For the past few months, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters has been very busy.

He unveiled a bold new plan in June: “Effective immediately, all Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support into the curriculum,” he wrote in a memo to district superintendents.

As part of this plan, Oklahoma would be purchasing 55,000 Bibles, one for every public school classroom. (There were just over 42,000 teachers in Oklahoma’s K-12 public schools in 2022.)

“The Bible is one of the most historically significant books and a cornerstone of Western civilization,” Superintendent Walters reasoned.

The proposal was met with waves of controversy. But his plan was just one of a number of efforts across the United States to incorporate more Christian-centered materials into public school classrooms.

A week earlier, Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed a new law requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom. In November, the Texas State Board of Education approved optional Bible-infused lesson plans.

Lawmakers in Florida and Texas also allowed chaplains to provide religious counseling to public school students last year. Montana permitted public schools to begin each day with prayer. And at least seven other states have been trying to incorporate such mandates in public schools, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Al Behrman/AP/File

Workers remove a monument bearing the Ten Commandments outside West Union High School in Ohio, June 9, 2003. Louisiana and other Republican states are again beginning to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms.

In some respects, these state-led efforts are designed as constitutional test cases. For the past two decades, the U.S. Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, has made protecting religious liberty one of its defining legacies.

“I think that if we want to have a well-informed and knowledgeable citizenry in the United States, then teaching tomorrow’s educators, lawyers, politicians, doctors, scholars about the Bible, and its foundations in Western civilization and American heritage, is indispensable,” says Nicole Hunt, spokesperson for Focus on the Family, a Christian ministry.

Public education has long been a focus of religious conservatives. And from trying to get taxpayer-funded vouchers for religious schools to allowing prayer and other acts of personal devotion on public school grounds, the Supreme Court has given the go-ahead.

The current efforts have often been labeled “Christian nationalism,” which is generally defined as the belief that the United States is, and always has been, a Christian nation. Many who hold this belief think there is an urgent need to preserve that identity with the authority of the government.

President-elect Donald Trump has long been their full-throated champion.

“I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER. READ IT,” he posted on his Truth Social platform June 21. “THIS MAY BE, IN FACT, THE FIRST MAJOR STEP IN THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION, WHICH IS DESPERATELY NEEDED, IN OUR COUNTRY. BRING BACK TTC!!!”

Oklahoma orders “Trump Bible” for public school classrooms

After Superintendent Walters announced Oklahoma would purchase 55,000 Bibles, the state issued a request for proposals.

A potential vendor “must provide only the King James Version Bible for historical accuracy.” It also “must include copies of The United States Pledge of Allegiance, The U.S. Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution, and The U.S. Bill of Rights.” Lastly, the Bible “must be bound in leather or leather-like material for durability.”

These specifications were oddly specific. In fact, there were only two Bibles in publication that appeared to meet such criteria.

Sue Ogrocki/AP/File

“The Bible is one of the most historically significant books and a cornerstone of Western civilization,” says Ryan Walters, superintendent of public instruction in Oklahoma. He has mandated that the Bible be incorporated across the curriculum.

One of them was the “God Bless the USA Bible,” published by the popular singer Lee Greenwood and sold for $59.99. According to The Associated Press, the Bibles are printed in China at a cost of less than $3 each.

Mr. Greenwood also pays President-elect Trump a licensing fee to use his name, image, and likeness in the faux-leather-bound Bible.

According to Mr. Trump’s August financial disclosure, the president-elect has already made $300,000 from copies sold. During the campaign, he advertised and sold it as “the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” This is why it is more commonly known as the “Trump Bible.”

The only other Bible to meet Superintendent Walters’ criteria was the “We the People Bible.” It is sold by Donald Trump Jr.

At the advice of other state agencies, however, the bidding criteria were altered. Now, bids would be open to publishers that bound the U.S. historical documents separately from the required KJV Bible.

On Nov. 14, Superintendent Walters announced the state had purchased the first 500 Bibles. These would be placed in the classrooms of Oklahoma’s Advanced Placement government classes, he said.

“It’s very clear that the radical left has driven the Bible out of the classroom, which leads to a lack of understanding of American history,” he said in a video posted on the social media platform X announcing the purchase. “We will not stop until we’ve brought the Bible back to every classroom in the state.”

His department, it turned out, had chosen to purchase the Trump Bible.

Patrick Semansky/AP/File

President Trump holds a Bible as he visits outside St. John’s Church in Washington, June 1, 2020.

Oklahoma’s Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, was not very impressed with Superintendent Walters’ plan.

“Oklahoma law already explicitly allows Bibles in the classroom and enables teachers to use them in instruction,” his spokesperson Phil Bacharach told reporters.

In fact, while the Supreme Court has consistently forbidden officially sponsored devotional or religious uses of the Bible in public schools since the 1960s, it has always ruled that the Bible could be used for educationally appropriate purposes.

