Charles Krupa/AP

Demonstrators clutch placards at a rally in support of Ukraine, Feb. 28, 2022, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. MIT has severed ties with a research university it helped establish in Russia, citing the country's "unacceptable" invasion of Ukraine.

The wanton force being hurled by Russian President Vladimir Putin against Ukraine is not just a deepening humanitarian tragedy, nor even just a security challenge that is uniting most of the world in opposition and outrage.

It is also proving to be a civics lesson on a grand scale, because the message ringing out from the words and deeds of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, his army, and millions of his countrymen and women is that democracy matters.

And what’s more, that it is worth fighting – even dying – for.

It’s a message with especial resonance at a time when many democracies worldwide have been weakened by internal divisions, an eroding readiness to compromise, a waning commitment to core institutions of representative government, and the increasing appeal of populist discourse.

In recent days, however, all that has been overshadowed by a passionately renewed commitment to democracy among leaders across Western Europe.

At least for now, this sense of democratic purpose seems to have persuaded politicians that hot-button issues like pandemic restrictions, immigration, even fuel prices and inflation, are trivial by comparison.

It is unclear whether this shift will endure in Europe. But an even more important question may be how this democratic “teachable moment” is received in the major powers with most at stake geopolitically in the Ukraine crisis: the United States, and Russia itself.

Europe’s leaders have been explicit about how deeply Ukraine’s determination to fight has affected them, nowhere more so than at a special session this week of the European Parliament. President Zelenskyy addressed the meeting by video link even as the Russian invasion force intensified its bombardment of his capital.

The Parliament’s president, Roberta Metsola, thanked him for “showing the world what it means to stand up” for democracy. “Thank you for reminding us about the dangers of complacency.”

Virginia Mayo/AP

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola addresses a session on Ukraine at the European Parliament in Brussels, March 1, 2022. At the session, she thanked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for “showing the world what it means to stand up” for democracy.

She added that the heroism of ordinary Ukrainians had reminded the world that “our way of life is worth defending.”

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, went further.

Acknowledging that the unprecedented sanctions Europe had adopted against Russia would hit European pocketbooks as well, she declared: “Yes, protecting our liberty comes at a price. But this is a defining moment. And this is a cost we are willing to pay. Because freedom is priceless.”

The united voice with which European political leaders have echoed this message may partly reflect their countries’ memories of living without democracy – either under Nazi occupation during World War II in countries like France, Belgium, and the Netherlands; under postwar dictatorships in Spain and Portugal; or among the countries closest to Ukraine, under Soviet control.

But the effect has been clear. A Canada-style “freedom convoy” descended on Paris and attempted to drive on to Brussels in the days before Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Now, the initiative appears to have fizzled. That’s not because the participants feel any less strongly that COVID-19 restrictions have been an affront to personal liberties. Rather, in the current European political climate, with hourly images of Ukrainians under bombardment, they seem to recognize that a renewed protest would be seen as self-indulgently discordant.

But will Europe’s political change of heart spread more widely?

In America, at least so far, the broader democratic message in Ukraine’s resistance seems to have had less impact.

President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this week did highlight rare bipartisan agreement in support of Ukrainians, and in opposition to Mr. Putin’s invasion.

When he turned to domestic matters, however, Republican lawmakers’ response suggested that the divisions that have marked U.S. politics so deeply are not likely to give way to the kind of newfound unity seen in Europe.

Another possible sign of the difference between the post-Ukraine atmospheres in Europe and Washington: Bipartisan U.S. support for Ukrainians doesn’t seem to have caused any significant move among Republicans toward supporting investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol – the nearest thing modern-day America has experienced to an overt threat to its democracy.

In Russia, where nearly all power is vested in Mr. Putin, the long-term effects of Ukraine’s democracy message are even harder to gauge.

There has been a surge of small-scale protests against the war, as well as individual shows of support for its victims, sometimes simply by wearing articles of clothing in the blue-and-yellow colors of Ukraine. That’s no small thing, given the ever-tighter controls on dissent in Russia.

