In January 2026, the New York Times Magazine featured an article about Philippe Sands, one of the world’s pre-eminent human rights attorneys. The article was written by Michael Steinbergerand was titled:
‘This Could End Very Badly’: A Human Rights Lawyer Fears a New Age of Impunity
There is little doubt that, in fact, we find ourselves living in a new age of impunity, impunity being the exercise of power without accountability, which becomes, in starkest form, the commission of crimes without punishment. The carnage we see in Gaza, the Ukraine, Sudan and the unchecked cruelty exhibited by the immigration/deportation policies of the Trump administration and the destruction of a school and the deaths of children in Iran by U.S. bombs are all evidence of this contemporary and criminal reality. No one seems to be held accountable. Family separations are at an all-time high. A May 2026 report from the Brookings Institution published by the New York Times estimated that 100,000 children had been separated from their undocumented parents, and more recently, that estimate has grown to 205,000, with 71% to 75% being U.S. citizens by birth. No one seems to be held accountable. And the level of corruption that exists around the world and in particular, with the self-dealing Trump administration, Trump family and Trump himself without accountability is astounding. They are destroying institutions, violating norms and getting richer with impunity. No one seems to be held accountable as if no one seems to care.
Commenting on the situation in the United States, Steinberger said of Sands:
What especially troubles him is the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision granting presidents almost blanket immunity. As Sands asks: “If a president commits crimes against humanity, tortures or disappears people, is he going to be subject to examination by the courts? The answer appears to be no.” Sands fears that the Supreme Court, 80 years after the Nuremberg trials established that political and military leaders could be held accountable for atrocities against their own citizens, has ushered in what he calls a “new age of impunity.”
And it is not only on the international stage and among global power brokers that this reality of impunity creates such collateral humanitarian damage, but we also find it impacting our domestic relations as well.
The alleged rape case at Cornell University. an elite Ivy League school, has been extensively reported in newsprints and on social media, touching a raw nerve on college campuses and in society regarding the scourge of sexual abuse and assault.
A recently published conversation among Michelle Cottle, Jamelle Bouie and David French (October 3, 2026) was titled: Cornell and the Age of Impunity. At a time when the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and the impunity that has protected the rich, powerful and famous from accountability, criticism of the University administration, law enforcement and prosecutors has run hot. Yet again, the victim goes unheard and the elite get protected. Something said by David French has remained with me:
French: You know, there are two huge problems I want to emphasize: cultural and legal. So here’s the cultural problem — and I think we have confused the minimum legal standard, which is consent, for the moral standard. And I do not agree that the moral standard for sexual activity should be consent. I think it should be care. Now, I’m not going to ask that people agree with my conservative, evangelical Christian sexual ethics, that sex is for marriage between a man and a woman. Look, I know lots of people disagree with that, obviously, but at the minimum — at the minimum — is this the kind of thing, if these young men actually cared for her, rather than just asked if she agreed with it in the moment — is this how they would treat her?
And that’s the problem I have with a lot of these arguments, culturally, is we almost treat it like, well, everybody was consenting, and then that makes it morally OK. I want everyone to be caring, and if you’re caring, you’re going to be preventing an awful lot of this stuff, where years later — and even days later or hours later — people look back at what they did when — Michelle, as you’re talking about, the combination of alcohol and hormones does not always make us our best selves — and then we look back at that and go, “I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to be that.”
French’s desire is simple but spot on, as they say!
I want everyone to be caring, and if you’re caring, you’re going to be preventing an awful lot of this stuff.
If we could be more caring, we could prevent a lot of this stuff and hold accountable those who say and do terrible things.
I received an email from Tyler Huckabee, the managing editor of Sojourners. In it he said the following:
For more than 50 years, Sojourners readers have believed that faith should move us towards justice—that Jesus is not a political mascot, but someone who taught us a new way to think about our neighbors, our politics, our culture, and our lives.
At a time when so much media is optimized for outrage, speed, and black-and-white certainty, we make room for depth. We believe journalism can be a kind of Christian witness: telling the truth about injustice, challenging the exercise of power, and refusing to reduce our neighbors to political talking points.
Now, as communities prepare for the consequential 2026 midterm elections, that witness will be tested like never before.
The questions before us reach far beyond campaign slogans and Election Day: What kind of country are we becoming? What role will faith play in our public life? How should Christians think about power, democracy, immigration, and our obligations to each other?
As Christians, we must care about how we answer these questions and how we show the worldthat Jesus has, in fact, taught us a new way to think about our neighbors, our politics, our culture and our lives. And we must provide our witness in whatever way possible, from our pulpits and pews, in print and on social media, in our classrooms and on the street and with our votes. In spite of the enormity of the challenges, we must show our country and the world that we will neither fail to meet the moral standards of our faith nor live without an authentic sense of hope.
As I ponder the question of what it may mean for disciples to live by Christ’s teachings and example in the age of impunity, I recall that scene depicted in the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John wherein Jesus, so offended by the behavior of those doing commerce in the temple, he enters it with a whip and a wild effort to overturn all their tables.
John’s account comes at us with a flourish:
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” (John 2:13–16)
I am imagining that it is this Jesus, this Christ, who would be leading us both to care and to act on our calling to hold those accountable for the shameful corruption and cruelty of our time and culture. Tables have been set by those who sin so grievously, and they must be overturned!
Steinberger wrote of Philippe Sands that even though he grew up in the bleak shadows of the Holocaust and then litigated some of the most heinous of atrocities, he never lost his sense of humor or hope: He wrote:
Last January, Sands delivered a Holocaust Remembrance Day lecture at the University of Cambridge, his alma mater. Although his work often immerses him in stories of appalling cruelty, he is by nature very cheerful, and he exuded warmth and affability as he reflected on his Cambridge education and talked about his career. He counseled the students against cynicism. He noted that international human rights law was still in its nascency and said he remained optimistic that its core values would ultimately triumph. “I firmly believe that the arc of history will follow the arc of justice,”
Martin Luther King Jr. of course, made the quote a prominent one. However, the original was from the pen of Theodore Parker, the Unitarian minister during the early 1800s. In 1853 a collection of “Ten Sermons of Religion” by Parker was published and the third sermon titled “Of Justice and the Conscience” included figurative language about the arc of the moral universe:1
Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little way. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.
Trusting in Christ and following the truths and teachings of the scripture, I/we can be equally confident that in spite of what we see happening today, the moral universe does bend toward justice and our job is to help it bend.
For generations, in the best of times and the worst of times, the prophet Micah has inspired people of faith to do what is required of them:
He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness (charity)
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micha 6:8, NRSVUE)
Doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with our God. That is who we are. And must always be.
Together, let us care enough to do what is required of us.