In a July memo, Superintendent Walters issued guidance on how teachers should integrate the Bible. They could show its influence on Western concepts of justice, for example. The Bible could also be used to explore literary techniques, or its influences on art and music.

In math or science classes, students could explore how thinkers were influenced by the Bible to explore “God’s creation,” the superintendent said to reporters.

None of this is unconstitutional if it maintains a secular purpose. But as Superintendent Walters told Oklahoma educators, “Adherence to this mandate is compulsory. ... Immediate and strict compliance is expected.”

The forcefulness of this mandate has troubled many Oklahoma residents skeptical of the plan’s stated secular purpose.

Michelle Lara, whose sixth grade son attends public school in Tulsa, says the plan seems to be motivated by politics rather than by academics.

“If that’s really what you want your children to learn, there are so many places that already exist,” says Ms. Lara, a parent organizer for Padres Unidos de Tulsa. “Why are we overburdening our already burdened and very overworked public education system to do something that the church exists to do?”

Within many Christian communities, the directive has been met with hesitation. Barbara Price, a retired theology professor who lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, harbors concerns about the specifically Protestant focus implied by the state’s mandate.

Andrew Demillo/AP/File

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signs an education overhaul bill, which includes plans to provide parents with vouchers to use for religious schools, at the state Capitol in Little Rock, March 8, 2023.

She wonders who, exactly, would be creating that curriculum. And if the Bible has a presence in classrooms, so, too, should the Quran, the Book of Mormon, and sacred texts of other religions, she says. “I would not have wanted some random teacher in school teaching the Bible to my kids. I would have wanted to have seen what they were teaching.”

In October, a group of parents, teachers, and faith leaders filed a lawsuit to block the new curriculum requirement. The litigants represented a range of traditions, including some with Indigenous heritage. Family members who are part of the LGBTQ+ community and those with children with disabilities also joined.

The Rev. Lori Walke, one of the plaintiffs, is senior minister at Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ in Oklahoma City. She describes Oklahoma as a deeply religious and spiritual place, where “You can’t throw a stick without hitting a church.”

It’s in those houses of worship where she believes religion should stay. Otherwise, she says, it amounts to the indoctrination of children – even those of other Christian traditions with different theologies.

Yet Ms. Walke also sees the Bible mandate as part of a wider effort that threatens the nation’s church-state separation.

“Christian nationalism is not a good look for our state,” she says. “People do not want to move to a place that is known for discrimination and bigotry.”

Frank Ravitch, a law professor at Michigan State University, also views these efforts as appeals to Christian nationalism. But he adds that people should be careful with this label.

“Not everyone who favors these kinds of things, whether citizens or legislators, is necessarily a Christian nationalist,” he says. “But they’re definitely playing right into the hands of Christian nationalists.”

Religious conservatives, Supreme Court, challenge “separation of church and state”

Religious conservatives have for decades rejected the idea of the “separation of church and state.”

And in many ways, the election of Mr. Trump to another term has validated that rejection. The Supreme Court, with three Trump appointees, is also poised to continue to revise previous jurisprudence surrounding the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

Hilary Scheinuk/The Advocate/AP

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill holds up an example of a poster of the Ten Commandments to be placed in schools, Aug. 5, 2024.

“For too long, we’ve imagined the perceived separation of church and state mandated that these two cornerstones of our national life must be distinct and unrelated. But is that true?” asked Ian Rowe, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, during an event in September called Church and State: Reimagining Faith Communities’ Role in K-12 Education. “The actual words ‘separation of church and state’ never appear in the Constitution.”

The Roberts court has ruled that religious institutions be included when taxpayer funds are offered to private nonreligious groups. In that same vein, it has permitted vouchers and other state funding for private religious education.

Advocates and legal scholars, however, point to a Supreme Court case in 2022 that sparked the current movement to make more room for religion in public schools.

The school district in Bremerton, Washington, warned a coach, Joseph Kennedy, that his postgame prayers violated its policy regarding religious activities.

Mr. Kennedy filed a lawsuit against the school district in August 2016, saying his First Amendment rights had been violated. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which agreed with him, ruling 6-3 in his favor in June 2022.

“In truth, there is no conflict between the constitutional commands before us. There is only the ‘mere shadow’ of a conflict, a false choice premised on a misconstruction of the Establishment Clause,” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch in his majority decision. “The Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.”

Lindsey Wasson/The Seattle Times/AP/File

Bremerton High School football coach Joseph Kennedy (center, in blue) kneels and prays after his team lost to a rival Oct. 16, 2015, in Bremerton, Washington.

At the same time, Justice Gorsuch also reaffirmed that such expression could not be “pursuant to [his or her] official duties.”

Religious conservatives see this as a major victory. Critics, however, say the recent efforts are part of a long-term legal project.

“I think interest groups see this as kind of a carpe diem moment with the current court,” says Mr. Ravitch. “And they know that this court doesn’t really seem to take long-standing precedent very seriously.”

Leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State say current efforts are part of an orchestrated Christian nationalist agenda, driven by a “shadow network” of conservative organizations, wealthy individuals, and powerful politicians.