Various leading figures in Russia’s arts, culture, and sports communities have also called for an end to the war, some of them in social media posts boasting a Ukrainian flag.

But the key question – for Mr. Putin’s future, and thus for Kyiv’s future as well – is whether Ukrainians’ suffering amid intensifying attacks, and their determination to join the “family of democracies” in Europe, will be felt as strongly in the East, among ordinary Russians, as it has been in the West.

Bob Edme/AP

Cars drive past a gas station where oil prices on display are over 2 euros ($2.22) a liter in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, southwestern France, March, 3, 2022. Oil prices continued to climb as Russian forces bombarded Ukraine's second-largest city and besieged two ports Thursday.

The military outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remains unknown, but its economic fallout is clear.

Higher prices, lower growth, and more inflation. The remaining questions are: how much higher and for how long?

The world is already feeling the initial effects from the sanctions wall the West is quickly erecting around Russia. Oil prices have reached an 11-year high. Wheat is trading in record territory. And this may only be the beginning. The longer the war drags on, especially if civilian casualties mount, the more the pressure will grow for the West to do even more to squeeze Russia. And that would mean closing the giant gap that remains in the West’s sanctions wall: Russian energy.

If the United States uses its powers to stop Russia from exporting oil, the fallout for Western economies is likely to become far more extreme than anything seen so far.

“Oil and gas prices will go bananas,” says Henning Gloystein, director of energy, climate, and resources at Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm based in New York. “That would cause a recession,” at least in some countries. That’s one reason Mr. Gloystein is fairly confident the Biden administration will not pull that trigger.

Other analysts are not so sure. “I suspect that we are going to have more demands for action” against Russia, says Chris Miller, professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and author of two books on the Russian economy. “At this point, the next big step is energy.”

Existing sanctions, already severely squeezing the Putin regime, also have side effects for the rest of the world – boosting inflation and slowing growth. The effects vary by region.

In the U.S., inflation is likely to rise and stay higher for longer than expected. The Oxford Economics forecasting firm on Friday revised its inflation forecast for the year to 6.5%, up from 5.9%. This will be reflected most prominently at the pump, where average gas prices edged up 8 cents per gallon over the past week to an already high $3.61 per gallon, according to the AAA auto club. These price pressures will slow real economic growth, but not kill it, according to Oxford. 

Petros Giannakouris/AP

Personal trainer Antonia Kalantzi shops at a grocery store in Athens, Greece, Feb. 16, 2022. Economists, farmers, and charity workers agree about a cost-of-living crisis in Europe: Inflation may ease later this year, but the war in Ukraine adds new uncertainty.

Worldwide, the conflict in Ukraine should shave about 0.2 percentage points from growth this year, Oxford says. Europe will be hit harder. The reason is energy prices.

Uncertainty over oil

Uncertainty about whether the Russians will reduce or stop the flow of natural gas to European Union nations had already sent gas prices to record highs Wednesday, rising 60% from the day earlier. And there are no ready alternatives for EU nations heavily dependent on Russia for their gas – Germany (about 50%), Poland (80%), Bulgaria (100%), and others. The amounts of liquefied natural gas that could be imported from the Middle East and the U.S. are too small to make up for the potential loss of Russian natural gas. Of course, it’s a two-way street. Russia currently has no real alternatives to selling to Europe, says Mr. Gloystein. It has but one pipeline of significance going to China, whose total demand for gas is roughly one-tenth what Russia sells to Europe.

But it is oil – not gas – that is the Achilles’ heel for Russia and the West’s trump card. Crude oil alone accounts for nearly half of all Russian exports. And unlike gas, it can be exported practically anywhere. So even if the West refuses to buy it, Russia can sell it to India, which currently is purchasing it at a hefty discount, and China. 

“That’s the mother of all sanctions,” says Tyler Kustra, a professor of politics and international relations at the University of Nottingham in England. “The U.S. can’t do a lot more than it is doing without blowing up the European energy market.”

