borne fruit in the case of the Middle East,” and are suggesting that “if it can be successful there, it can be successful elsewhere,” says Ms. Sun.

Turning economic clout into political influence

China’s rise as the globe’s largest trading power has brought a surge in Chinese investment across the developing world. In the past decade, China invested an estimated $1 trillion in the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive program to build railways, highways, and energy pipelines in nearly 150 countries spanning Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

Now, Beijing is seeking to leverage its economic clout in the Global South to create a base from which to expand its political and diplomatic influence and gain greater sway in international institutions and world affairs, experts say.

China Daily/Reuters

Wang Yi, China's top diplomat, poses with top officials from Iran and Saudi Arabia. The two Mideast rivals announced last week they would reestablish diplomatic ties, in a deal brokered by Beijing.

“A great power does not just engage economically with its neighbors. It becomes more involved and more prominent in global affairs,” says Nadège Rolland, a senior fellow for political and security affairs at the National Bureau of Asian Research. China’s new outlook is a “paradigm shift,” she says.

“China’s engagement is not just about trade and the quest for natural resources and markets,” she adds. “There’s a growing sense from the Chinese political elites that they also need to deliver global public goods.”

In a recent speech in Beijing, the editor-in-chief of the influential Beijing Cultural Review, Yang Ping, argued that China should “build a new type of international relations and a new type of international system that has strategic depth and in which China and the countries of the Global South are jointly integrated.”

This would involve adapting the Belt and Road Initiative to make strategic investments in developing countries that might not be profitable, Mr. Yang said, according to a translation of his remarks on the blog “Sinification.”

The governments of many such countries are receptive to Beijing’s outreach, which presents China’s economic success under a state-led, authoritarian system as an alternative model to that of the West.

China also benefits from a long history of solidarity with the Third World as one of dozens of developing countries opposed to colonialism that attended the 1955 Bandung Conference, a precursor to the Non-Aligned Movement. During the Cold War, China sought to form a united front with the developing world to resist pressures from the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

“The parallels are very similar to what we are seeing today,” says Dr. Rolland, as Beijing seeks to work with the Global South to resist what it perceives as a Western campaign of isolation and encirclement.

A key facet of China’s strategy is to focus on areas where it thinks the U.S. is not paying enough attention, experts say.

“The uncertainties of U.S. power and influence … could allow Beijing to play an increasingly important role in regional politics, especially within the Global South,” said Michael Swaine, director of the East Asia Program of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, in an online forum Tuesday.

Hu Chao/Xinhua/AP/File

Passengers in Kunming, in southwestern China, line up to board a train running on the China-Laos Railway. The track is one of hundreds of infrastructure projects under Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative that China is seeking to parlay into global political influence.

Not everyone so keen ...

China’s effort to elevate its stature as a great power, through diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East and elsewhere, won’t end with the Iran-Saudi Arabia deal. Plans are afoot for Beijing to host a high-level summit later this year between Iran and the Gulf Arab countries in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council.

If that summit succeeds, illustrating China’s ability to bridge historic rivalries, “that would be a real [game] changer in terms of international relations in the region,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute, told Tuesday’s online forum.

Yet experts say it is too early to say how far China-brokered agreements will be implemented and caution against overstating China’s role. “China was at the right place at the right time with the right relationships” to help strike the Iran-Saudi Arabia agreement, says Ms. Sun. “It was not because China has this amazing influence to be the peacemaker.”

Indeed, experts stress that China’s ability to forge unity and dampen conflicts in the developing world will often be curtailed by the calculations of the individual countries involved, many of which will seek to balance their ties with the U.S. and China.

While Beijing may view itself as making common cause with the developing world, as in the 1950s and 1960s, China’s superpower status has left many countries wary of its influence, says Ms. Sun.

China “is in a Cold War competition with the United States. It is dividing the world into two pieces in this competition and trying to get the Third World to align behind China,” she says. “The Chinese will say … China is just an innocent third party on the sidelines, but I’m sure a lot of countries will feel differently about that message.”

The greatest athletes throughout sports history are often recognized for clutch performances on the field of competition. Timely play isn’t just a mark of a champion, but also the barometer with which greatness is marketed.

However, that sense of appreciation is often lacking when it comes to athletes who make relevant stances off the field. Where we instantaneously cheer a game-winning touchdown or a silky shot in sync with the sound of a buzzer, it might take decades, if at all, for us to honor sports figures who are also activists for social justice.

Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback turned publisher, fits this dichotomy well. Even in his recent promotion of a new graphic novel, his commentary drew controversy. I can’t help but look at the man who was a play or two away from winning the Super Bowl, and seeing a near twin and kinsman in basketball player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who was similarly blackballed in his athletic prime. 

I was a teenager back in 1996 when Muhammad Ali raised the torch as a precursor to the Atlanta Summer Olympics. I distinctly remember the cheers and reverence for “The Greatest.” But the graciousness of that day belied the rhetoric that surrounded Ali in the 1960s, when he was criticized for his religious beliefs and anti-war stance.

Doug Mills/AP

Muhammad Ali holds a torch as he watches the flame climb up to the Olympic cauldron during the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, July 19, 1996. The crowd cheered, but in the 1960s the boxer had been criticized for his religious beliefs and anti-war stance.

“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America,” Ali famously said as a conscientious objector who later refused to serve in the Vietnam War.

Profiles in courage

“Profiles in Courage” is the name of John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning volume of biographies chronicling acts of fortitude from eight United States senators. A similar anthology could be outlined for the likes of athletes such as Bill Russell, Curt Flood, and Paul Robeson, among many others. 

Ali’s criticism of this country and its establishment was a profile in courage because of what it cost him. At one point he was considered by many to be the most hated man in America.

But athletes can do more than inspire through their imagination and creativity. They can also change lives.

Flood was an All-Star and multiple Gold Glove winner for the St. Louis Cardinals. But in 1969 he attacked a rule that was at the heart of baseball: A team owned a player his entire career, and there was nothing the player could do about it. So in 1969, he sued, telling the commissioner, “I do not regard myself as a piece of property to be bought or sold.”

By 1976, his protest had brought an end to the old order with the advent of free agency. But his career collapsed. In 1992, Flood received the NAACP Jackie Robinson Award for contributions to Black athletes. 

These stands on moral grounds can represent some of the best of the human spirit, even if not appreciated in real time.

Take Robeson. In the 1910s and ’20s, he was class valedictorian at Rutgers University, an All-American football player who got his law degree from Columbia University while playing in the National Football League; an actor, a singer, and a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance.  

But Robeson has been relegated to obscurity because of his pro-Black and anti-colonial views. When he was called to testify at a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing in 1956, he expressed a sentiment similar to Ali’s.

Bill Allen/AP

Famed baritone and football player Paul Robeson testifies in Washington before the House Un-American Activities Committee, June 12, 1956. He said, “I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country."

“I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. And they are not. They are not in Mississippi. And they are not in Montgomery, Alabama. And they are not in Washington. They are nowhere, and that is why I am here today,” Robeson said. “You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers, too. And that is why I am here today.”

Robeson was destined for conflict with the United States government due to his socialist views and connections with the communist Soviet Union. Consequently, he is a quintessential example of how Black activism in sports can get diverted – focusing on other issues to leave the core questions unanswered.

Jackie Robinson is undeniably one of sports’ greatest pioneers, courageous in his own right. Yet, in the face of the political accusations against Robeson, the man who broke baseball’s color line testified against Robeson, an act he said he regretted in his autobiography:

“I would reject such an invitation if offered now,” Robinson wrote in “I Never Had It Made.” “I have grown wiser and closer to the painful truths about America’s destructiveness. And I do have increased respect for Paul Robeson who, over the span of twenty years, sacrificed himself, his career, and the wealth and comfort he once enjoyed because, I believe, he was sincerely trying to help his people.”

Sports as a stage

Sports is more than a platform for entertainment, or even self-promotion. Some athletes understand that sports provide a stage to speak about societal wrongs, to demand change for all people – and that is a different definition of “The Greatest.” Winning games might give these athletes a louder voice, but it is secondary to lasting change.

Is it too much to ask for such courage to be appreciated in athletes’ own time?

Mr. Kaepernick’s stance against police brutality certainly came at the cost of his career. He has not played another snap since the season he protested against police brutality. Various protests from NFL players, including Mr. Kaepernick, in response to the deaths of Michael Brown and Tamir Rice put them at odds with police unions and other pro-military groups.