“They have been working – and tirelessly – to target a lot of different things, including schools, and really to impose their worldview, again, on public students, but also all Americans,” says Rebecca Markert, the organization’s legal director. “We saw them do it with the right to abortion a few years ago.”

Still, opponents of the mandates have had their own legal victories.

Louisiana’s law required that all public school classrooms display the Ten Commandments in a frame or poster that’s at least 11 by 14 inches, by Jan. 1, 2025.

But after a group of Louisiana parents filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s Ten Commandments mandate, Governor Landry didn’t mince words: “Tell your child not to look at them,” he said during an August press conference.

In November, U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, nominated to the court in 2014 by President Barack Obama, said the Louisiana law had an “overtly religious” purpose, and was “unconstitutional on its face.”

“Our founders weren’t using the Quran when they were founding our country”

As the battle over church-state separation unfolds in courts, opponents of the mandates in public schools are trying to direct attention back to the needs of students.

Heather Weaver, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, says these state efforts amount to an attack on the fundamental purpose of public schools.

“The students who don’t follow the states’ religious dictates will feel ostracized from their school community, undermining [both] their ability to learn and the states’ legal obligation to provide an equal education to all students, regardless of their faith.”

Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman/AP

Democratic state Rep. James Talarico expresses disapproval for Texas’ policy that allows chaplains to provide counseling services in public schools, Feb. 29, 2024, in Austin.

After Mr. Trump won the election, Americans United was one of the many advocacy organizations that shifted gears toward this focus on students. “Public schools are, in some ways, the most crucial bastion of church-state separation, and we will fight for every child,” wrote Rachel Laser, president of the advocacy group.

Those who support bringing Bibles and the Ten Commandments into the classroom say they are ready for the challenge. They believe a fuller understanding of the Bible’s influence across public school curriculum will only enrich students.

Ms. Hunt with Focus on the Family says her children attending public charter schools in Colorado have been exposed to teachings from a variety of world religions. When it’s done in a neutral way that doesn’t cross into devotional territory, she considers it an enhancement to their education.

But if the Supreme Court hears a case about the Bible’s inclusion in classrooms, she expects justices to view the issue through the lens of “historical practices and understandings,” and not of the separation of church and state. “Our founders weren’t using the Quran when they were founding our country,” she says.

Ultimately, Ms. Hunt suspects many of these cases will wind up in the nation’s highest court. “I welcome the day when it’s not so controversial to say that the Bible as a foundation for Western civilization should be taught in the classroom,” she says.

Facing political stonewalling and declining popularity, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol attempted to impose martial law this week – and failed spectacularly.

In a late evening television address Tuesday, Mr. Yoon argued that North Korea sympathizers were “paralyzing” his administration, and announced military rule. Lawmakers raced to the parliament building, where they voted to nullify Mr. Yoon’s martial law order, even as South Korean troops stormed the building. Political leaders and protesters immediately called for him to step down. Hours later, Mr. Yoon lifted martial law.

The rapid and powerful pushback, including by lawmakers from Mr. Yoon’s party, reflected not only the widespread view that he had overreached, but also deep-seated bitterness over South Korea’s dark legacy of coups and military dictatorship as recently as the 1980s.

“There’s a strong sentiment against strongman rule in Korea,” says retired South Korean army Lt. Gen. Chun In-bum, a decorated military commander, former defense official, and expert in national security. “Mr. Yoon miscalculated.”

Kim Soo-hyeon/Reuters

A TV screen at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea, broadcasts a news report on South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's failed attempt to impose martial law, Dec. 4, 2024.

Q: Who is Yoon Suk Yeol, and why did he declare martial law?

A veteran prosecutor and political outsider, Mr. Yoon won South Korea’s 2022 presidential election by a razor-thin voter margin of less than 1% – the smallest difference between two leading candidates in the history of South Korea’s presidential elections. Mr. Yoon, the candidate for the conservative People Power Party, had never held a seat in parliament or a Cabinet position. He campaigned on supporting small business and soldiers, as well as promoting democracy and closer ties with Japan and the United States.

“I will reestablish liberal democracy, the rule of law and the value of fairness,” Mr. Yoon said in announcing his candidacy in June 2021.

But amid personal scandals, labor strikes, and other controversies, Mr. Yoon’s job approval rating steadily declined from over 50% when he took office to around 20% last month. Prior to the martial law debacle, hundreds of thousands of South Koreans signed a petition calling for his removal.

Meanwhile, the opposition Democratic Party, which holds a majority in parliament, has stymied Mr. Yoon’s administration, including through motions to impeach top officials and prosecutors and by blocking Mr. Yoon’s proposed budget.

Without offering evidence, Mr. Yoon accused “anti-state forces” sympathetic to North Korea of undermining South Korea’s democracy by “inciting internal rebellion.”