If the U.S. decides to extend its banking sanctions on Russia to oil – energy is currently exempted – then it will be much harder for anyone to buy it, China and India included. The West has largely accomplished this oil-export cutoff with Iran. Such an action against Russia, a much bigger exporter, would have much bigger implications. Some analysts say oil could go well above $100 a barrel (it was trading at around $111 on Thursday morning) and stay there until the market adjusts and other oil producers ramp up production. Europe, already reeling from high natural gas prices, could see its expected post-pandemic recovery undercut. 

There are several strategic reasons the Biden administration might not take this step. The U.S. wants to maintain a united front with Europe against Russia. It does not want to appear to be escalating the conflict. It may want to give Russia an incentive to stop short of a full takeover of Ukraine, nor does it want to drive President Vladimir Putin into a corner where he feels he has nothing to lose by pursuing his current plans.

But the most important reason for inaction may be economic. With a public already sticker shocked by the rise in prices for everything from cars to food (for reasons that have nothing to do with the Ukraine conflict), the administration is reluctant to send American gasoline prices soaring. 

When asked Wednesday whether the U.S. would move to ban Russian oil exports, President Joe Biden said: “Nothing is off the table.” However, a White House spokeswoman later that day tamped down expectations, saying the White House was “very aware” that such a move “would raise prices at the gas pump for Americans.”

SOURCE:

The Observatory of Economic Complexity

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Ripple effects for food in Africa

Other regions of the world face effects of the West’s sanctions wall. Russia and Ukraine are both major exporters of wheat, supplying mainly the Middle East and North Africa. And with stocks already at a five-year low and prices at a record high last year, the threat of a further cutoff in supplies – due to sanctions or the war itself – has pushed wheat prices up roughly another 10% in the past month. This will have inflationary effects around the world. But the harshest impact will be in North Africa, which is in the midst of a severe drought.

Egypt, for example, relies on Russia and Ukraine for 70% of its wheat needs. The cutoff of supplies will make it more expensive for the government to provide subsidized bread to its low-income citizens. For other African countries on the edge of famine, any increase in wheat prices will put bigger populations at risk.

“Wheat is the single most important question right now,” says Pat Westhoff, professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Missouri in Columbia. “The markets have been gyrating like crazy in the last three or four days.”

Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

A combine harvester loads a truck with wheat in a field near the village of Hrebeni in Kyiv region, Ukraine, July 17, 2020. Grains are major exports for Ukraine, with North Africa especially reliant on its wheat exports.

Another area of concern, he says, is fertilizer. Russia is a major exporter and the withdrawal of its supply from the world market will send prices higher. For other reasons, fertilizer prices were already trending upward. 

Wider effects: money, parts, labor

Then, there are the secondary effects from the private sector, which will play themselves out in the months ahead and further isolate Russia from markets for parts, capital, and expertise. Some of these are visible and high profile. ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and Equinor in Norway have said they’re pulling out of Russia, despite billions of dollars in investments there, and TotalEnergies in France has halted new investments. Apple has stopped selling its products in Russia and limited its access to digital services, such as Apple Pay. Ford is suspending operations, and Boeing and Airbus are pausing parts and technical support in Russia. 

Less visibly, tanker companies and refineries are reconsidering whether to take Russian oil, because of the heightened risk. Insurance companies are backing away from covering business transactions with Russia.

Spillover effects span many nations. A Boston-based partner in two tech companies in Russia-allied Belarus (who asked not to be named because of the political sensitivities involved) talked with five clients last week. Four were sticking with the company; one was leaving because of concerns about its reputation. Another potential client was not signing on because of the rising financial risk. Both of the Belarus firms have looked at contingency plans, such as moving software developers from Belarus into Poland and how to transfer money if its Russian bank can no longer operate. 

“The logistical problems I think we can probably solve,” says the Boston-based partner. “Uncertainty will be the problem going forward.”

For years, Londoners have largely ignored the wealthy Russian oligarchs living among them.