I remember those protests distinctly, as they helped to put the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag on the national stage. Some people viewed them as inconveniences – or intermissions. But when we begin to see the courage of these athletes through a different lens, then we see protest as more than a break in the action, but bigger than the game itself. 

In the opening scene of Sarah Ruhl’s play “Letters From Max, a Ritual,” which has been playing at the Signature Theatre in New York since February, the award-winning playwright describes the moment poet and former student Max Ritvo first walked into class.

“It was as though an ancient light bulb hovered over his head, illuminating the room,” she explains.

Based on her nonfiction book about the friendship she shared with the late Mr. Ritvo, who died of illness at age 25, Ms. Ruhl’s play indeed puts on stage “a ritual” of their conversations. Their exchanges cover creativity, spirituality, and the ways human beings compose meaning out of their experiences of mortality. 

Her play is in many ways a departure from traditional American dramaturgy, says Ms. Ruhl, one of the current playwrights-in-residence at the Signature Theatre. The American stage has too often featured “men yelling at each other and finding the drama in that,” she says. “I’m interested in these moments of quiet interiority and kindness.” 

Last month the Monitor had a conversation with Ms. Ruhl and another of the theater’s playwrights-in-residence, Samuel D. Hunter, about the religious and spiritual themes that pervade their bodies of work, and the ways theater itself is particularly conducive to such themes. 

In Mr. Hunter’s 2010 play, “A Bright New Boise,” which the multi-stage Signature Theatre has also featured the past two months, a middle-aged, conservative, evangelical man named Will is seeking work – and healing from a troubled past – at an Idaho Hobby Lobby store. 

As one of his fellow employees, who wears T-shirts with imprints of profane or startling messages during his work shifts, says to Will: “I’m forcing people to confront words and images they normally avoid. Especially at a place like this.” (Last year’s film version of Mr. Hunter’s 2012 play “The Whale,” directed by Darren Aronofsky, took home two Academy Awards, including one for best actor, earlier this month.) 

“One of my writerly concerns throughout all of my plays has been the tragedy of isolation and the redeeming value of human connection,” says Mr. Hunter. “I think probably every play I’ve ever written is fundamentally about that.”

The playwrights share more about their work in the following conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity. 

Joan Marcus

Jessica Hecht (left) and Ben Edelman star in "Letters From Max, a Ritual," by Sarah Ruhl, at the Signature Theatre in New York. The play is about the correspondence between Ms. Ruhl and the poet Max Ritvo, a former student of hers, on a range of subjects including creativity, spirituality, and mortality.

Both of your plays explore religious and spiritual themes in such different ways. Do you see the theater as a medium more conducive to such themes? 

Ms. Ruhl: For me, theater is very much a sacred space. I think going back to the Greeks, it was always a place of ritual, of holy rites. And then in the liturgical tradition, looking back at Passion plays and the origins of theater in Europe, it was always deeply embedded in liturgy. So in a way, it’s just very recently that it’s been a secular space.

I think people who are drawn to the theater are sort of true believers in the theater, and I think it’s quite holy to them and a place to contemplate what it is to be alive, what it is to die, what it is to love. And so it’s kind of [a] commons for all of those questions to be asked in a culture where we have fewer and fewer of those common spaces to ask those questions. 

You could call them existential questions or you could call them spiritual questions. I think people are afraid of the word spirituality in the theater historically, but I actually think there’s a bit of a renaissance of really locating those questions in the theater.

Mr. Hunter: I’m really interested in that suspension of disbelief and that faith that an audience has to put in somebody who is – let’s be honest, theater is a bunch of people talking unnaturally loud and facing one direction. There’s a surreality to it that is baked in even when you’re doing the most naturalistic of plays.

And I think that coming together and sitting in a room and witnessing that, and choosing to have faith in the lives of these people, is a kind of artistic leap of faith.

Joan Marcus

In the 2010 play "A Bright New Boise," Will (played by Peter Mark Kendall, left) is a conservative, evangelical man seeking work – and healing from a troubled past – at an Idaho Hobby Lobby store. Will hopes to get to better know younger co-worker Alex (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio, right), who is his son.

Ms. Ruhl: This idea that faith has so much to do with the suspension of disbelief, I think that’s so true. I think of theater almost as an incarnation of “the word made flesh.” Maybe that’s blasphemous – I was raised Catholic – but I like the idea that now a new actor can embody Max’s language, it feels like a kind of incarnation. His body is not there, but his language is still there, and other bodies can inhabit it.