“The National Assembly, which should be the foundation of liberal democracy, has become a monster trying to destroy it,” he said Tuesday. The martial law decree banned all political activities and labor strikes, as well as “fake news,” and put all media under the control of the Martial Law Command, headed by army Gen. Park An-su.

Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters

South Korea's main opposition Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung holds a sign reading, "Investigate his act of rebellion immediately," at a rally at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Dec. 4, 2024.

Q: What was the political fallout?

Following Mr. Yoon’s announcement, opposition leaders and protesters immediately called for him to step down.

On Wednesday, six opposition parties announced they had submitted a motion to impeach Mr. Yoon. A two-thirds majority vote is required for the parliament to call for a president’s impeachment – a number experts say is within reach. The matter would then move to South Korea’s Constitutional Court for a decision. If Mr. Yoon were to step down or be removed, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo would assume the duties of president.

Protesters chanting for Mr. Yoon’s removal rallied in Seoul Wednesday night.

“There’s going to be a fight for sure – not with fists and clubs, but in the courts and halls of the National Assembly. The Korean people will be the biggest loser,” says General Chun.

“But we have been through this before,” he said, recalling the 2016 impeachment and removal of then-President Park Geun-hye for involvement in a political scandal. “I am optimistic that we will be able to find our way.”

Q: How will South Korea’s political uncertainty impact its security?

As a treaty partner of the United States, South Korea has a solid partnership with the U.S. military as well as European forces under the United Nations Command, which helps safeguard the country from North Korean aggression.

Pyongyang may exploit the political unrest in Seoul as a propaganda tool, experts say. More concerning for Washington and Tokyo, however, is that the potential replacement of Mr. Yoon would deprive the tripartite alliance of a powerful advocate. Mr. Yoon oversaw a dramatic easing of tensions between South Korea and Japan, and the advancement of defense cooperation with both Washington and Tokyo.

“This will ... strain South Korea-Japan ties and make trilateral cooperation with the U.S. more difficult, potentially leading to more instability in the region, emboldening Russia, China, and North Korea,” said Alexander Lipke, Asia program coordinator at the European Council on Foreign Relations, in an email.

The U.S. Embassy released a statement calling Mr. Yoon’s ending of martial law “a crucial step,” and stressing the need to “support our shared values.” It reiterated the U.S. “ironclad commitment” to the alliance.

More broadly, experts say that Seoul’s preoccupation with its domestic political crisis is likely to distract from its ability to focus on global issues, such as Ukraine. 

Just down a thickly forested road from the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial here in the historic city of Weimar, a young mother wrangling her three children at a church pizza party talks about the hopes and fears she has for their future.

This region shocked mainstream Germany by handing victory to the far-right extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in September state elections, and like many political conversations here, this one takes an unexpected turn.

“I spent a year in Israel working with Holocaust survivors,” says the mom, working to establish her progressive bona fides. “My circle is full of leftist voices, and we always say, ‘Never again – never could we ever let something like the Holocaust happen again.’”

Then, descending into a whisper, with a toddler clutching her leg, Caroline, who would share only her first name, says: “But, I’m still thinking about voting for the AfD.”

The AfD, which has been labeled by the federal government for suspected right-wing extremism, took 33% of votes, a first-place finish, in this state of Thuringia in September. Its leader in Thuringia has been fined for using banned Nazi-era language. Next door in the state of Saxony, the party took a close second with about 30% percent. (Nationally, polls show the party is second in popularity, at 17%, behind the center-right Christian Democratic Union at 32%.)

As embarrassed as she seems, Caroline grounds her position in a feeling of displacement: “I just don’t feel at home in my country anymore.”

She recently found herself among women wearing headscarves in a market square in a nearby town: “They were talking in Arabic, and they didn’t make eye contact with me, and I felt foreign in my own country. I’m afraid of the Islamicization of Germany, when I think of what happened [on Oct. 7, 2023] in Israel, how brutal it can all be.”

Adjusting the toddler, who has migrated to a perch on her hip, she says, eyes downcast: “I know it’s taboo to say this.” And she clarifies that she knows that Muslim “refugees are not Hamas,” and that, more broadly, respected Muslim organizations in Germany have condemned Hamas violence.

And yet, Caroline – at the tipping point of sympathy for the AFD – shares a mood that has helped push the party into second place in German opinion polls ahead of the 2025 federal elections.

Dispirited Thuringia is an ideal place to study the influence of radicalization politics, not only because the Nazis first tasted power here a century ago, but also for the foothold the far right has gained now.

Mainstream parties have found it an uphill battle to establish themselves securely in Thuringia. The state’s communist past stripped it of the vibrant churches, independent trade unions, and other civic organizations that in west Germany served as the building blocks of democracy, says Daniela Schwarzer, an international affairs expert at the Bertelsmann Stiftung, an independent foundation.

“Thuringia is a place that sits at a significant distance from institutions, from Berlin, from politics, and I would say even from democracy,” adds Johannes Kieß, a sociologist at the University of Leipzig.