Locals in affluent Highgate in North London certainly knew they were there. Every weekend, tours of billionaires’ homes walk past Russian-owned Witanhurst, the United Kingdom’s second-largest house after Buckingham Palace.

So, too, were they aware a couple of miles away in Belgravia, where Londoners have renamed Eaton Square “Red Square,” due to its high concentration of Russian tycoon homeowners – among them Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska, two billionaires closely allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But the lack of public scrutiny – and the active welcome the oligarchs have received from multiple British governments over the years – looks set to come to an end.

As Mr. Putin pushes onward with war in Ukraine and renewed questions are being raised about the origins of oligarchs’ fortunes, the United Kingdom is moving to “clamp down on Russian money in the U.K.,” announced Prime Minister Boris Johnson on March 1. That signals a long-awaited U-turn in the historically laissez-faire attitudes adopted towards oligarchs and their “Londongrad” playground.

The London laundromat

In three decades, London has established itself as the global hub of choice for Russian “dirty” money. Russian oligarchs are believed to have siphoned money from Russian state assets, often with Mr. Putin’s assistance or approval. They eventually transferred that wealth to the U.K. for safekeeping and investment – which the country welcomed with few questions, according to a 2020 intelligence and security parliamentary committee report.

According to the report, that welcome “offered ideal mechanisms by which illicit finance could be recycled through what has been referred to as the London ‘laundromat’. The money was also invested in extending patronage and building influence across a wide sphere of the British establishment – PR firms, charities, political interests, academia and cultural institutions were all willing beneficiaries of Russian money, contributing to a ‘reputation laundering’ process.”

Transparency International identified over two thousand U.K.-registered companies used in Russian money laundering and corruption cases, involved in more than £82 billion ($109 billion) of funds diverted by, for example, embezzlement and unlawful acquisition of state assets. The advocacy group has also identified some £1.5 billion worth of London property owned by Russians accused of corruption with links to the Kremlin.

The mood in Britain began to turn against Russian oligarchs even before the invasion. On Feb. 17, the government axed the so-called “golden visa” program introduced in 2000, which granted residency to wealthy foreigners in exchange for large-scale investments – the larger, the more quickly the visa would be granted. Many Russian millionaires were among the recipients.

But the escalating violence in Ukraine has “completely changed” Britain’s casual approach toward Russian money, says Kathryn Westmore, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a British military and security think tank.

Key among those changes is Mr. Johnson’s resurrection of legislation first proposed by former Prime Minister David Cameron but ignored for almost a decade. The bill would require anonymous owners of property to identify themselves,  or else the property cannot be sold. Violators of the law would face five-year prison sentences.

“It’s disgraceful that the situation in Ukraine has had to happen in order for that to happen,” says Ms. Westmore. She, like many Britons worried about the obscure nature of Russian influence in Britain, welcomes the expediency shown by Boris Johnson.

“It’s hard to celebrate the fact that new legislation tackling transparency is coming in,” she says. “But it is much needed.”

The U.K. has other tools available to it as well. In 2018, it introduced unexplained wealth orders (UWOs), a means by which it could demand that a rich person suspected of corruption or criminal connections explain the origins of their wealth. UWOs have only been used a handful of times, but the new bill is expected to boost their utility.

Also, cabinet minister Michael Gove is working on a proposal that would enable the government to more easily seize the assets of oligarchs closely associated with Mr. Putin.

Russian money, British institutions

When Labour Party Member of Parliament Chris Bryant last week read a leaked government document in Parliament identifying Mr. Abramovich, the Chelsea Football Club owner, as having links to the Russian state and of engaging in “corrupt activity and practices,” he had set in motion a chain of events that has shed light on the influence that Russian wealth has exerted on British cultural institutions.

Toby Melville/Reuters

Fans take photos outside Stamford Bridge, the stadium for Chelsea Football Club in London, March 3, 2022. Russian businessman Roman Abramovich said on Wednesday that he would sell the club amid growing pressure for oligarchs to be hit by sanctions due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Mr. Abramovich acquired his riches from Russian oil after the fall of the Soviet Union and bought Premier League soccer club Chelsea in 2003. His wealth turned them into an all-conquering team, but few questioned his intentions, or indeed, the true source of his fortune. Soccer, like much of Britain, has “simply bent the knee to foreign capital,” says Jonathan Liew, sportswriter at the Guardian.