Are there challenges when writing plays about spiritual and religious themes? There are so many questions about human vulnerability and mortality in your plays. Are there ways in which they also express hope? 

Ms. Ruhl: One thing about Max is, he could discuss the life of the spirit so easily. You know, it was like his version of small talk. And so it was a joy to be with him, even in his darkest hours, because he was very funny, too. 

People might think, “Oh, that must have been so hard to make yourself available to your student during those moments of suffering.” No, it was a delight. He was an absolute delight to share space with because he was funny. He was a genius. And we could talk about anything. So I think that’s hopeful, that a friendship can be found in really dark moments.” 

Mr. Hunter: There is so much joy in “Letters From Max.” I was so surprised after reading it. I was heartbroken, but in this completely uplifting way, which kind of feels like the Christian narrative, right? I mean, the Christian narrative is devastating. It’s crucifixion. But there’s so much joy and resurrection in the end.

I think people have been really reticent to talk about spirituality or religion in these kinds of “secular spaces.” I joke that like every time I have a meeting with a television executive, and they ask me, “What kind of show would you want to make?” I always say, “I want to make a show about evangelical Protestants in America.” And it’s like, they just shut down.

One of the things I’ve realized about myself and my writing over the years is kind of a distinct lack of cynicism, which I feel like we share. I never feel cynical when I’m watching one of your plays, Sarah. I never feel like your plays are judging the characters from a distance, you know, or needling them, and I think maybe there’s a hope and a faith baked into that.

Ms. Ruhl: I resonate so much with what Sam just said, too, about the idea of isolation and connection in all of his work, and also that idea of care and caretaking, which I think you could call Christian, you could call it humanist, you could call it what you will. I feel a lot of tenderness and gentleness in Sam’s work, which also is hopeful to me.

I guess another thing I might mention about “Letters From Max,” as a formal thing there’s the letter-writing exercise we have in the lobby during intermissions [in which people share their experiences with terminal illnesses or encounters with people meaningful to them]. And I’ve gotten a couple extraordinary letters, and then heard about some letters other people have gotten that they wrote in the lobby.

It’s about the value and beauty of caring, and I think that’s embedded in the subject matter of these plays. But also, it’s the force field of what we do in the theater.

Reuters

Mohamad Sabsabi works on his wind turbine creation, Green X, to provide electricity to his and some neighbors' houses in Bebnine, Lebanon, March 1.

The world’s industrial superpowers – the United States, Europe, and China – are now in open competition for resources and talent to create a green-energy future. The European Commission, for example, revised its rules today for sourcing raw materials needed for batteries in response to moves by the U.S. and China. Yet a focus on this struggle may miss a potential game changer in climate action: citizen-led action on renewable energy.

A new study of more than 30,000 citizen-led energy projects in Europe – ranging from rooftop solar panels to public electric-vehicle charging stations – points to a new era of energy democracy shaped by abundance and shared security. Published this month in Scientific Reports, the study done by Western Norway University provides the first quantitative measure of how climate change is compelling societies to bind together in new ways to reinvent prosperity and stability.

Energy security in the 20th century was largely managed by governments and major companies. Yet the transition to renewables could pivot on energy projects that rely on broad-based participation – or equality and inclusivity. The World Bank estimates that investments in green energy need to triple by 2030 and that up to 70% of that capital will come from private sources.

The investors need not all be giants. The European study found that more than 2 million people across 30 countries invested $12 billion in renewable energies and cut consumption between 2000 and 2021. Collectively, they produced or saved enough electricity to provide power for an equivalent number of people in the survey.

Almost everywhere, the switch to renewables is engaging new players. In the West African country of Ghana, the government has enlisted civil society in drafting an energy transition plan. In Canada, long-neglected Indigenous communities are now key partners in more than 200 public and private renewable energy projects. Examples like these show that the energy future will not rise and fall alone on the quality of governance. The energy transition also marks a social transition, one that ensures a central role for citizens.

“Much of the reluctance to do what climate change requires comes from the assumption that it means trading abundance for austerity,” wrote Rebecca Solnit, co-editor of the forthcoming anthology “Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility,” in The Washington Post. Part of that abundance, she adds, is cooperation and generosity, which are essential for a viable future.