Lenora Chu

Jens-Christian Wagner is a historian and director of the Buchenwald Memorial, located near Weimar, Germany, at the site of the concentration camp erected by the National Socialists in 1937. The memorial attracts millions of visitors a year.

Displeasure at mass immigration, an east German identity still beleaguered 35 years after the fall of communism, and a dampened economic outlook all provide fertile soil for extremism – prompting one-third of Thuringian voters to choose the far-right ballot.

They are moved by broader doubts about the Western democratic model, says Jens-Christian Wagner, a historian and director of the Buchenwald Memorial.

“Right-wing, authoritarian, anti-liberal ideas and practices are gaining weight – that is a global phenomenon. It’s not just happening in Thuringia,” says Dr. Wagner. “We Germans … have lived under dictatorship; it’s not the same in the U.S., where there’s no historic experience of how a far-right government looks and acts. But we are all under threat.”

A training ground for the Nazis

A century ago, Thuringia was an ideal training ground for the National Socialists.

Sparsely populated, the region boasts the dense Thuringian Forest, an ancient mountain range around which small towns were scattered. Thuringia’s emerging industries were depressed after World War I, and the parties of the ruling Weimar Republic were constantly fighting among themselves.

Enter the Nazi party, adept at moving into politically unstable and economically depressed regions. “And, in 1924 came the original sin on the road to the National Socialist state,” says Dr. Wagner. Conservative nationalists in Thuringia, forced into the minority, cooperated with the Nazi-backed far right. That decision eventually allowed the Nazis to slip into the state parliament, gain control of the interior ministry, and ultimately enter the regional government.

“That was the end of democracy in Thuringia, and we all paid dearly for it,” says Dr. Wagner.

During that era, Nazi slogans scapegoated Jews and the ruling Weimar government. “Blood and soil” spoke to farmers; “For a strong Germany” stoked nationalist pride, and “Death to Judah” promoted antisemitic feelings.

Today, the AfD targets Germany’s mainstream parties and the country’s resident Muslims with slogans such as “Thuringia first,” “Protect our homeland,” and “We will stop the flooding of our country.” (Muslims number 5.5 million, or 7% of the population; more than half of them are German citizens.)

The charged rhetoric taps fears in Thuringia, where the party’s hard-line stance on immigration resonates, says Dr. Schwarzer, the international affairs expert. “One thing is clear: Unlike in the past, the majority of AfD voters are no longer casting protest votes. They are genuinely convinced by the party’s offering.”

Lenora Chu

Holger Klopfleisch raises corn, wheat, and potatoes on land in Niedertreba that his parents also farmed. His ancestors have been in the eastern German state of Thuringia for more than 500 years.

“We want respect”

Holger Klopfleisch’s family line goes back 500 years in Thuringia.

The reasons for the far right’s rise are manifest in his hometown of Niedertreba. As Mr. Klopfleisch walks down the town’s sedate streets, his body battered by a lifetime of farming, he passes his childhood schoolhouse that no longer has any pupils. The majestic town church with its tar-black spires, dating to the 1700s, is attracting fewer and fewer faithful. The town dentist and doctor moved on long ago.

“There used to be two grocery stores, too,” he says.

Yet Mr. Klopfleisch stays in his town in the German heartland, population 749, his head held high. “The Klopfleisches in Thuringia were pastors, and farmers, and an archaeology professor who has a street in Jena named after him,” he says, proudly.

As a young adult when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, he watched dozens of his former schoolmates decamp to seek opportunity in West Germany or in larger cities in the east, while East German-era state run industries collapsed.

He toiled alongside his parents to breathe new life into the family farm in a market economy, only to see mainstream politicians now remove diesel subsidies, slap demanding environmental regulations on farmers, and fall short in managing an influx of 4.5 million immigrants in 2022 and 2023.

“The AfD’s victory is a warning shot to the mainstream parties to act,” says Mr. Klopfleisch, who votes center-right. “I understand why people are dissatisfied. West Germany looks down on us. I want them to look at Thuringia at eye level. I want more respect for the people in Thuringia.”

And, there’s plenty to be proud of, he says. West German farmers learned about collective farming from their eastern cousins, and nearby Weimar, Thuringia’s shining jewel of a city, is dotted with UNESCO world heritage sites that draw 8 million tourists a year. Martin Luther often preached in the city church, and the city became the birthplace of the German Enlightenment, home to writer-philosophers Goethe and Schiller, and the namesake of the Weimar Republic.

Mr. Klopfleisch will often argue with his daughter by invoking Goethe’s poem “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”

“I tell her to ‘Go into the lonely corner, broom!’” says Mr. Klopfleisch, chuckling. “My daughter laughs and says ‘Yeah, Papa!’”

Lenora Chu

Tattoo shop owner Maik Baier is an elected Bautzen city councilman from the far-right political Alternative for Germany, which took 30% of the vote in Saxony state elections this year.

Echoes of Germany’s past

Maik Baier decided a decade ago to cast his lot with the AfD, and he was elected this year to the city council in Bautzen, in Saxony.