But after years of being seen as a benevolent figure, he is now under serious scrutiny, even from a once laudatory government, says Mr. Liew. The “furious backpedaling of the Johnson government” and the “performative outrage of the footballing authorities suggests that the real red line was not morality, but PR.”

Still, whatever its motivation, the U.K.’s role as the global hub for Russian money “puts its government in a uniquely strong position to hurt Putin’s kleptocracy ... by attacking financial secrecy,” says Tom Burgis, author of “Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World.”

Russian firms have sought London as the place to raise foreign capital and global clout; in total, they have a market value of more than £400 billion listed on the London Stock Exchange. And some £68 billion of Russian money has flowed into offshore British tax havens, such as the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands, via London, raising further questions as to how and where that wealth was generated.

Dismantling the City of London’s financial secrecy, with its links to tax havens and law firms adept at reputation management will come at a cost, Mr. Burgis says. “But the U.K. now faces a choice: whose side is it on?”

Russian influence in office

Amid a clampdown on Russian money in Britain, Mr. Johnson may have to look closer to home. The ruling Conservative Party has received some £2 million in donations from Russian-tied sources since Mr. Johnson took office in 2019, according to Electoral Commission data. Intelligence authorities warn such gifts may not be for altruistic reasons, as Russians seek to establish broad influence in the U.K.

World-renowned universities and cultural institutions also “encouraged” Russians to set up camp, says Ms. Westmore of RUSI. “The U.K. offers a sort of stamp of legitimacy,” she says, “not just from a financial perspective, but also from a social and cultural perspective.”

An open property market for foreign investors, the rule of law, and a functioning legal system has, ironically, encouraged the systemic flow of Russian wealth into Britain, she adds.

For financial crime analysts like Ms. Westmore, a new register of overseas ownership represents a step in the right direction and will act as a “deterrent,” but will need “time and tough enforcement.”

It’s not just about the money, she says, but about the British role in not facilitating wider corruption. “We must make sure we get it right.”

Eric Gay/AP/File

A woman prays outside the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a week after 26 churchgoers were killed by a gunman in 2017. FBI data show that mass shootings in houses of worship are statistically rare, though increasing. And religious leaders are generating fresh thinking on how to allay fears that threaten their open-armed welcome.

The man with a backpack slipped unnoticed into the church auditorium. He carefully chose his moment. The congregation of First United Methodist Church in New Braunfels, Texas, was engrossed in watching a presentation when he interrupted proceedings. Unzipping his backpack, the intruder dressed in camo-fatigues quickly assembled a firearm with practiced precision. People cowered in the pews.

Then it dawned on the congregation that the interloper was a part of the security demonstration they’d been watching. 

“People complained afterwards,” admits Gary Kirkham, a congregation member who helped create the church’s safety program by consulting experts and police. “A lot of this stuff is just too realistic for some people.”

Their jitters – as well as the security exercise itself – are understandable. In 2017, a man from New Braunfels drove to a church in nearby Sutherland Springs and fatally shot 26 people. Headlines about tragedies such as that one – and a shooting Feb. 28 in a Sacramento, California, church in which five people died – create a conundrum for churches, mosques, and synagogues reconciling security with spiritual mission.

Fences, cameras, and security guards might help regular worshippers feel secure but risk inhibiting an open-armed welcome to visitors. There’s intense debate, too, over whether protective measures should include guns inside sacred spaces.

And yet, these contentious dilemmas have spurred fresh thinking. Conscious efforts to engage with the broader community, be security wise, and stay centered on sacred mission, say religious leaders, are the best way to answer the fundamental question at issue: How to allay fear?

“There’s an existential threat to Judaism and to religion which is that if people are afraid to come together, then their religion becomes much, much weaker,” observes Jeremy Yamin, who as director of security and operations at the Massachusetts nonprofit Combined Jewish Philanthropies helps Jewish institutions implement security. 

That dilemma echoes across the U.S., which, since 1980, has experienced 11 mass murders at houses of worship. According to The Violence Project, the number of those attacks (defined by four or more victims) has grown over the past two decades. The three deadliest shootings have taken place since 2015. But, statistically speaking, mass shootings – distinct from arson or other threats – at churches are “rare events in the grand scheme of things,” says James Densley, co-founder of The Violence Project and department chair of the School of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice at Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis.

While headlines about attacks on houses of worship get chilling attention, these sites are actually no more likely to have a shooting than any other location, says Guy Russ, vice president of innovation and data at Church Mutual Insurance, the leading insurer among the nation’s 350,000 religious institutions.* What makes religious institutions vulnerable is that there’s often less security in place than at schools or government buildings.   

Most shooters, according to an FBI study, select targets based on a perceived wrong that happened to them either in that place or by a person that happens to be at that place. Often, the shooters know their victims. In the latest shooting, in Sacramento, the gunman killed his three daughters, one other person, and himself. 

Matt Rourke/AP/File

A spontaneous memorial grew outside the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in the aftermath of an October 2018 shooting attack that killed 11 in the synagogue.

Security training has saved lives

Houses of worship can be a target of a broad array of racial or religious hate crimes – Klan-inspired firebombings of Black churches in the 1960s being a historical symbol of that. But, while hate crimes overall increased in 2020, just 3.4% were committed in churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques.

Even so, some of the most devastating mass shootings in recent history have been motivated by animus toward religious and racial groups, magnifying public fear of the vulnerability of all churches. 

In 2019, there were 51 people massacred inside a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, and in 2017 a white nationalist killed six people in a Quebec mosque – though there have been no mass shootings in a U.S. mosque. Eleven people were fatally shot inside a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. A shooting by a white supremacist at Mother Emanuel, a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, claimed nine lives in 2015.

Warren Mitchell, head of security for the 4,200-seat Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, recalls the effect that latter massacre had on his fellow, predominantly Black congregants.

“Every congregation around the country, especially African-Americans, were all on edge because a lot of people started asking about security training,” says Mr. Mitchell, who is a Dallas Police Department sergeant. “There were some churches, like one directly across the street from us, that we’ve provided some security training for. And it made us brush up even on our security training.”

Many congregations utilize federal and state grants to boost security and implement safety drills. That training has been credited with saving lives.

When Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and members of his congregation were taken hostage inside a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, he recalled training he’d received from the FBI, the Anti-Defamation League, and Secure Community Network. It helped him calmly manage the 11-hour situation. The captives were eventually able to flee when the rabbi threw a chair at the gunman. 

Though Mr. Cytron-Walker recently said he wishes that one of his fellow hostages had been carrying a gun, a former member of his synagogue alleged on Facebook that the rabbi “didn’t allow his members to be armed during services.” 

“I was praying very hard that everything would be resolved in the best way possible,” says Michael Barclay, rabbi at Temple Ner Simcha in Agoura Hills, California. But he wonders if the incident would have happened at all if there had been security guards like the ones at his synagogue in California. 

“There’s a great statement from Islam – they say, ‘Trust in Allah and tether your camel,’” says Rabbi Barclay. “So we have faith in God, and we tether our camel by always having people there with firearms. ... You need to create a safe physical space so that you can have a safe spiritual space.” 

Many synagogues hire armed guards. It’s expensive, and many small synagogues can only afford to do so on important holidays. Another option for smaller congregations: Authorize lay members to bring concealed-carry firearms where it’s legal. 

“The concept of having some of your own congregants who are trained, skilled, maintain their skills and practice, and are known to the community and known to the congregation, I don’t think it’s a bad idea at all,” says Fred Kogen, president of a mostly Jewish but secular social gun club in Southern California called Bullets & Bagels. “I don’t think self-defense of a church or synagogue should be the sole purview of the so-called experts.” 