He ditched the center-right conservatives because they have long neglected education and the economy in his corner of east Germany, and never cared for “the people at the bottom,” he says. Those were regular folks like himself with his struggling tattoo shop, his parents who were devastated during the reunification years, and his teenage son who is now seeking construction work.

“Everything in Germany is going downhill,” he says, sitting in his empty tattoo parlor.

“I tell my son ‘Work with your hands,’ because craftsmen can’t be replaced by digitization. We [in the east] have had this experience of how quickly something can disappear, and we’re very, very sensitive to that possibility.”

Unlike Caroline, the young mother at the church, however, Mr. Baier, doesn’t whisper when he expounds on a far-right talking point: that refugees from Muslim countries are to blame for Germany’s problems.

Bautzen is considered a “hotspot” for hate crimes and tension between migrants and ethnic Germans. Mr. Baier says his girlfriend feels unsafe walking the streets alone and is fearful of migrant-related crime.

Torben Braga, an AfD member of Thuringia’s state parliament, insists the party’s anti-migration platform isn’t “Islamophobic.” Rather, he says, the party rightly describes Islam as a “state-related, political, social idea that is incompatible with German basic law.”

A century ago, the Nazis’ rise from the forests of Thuringia to the German chancellorship – which Adolf Hitler assumed in 1933 – would take a decade. While today’s police and military are more democratic, says the historian Dr. Wagner, he is concerned about the far right’s momentum. The AfD has expanded its voter base steadily since the party won just 10% of the vote in state elections a decade ago.

“I don’t think anyone in the AfD is planning to murder 6 million Muslims,” Dr. Wagner says. But he notes, that Thuringia’s AfD leader Björn Höcke has written that Germany will have to undertake a major ‘"remigration" project once his party is in government, and that it will require “human hardship” and a policy of "well-tempered cruelty.”

“They are antidemocratic, authoritarian plans,” Dr. Wagner says. “That isn’t exactly National Socialism, but it is ethnic right-wing extremism that will then show itself not only in plans, but also in practice.”

“And that,” he warns, “is dangerous.”

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Hennadii Mischevskyi displays two of the drones put together by Social Drone, a volunteer group that assembles drones to donate to the Ukrainian army, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Nov. 7, 2024.

Sometimes when Hennadii Mischevskyi is assembling military drones on his dining room table, his 7-year-old daughter leans on him and asks a very 7-year-old-child’s question: Why can’t you come play with me?

“I tell her Daddy is busy helping our country; I’m helping the army do its job better so they can help us,” he says. “Sometimes she asks if she can help, so I let her sort the little screws that are part of the assembly,” he adds. “I can tell she is happy to join in.”

Mr. Mischevskyi and his home drone assembly operation are a small piece of a nationwide civilian effort in Ukraine to supply the military with many of the thousands of drones it uses every month in the war with Russia.

Reminiscent of American and British civilian involvement during World War II – which ranged from the collecting of used foil to women working in factories – Ukraine’s civilian drone assembly operation is a critical factor in many army units’ ability to stave off an encroaching enemy.

Including the fundraising drives that finance the drone production, the nationwide operation offers insight into how much average Ukrainians remain involved in their country’s defense 1,000 days into the war.

“If I want to live in an independent Ukraine, if I want my children to grow up in a free country, I feel I have to do something to help those who are fighting on the front lines,” says Mr. Mischevskyi, director of testing at Social Drone, a volunteer drone assembly group based in Kyiv. “I think the growth of our group indicates just how much Ukrainians feel the same and want to do something to help.”

Indeed, Social Drone started out a little over a year ago with three friends assembling five to 10 camera-carrying drones a week for one front-line army unit. Today Social Drones’ stable of 1,200 volunteers assembles about 700 drones a week.

In October, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told foreign arms manufacturers that Ukraine is now capable of producing 4 million drones annually, with private companies, the military, and civilians all playing a role.

Civic engagement

The drone assembly campaign grew out of the surge in volunteering and civic involvement following Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Groups sprung up to help families displaced by the war and to furnish soldiers with everything from medical supplies to warm socks.

When family members and friends in combat units began reporting back that they could use more and better-quality drones, average Ukrainians swung into action.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

At Klyn Drones in Kyiv, Andrii Yukhno (left), Sasha, Stanislav, and workshop dogs Lilou and Leonia pose in front of stacks of drones ready for delivery to army units, Nov. 7, 2024.

One example is Klyn Drones in Kyiv. It started out as a volunteer group replacing homes’ war-damaged roofs, and then shifted to drone assembly this past spring when group members decided they wanted to do something to contribute to Ukraine’s defense.

“We decided [drone assembly] would be a more effective means of being involved,” says Andrii Yukhno, an engineer who runs Klyn Drones out of a basement along with two friends and two adopted dogs. “To be honest,” he adds, “we thought it would allow us to be directly involved in the elimination of the enemy.”