“We’re not here as bouncers”

Other denominations struggle, too, over whether guns belong inside a sanctuary. When Bethany Benz-Whittington was a pastor at a Presbyterian church in Jacksonville, Florida, the 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando prompted her congregation to consider allowing firearms inside the building. 

“I have said, ‘If you decide to become an open-carry congregation, and if you say guns are welcome in this space, then I will no longer be your pastor,’” says Ms. Benz-Whittington. “And so then, instead of engaging the issue, everyone has said, ‘Well, then we just won’t ask.’”

Where some churches opt for a “don’t ask, don’t tell” stance, others are less equivocal. At the Rev. Hansen Wendlandt’s Presbyterian church in Sandy City, Utah, a posted sign reads “Blessed are the peacemakers. Please leave your guns elsewhere.”

Despite his fervent anti-gun outlook, Mr. Wendlandt believes it’s prudent for churches to implement security measures. At his previous post in Nederland, Colorado, says Mr. Wendlandt, an individual sent a threat to disrupt a church service. So the pastor asked two of the largest men to sit near the door, but the threat didn’t materialize.

Even so, there were other challenges. Houses of worship are, after all, havens for those in need who can bring their problems along with them. 

“We had a ton of homeless ministry at that church in Nederland,” he says, noting that some congregation members were frightened by their presence. Nonetheless, he adds, safety isn’t the highest value of a denomination and it should never trump spiritual mission. His church congregation displayed patience and forgiveness toward those who were working toward healing.

“The Old Testament is rife with overprotecting,” he says, noting that the Sodom and Gomorrah story is really about welcome. “And in that case, there is this fear of the ‘other.’ I think that the wider scope of Scripture draws us to appreciate hospitality, and it’s incumbent on us to figure out where those boundaries are.”

That sort of openness isn’t without risk. At Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, hospitality is foundational. It feeds 400-plus families every week and offers rental assistance. Last year, a man there threatened congregants with a knife, then verbally accosted the center’s social services director, who isn’t a Muslim.

“He said, ‘Hey, you’re white. What are you doing here with these people?’” recounts Saif Rahman, director of government and public affairs at the center. “You try to balance between how you respond to this, and how do you maintain your values in making sure that this is a house of God that’s open to all.”

In New Braunfels, the First United Methodist church occasionally attracts unhoused people. Yet Mr. Kirkham says the ushers abide by Christian principles: “What would Jesus do in a case like this? You know he’d be welcoming, right?”

Even so, the security team is vigilant. Following the church massacre in Sutherland Springs, the New Braunfels church created a command center with 16 security cameras, installed a button that can instantly lock the doors, and trained an in-house team in everything from usher protocols to emergency medical care. That detailed security is low-key to the point of being almost invisible to visitors, says Mr. Kirkham.

At Friendship-West church in Dallas, Mr. Mitchell shares a similar philosophy: “We’re not here as bouncers at a nightclub. Our main thing is not to look like we are a fortress, a church that’s being guarded by police officers or security officers. We wear suits on Sunday.” 

Jacquelyn Martin/AP/File

Gordon Houtman (center) carries his daughter Marilyn Houtman into a prayer service at Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, in December 2015. The center's security philosophy, says spokesperson Saif Rhaman is "engagement with the larger community. The more we’re able to essentially fight ignorance with information and bring light to understanding, the less likely someone will decide to take it upon themselves to attack a religious center.”

Radical hospitality

Proactive engagement is an increasingly popular strategy. Borrowing a common security practice at banks and businesses, denominations train ushers to greet every newcomer at the door. Security experts cite studies showing that approach often deters people with bad intentions from going through with their plans.

“This idea of upping the greeting game has two parts to it,” says security consultant Jeanie Garrett, author of “Open Arms, Safe Communities: The Theology of Church Security.”

“You’re making sure that they have a reason to be there. You’re asking, ‘Do you need anything? Do you know where the sanctuary is? Are there prayer requests that you have? And can I get your name and email, and we’ll follow up with you?’ On the other hand, it’s also a radical form of hospitality.” 