Six months later, Klyn – whose name means “wedge” or describes the V formation of migrating geese – delivers drones in batches of 150 to army units they have established a relationship with. In return, the soldiers send back drone footage that demonstrates their effectiveness.

“We’ve received videos of our drones striking Russian armed vehicles and targeting Russian tanks,” Mr. Yukhno says. “That gives us the sense of direct involvement in defending our country that we were looking for.”

Boost to fundraising

Those videos are also an important piece of Klyn’s fundraising – the success of which determines the pace of the group’s drone production.

“We’re finding that the initial high involvement of regular people has started to drop off as more people live their lives almost as if the war doesn’t exist,” Mr. Yukhno says. “So the videos with our drones in action remind people of the part we all have to play in defeating the enemy.”

Donors who give enough are allowed to name a drone or inscribe one with a message.

“People choose the name of the village they are from that Russia has destroyed, or the name of a loved one who was killed in the fighting,” he says.

Such videos are also crucial for the fundraising organized by Oleksandra, a conference interpreter and mother in Odesa who, like some others interviewed, asked that her last name be withheld.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Oleksandra, an interpreter who volunteers as a fundraiser for civilian drone assembly groups, poses in Odesa, Ukraine, Oct. 30, 2024.

The video that “really works” with donors, she says, has a kamikaze drone striking new units of Russian soldiers. “When the [operator] doing the voiceover shouts ‘Woo-hoo!’ that’s when [donors] really respond.”

Oleksandra says she considered assembling drones but realized fundraising fit better with her skills and schedule.

Recently, wanting to do more, she has started combing the internet to find quality drone parts at the best price. Most parts still come from China, but a growing share of drone kits and parts are produced in Ukraine.

“I just feel that if we can’t be on the front line, we should all be involved somehow to win this war and preserve our independence,” Oleksandra says.

Pride in quality work

Back at Klyn Drones, in a space the size of a small classroom, Mr. Yukhno and fellow assemblers Sasha and Stanislav do the painstaking work of drone-building. They wield small screw drivers, tweezers, and solder guns, with dogs Lilou and Leonia – both strays picked up in abandoned villages – at their feet.

Ukraine’s defense ministry contracts with big companies to provide large orders of drones. But civilian assemblers say the military units they supply often express their preference for the models produced by the volunteer cottage industry.

“We pay attention to the quality of our work and pride ourselves on delivering a product that will serve our soldiers well,” says Mr. Yukhno. To illustrate, Sasha points out the difference in soldering quality between a Klyn drone and a commercial model.

At Social Drone, Mr. Mischevskyi says the army units they work with know by now they can trust the product to work right out of the box because every drone gets a test flight – not the case, he says, with more mass-produced drones.

Units can alter specifications with small producers and expect faster turnaround if they suddenly need drones with, say, night vision or heavier weapons-delivery capacity.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Andrii Iavorskyi sold an apartment he inherited from his grandmother to start Tricky Drones in Odesa, Ukraine. The volunteer organization assembles drones according to the specifications of army units the group works with.

At Tricky Drones in Odesa, co-founder and drone engineer Andrii Iavorskyi shows off a stack of boxed drones ready for shipment. As he shows a visitor around Tricky’s two-room operation just off a leafy residential street, Hryhorii Rybalka, the outfit’s sole paid employee, works on a receiver chip that will help operate the drone at longer distances.

Mr. Iavorskyi, a video producer by profession, was considering a job with a large drone manufacturer last year when he decided to start a drone assembly operation. A year later, Tricky Drones is building about 1,000 drones a month and is on a Defense Ministry list of drone suppliers military units can contact.

Operating with about a dozen volunteers, Tricky produces a variety of drones of varying sizes and functions.

Mr. Iavorskyi recalls getting a succinct request from an army volunteer unit seeking a large drone that could operate off of a car battery. “Just make it work” was the only instruction the unit sent.

But of all the drones Tricky produces, he says, he’s proudest of the reconnaissance drones that fly up to 40 miles to monitor enemy positions and movement.

“That’s a mission a soldier used to have to risk his life to accomplish,” Mr. Iavorskyi says. “To me it’s well worth the $600 that drone might cost to save a precious life.”

Oleksandr Naselenko assisted in reporting this story.

Curtis Chin learned about the world through the four walls of his family’s restaurant.

“Even though I worked in the family business for as much as 80 hours a week, I still felt like I saw the city, because the city came to our restaurant,” says Mr. Chin from a boba shop.

For six decades, Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine was a cultural crossroads. Its tables served everyone in Detroit, from the city’s first Black mayor to its drag queens to Jewish families seeking Christmas meals. For young Curtis, it was home. He did homework in the dining room, read newspapers at empty tables, and engaged with the many people from all walks of life who graced Chung’s. 

“I thought that’s what my life would be,” continues Mr. Chin. “I thought I’d just be a waiter because my dad had inherited it from his dad, who had inherited it from his dad.” Instead, he became a TV screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, and co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York. 

His 2023 memoir, “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant,” is a coming-of-age tale set in the 1980s against Detroit’s declining auto industry. Packed with humor, it chronicles Mr. Chin’s upbringing, from running food orders after school starting at age 10 to becoming a first-generation college student at the University of Michigan.  

Now on a 300-city book tour, he stops at historic eateries like China Pearl Restaurant in Boston. He hosts roundtable talks with family-owned businesses to raise awareness of the struggles of Chinese restaurants and Chinatowns. 

The Monitor’s Troy Aidan Sambajon caught up with Mr. Chin in Boston’s Chinatown to talk about his memoir and new project: a six-part docuseries on the history of Chinese restaurants in America. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q: In your memoir, you recount your experience growing up in Detroit’s Chinatown. What does Chinatown mean to you, and how has that changed over time?

Food and family – that’s what Chinatown means to me. I have great memories of my childhood, despite the fact that there were all these terrible things going on in Detroit. 

But now there’s this combination of feeling nostalgic in Chinatown, yet recognizing that so many family-owned businesses are under duress. You find a favorite restaurant, and then suddenly it’s gone. ...  

I see that happening everywhere. The Chinatowns are shrinking. They’re under pressure from gentrification. The population is moving out. So I’d like to help in any way to sort of preserve these spots, because they’re still necessary. 

Q: In the book, you portray your family’s restaurant as a vital community hub. How do restaurants function as anchors for their communities? [Chung’s closed in 2000, after the death of Mr. Chin’s father.]

I always grew up understanding that the restaurant was important to my family because we saw it as an opportunity. But I didn’t realize that what my parents were also doing was providing the community with a space – not just for the Chinese but also for the local Detroit community. 

Detroit through the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s was really falling apart, and there were fewer and fewer places to build connections. One place you could always turn to was our restaurant. 

I’ve actually been really dismayed that we live in a world that’s very divided right now. We don’t talk to each other. Chinese restaurants are one of the few places where you can go and see people from different races, classes, or socioeconomic backgrounds. If we can just use that opportunity to start talking to each other again – even if it’s just leaning across the table and saying, “Hey, what are you eating?” 

These are the baby steps we need to take as a country to start getting along with each other again. 

Q: You’re on a 300-city book tour – including 14 stops at historic Chinese eateries – that you’ve called your crusade to save Chinese restaurants. What does a community like Chinatown lose when businesses like Chung’s close?

The building that housed our restaurant – which has been abandoned for 20 years – was recently renovated, and I was approached about reopening our family’s business. That’s how beloved the restaurant is 20 years later. People still ask, “Would you be reopening the restaurant?” These days, I still fantasize about it. 

[When a restaurant closes] it’s not just a loss for that family and that part of history, but think about all the customers that may have been going there for multiple generations.

If I can raise some awareness, maybe it can help a restaurant get through the month. ... I mean, having 10 extra customers every week might be the difference, right? 

That’s really the thrust of this tour. I’m trying to build those connections and allow the restaurant owners to tell their own stories. These restaurants are beloved in the community. But because they’ve been here so long, it’s very easy to forget they’re still struggling. 

That idea of an immigrant family, starting a family business and working their way up, and using education as an opportunity, is still very strong in America. It’s a vital link in the immigrant story.

AP

A man in Seoul, South Korea, holds a candle during a vigil against a declaration of martial law by President Yoon Suk Yeol, Dec. 4.

Every democracy, like every family, is resilient in its own way against internal divisions, and the South Korean people certainly showed their distinct democratic qualities on the night of Dec. 3.

After a surprise declaration of martial law by an unpopular president, Yoon Suk Yeol, a majority of the nation’s lawmakers – including many in the president’s party – rushed to the National Assembly in Seoul, bolstered by masses of citizens outside in the near-freezing cold.

The lawmakers bravely bypassed military barricades, nearly 300 troops, and a ban on political activity to vote against the president’s declaration, as the constitution allows them to do. Their courage was reflected by the mood of the pro-democracy protesters. “I am so scared that South Korea will turn into another North Korea,” one woman told the BBC.

Within hours, Mr. Yoon backed down – even though the former prosecutor now faces impeachment. A parliamentary democracy that dates only to 1987 was saved. Asia’s fourth-largest economy showed it was worthy of being designated as a developed country. And potential turmoil in a tense northeast Asia was averted.

The “great Korean people [had] overcome this coup,” declared the main opposition leader, Lee Jae-myung. And by “great” he may have been referring to a Korean cultural trait called han, a livid sorrow born of past national trauma that has helped instill individual resilience against threats to freedom.

“The past three decades have shown Koreans won’t tolerate democratic backsliding,” proclaimed Darcie Draudt-Véjares, a Korea expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Korean politics are often likened to a contact sport. The president’s martial-law edict and the deployment of soldiers in Seoul certainly showed just how rough the politics can be. Yet Koreans also have an inner strength nurtured over time by repelling despots and invaders. On the night of Dec. 3, han was with them. Their democracy snapped back, saving an anchor of stability in Asia.