Ultimately, the key to keeping houses of worship relatively accessible to newcomers may lie in dispelling a bunker mentality within the denomination.

“The best security is engagement with the larger community,” says Mr. Rahman, at Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center. “The more we’re able to essentially fight ignorance with information and bring light to understanding, the less likely someone will decide to take it upon themselves to attack a religious center.”    

Another way to counter anxiety, suggest some, is to share a comforting theological outlook with worshippers. 

“The opposite of fear is faith. The two cannot exist in the same place at the same time,” counsels Rabbi Barclay.

Similarly, Joseph Moore, a pastor who works for the Presbyterian Foundation, says there’s a reason that the most common command in the Bible is “Do not fear.”

“Christian worship points us beyond ourselves,” says Mr. Moore. “It points us to the God of the universe. And it reminds us that we are not centered, but that something else is centered and that there’s something freeing and unifying about that.”

* This story has been changed to correct the name of the company Church Mutual Insurance, and to clarify its share of the business of insuring houses of worship.     

AP

Paul "Paco" Ollerton and his dog, Aggie, look toward the canal system that delivers Colorado River water to his farm near Casa Grande, Ariz..

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Joe Biden made only a passing reference to “the devastating effects of the climate crisis.” His lack of urgency on the issue was hard to miss. Just the day before an international panel of scientific experts released an assessment of the impact of human activity on climate that United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called “a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”

That report followed a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change in February finding that the southwestern region of North America is experiencing the longest megadrought in 1,200 years. After the driest 22 years on record, the Colorado River system, which sustains more than 40 million people across seven states and northern Mexico, is severely strained. The nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, have reached historic lows. They may soon not be able to generate hydropower.

Faced with this widespread extremity, the historically adversarial stakeholders in the Colorado River basin are starting to demonstrate something else that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded: that “diverse forms of knowledge such as scientific as well as Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge” provide a strong shared basis for reducing the effects of human-induced climate change. Environmentalists, farmers, city planners, and tribal nations are learning that sustaining this vital, renewable resource depends as much on trust as rainfall.

“We need to remember that everyone is struggling with this – everyone is hurting in this region right now,” says Taylor Hawes, The Nature Conservancy’s Colorado River program director. “If we can keep coming back to shared values – a sustainable river system, vibrant cities, a healthy river, sustaining agriculture – we should be able to come together and find solutions. We find trust when we see that our interests are aligned.”

Water rights on the Colorado River are governed by laws established in 1922 and revised over the years to balance allocations state by state from the headwaters to the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. That system fostered enduring mistrust among different interest groups competing for water to grow crops, protect fish, and irrigate urban growth across desert landscapes. Lately, however, that rivalry is turning to cooperation. Compelled by climate change, water users are sharing technology and expertise. Cities like Las Vegas are becoming more water efficient. Farmers are shifting to crops that require less irrigation.

Perhaps more importantly, a constituency that was sidelined is starting finally to be embraced. Thirty tribal nations hold the rights to a quarter of the water that flows through the basin under rights that predate the river compact. Now as public and private stakeholders start working to revise the river’s management guidelines before they expire in 2026, the tribes are finding a seat at the table.

A novel pact signed in January between the state of New Mexico, the Jicarilla Apache Nation, and The Nature Conservancy illustrates the potential of a more inclusive approach. For years the Jicarilla Apache Nation leased water to coal mines in the state’s northeast corner. As those operations have shut down, the tribal nation has more water to share elsewhere. The new accord leases water to the state to improve water security and benefit wild fisheries.

“This first-of-its-kind project demonstrates how meaningful sovereign-to-sovereign cooperation, with support from environmental organizations, can lead to creative solutions,” said Daryl Vigil, water administrator for the Jicarilla Apache Nation, following the agreement.

As climate change forces adaptation, knowledge sharing and trust-building on the Colorado River illustrates humanity’s potential to chart a more equitable and caring future. That’s a lesson that may resonate in other places where vital natural resources face competing claims.