Happy Easter! Also, Passover greetings to our Jewish readers, and a Ramadan Mubarak for our Islamic neighbors.

Most Americans are likely to observe Easter. According to a Lifeway Research survey, 66% say they believe in the biblical accounts of the physical resurrection of Jesus as historical fact.

But those same people aren’t sure how to connect that event to their daily lives, with 32% saying God isn’t concerned with their day-to-day decisions, the survey reported.

One Protestant pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Johnston of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, said the disparity illustrates the “rife biblical illiteracy in the church.”

And Bishop Robert Barron, a popular Catholic speaker and head of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota, told us making that personal connection to the resurrection is essential to Christian belief.

“If you don’t see what it means to you, then you’re kind of missing the point of it,” the bishop said. “The resurrection is the good news because it’s God’s answer to sin and death.”

The roiling marketplace that is American higher education might find hope in the actions of Christians and conservatives. Some colleges are dropping traditional liberal arts classes in favor of degree programs that produce more revenue for the schools, which is where the two groups come in.

Reporter Sean Salai details how many of the initiatives to save traditional humanities education in college center on the “Great Books” reading program that includes Plato’s writings and Shakespeare’s plays. The programs provide a safe space for students to discuss the foundational works of Western civilization, books often trashed by modern dissidents.

Rachel Fulton Brown, who teaches medieval history at the University of Chicago and is outspoken in her support for the older curriculum, said the goal is to “make academia medieval again.”

As the annual eight-day observance of Passover concludes Thursday, Jewish institutions across the U.S. will have to remain vigilant because of rising antisemitic incidents in the United States and elsewhere.

A report from the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s Antisemitism Research Center says attacks against 12 U.S. synagogues in January and February show a 71% increase from the seven reported in the same period of 2022.

“Antisemitism at its root doesn’t just start and begin with an antisemitic act,” said Yoni Michanie, the group’s research and data manager. “There’s a virulent ideology that’s motivating these individuals to target these Jewish institutions.”

The solution lies in training people about the roots of antisemitism and how to combat it. Yoni Ari, CEO of the Jewish Emergency Preparedness Program said Jewish institutions need to craft a “culture of preparedness” and learn how to operate security equipment, train an emergency response team, and practice based on “real-life scenarios” of similar events.

The monthlong observance of Ramadan by Muslims around the world involves fasting from sunup to sunset. In what prison inmates would call “the outside world,” believers can usually arrange their schedules to handle the period and often gather with friends and family to break the fast in the evening.

For those incarcerated, however, prison officials have to handle those accommodations. In Virginia, state corrections officials required inmates to have signed up in November 2022 for this year’s Ramadan fast, which began on March 27.

Alexander Crichlow, an inmate at the Green Rock Correctional Center in Chatham, converted to Islam in January. Despite repeated requests, the prison said he could not get on the “accommodation list.” He also says in a federal lawsuit that officials are blocking him from gathering with other Muslim inmates in the evening to break the daily fast.

Celebrating the Resurrection. The Roman torture and execution of an obscure Jewish carpenter in first-century Palestine may not seem like a cause for celebration, columnist Michael McKenna writes, until you consider what happened afterwards: the resurrection of that dead carpenter, known as Jesus, or Yeshua bar Yusef.

Mr. McKenna suggests there are only two choices in considering the Easter story: Either Jesus “was God, in which case his torture, execution and resurrection are central to the lives of everyone on the planet, or he was an itinerant Jewish preacher who was probably a madman whose life and death meant nothing.”

Given that Jesus’ teachings have survived and flourished over the past 2,000 years, he writes, believing the latter option is more difficult.

Time is fleeting. In another column related to Holy Week, Mr. McKenna writes about the importance of caring for our friends and families while they are still in our lives.

“Fretting about the amount of time we have with those we love is pointless. Worrying about how and when they will leave is pointless. The best thing we can do is to love whoever God has put in our path for as long as they remain with us. Treat those you love and those in your care as well as you can every day, and always be armed with the knowledge that the time with all of them is fleeting,” he writes.

If Jesus on the cross can forgive, so can we. Forgiving one’s enemies even in the midst of the worst circumstances — something Jesus demonstrated on the cross — is a concept Americans, particularly the country’s sheltered youth, need to learn, writes Washington Times columnist Billy Hallowell.

“If Jesus, amid the most horrific moments imaginable while bearing the sin of mankind, can offer love and care for those mocking and annihilating him, perhaps we, too, can muster the ability to forgive, look past wrongs and even venture to love our enemies.”

Billy notes that others in Scripture also demonstrate the need for forgiveness, whether it’s Joseph in the book of Genesis or Stephen during his stoning recorded in the New Testament book of Acts.

Take Easter seriously. Easter and our freedom as Americans are linked, Judge Andrew Napolitano argues in his column. 

He writes that while freedom can be taken by government fiat, it is essential if “we are to unite with the truth.”

“Taking Easter seriously recognizes that Jesus had the freedom to reject his horrific death, but he exercised his free will to accept it so that we might know the truth.”

The message of Easter is that there is hope for those who have died, Judge Napolitano writes. And, “if there’s hope for the dead, then there’s hope for the living.”

The madness of a crowd. The world’s current lemming-like rush to follow offbeat and even bizarre theories — abortion is health care, men can menstruate and gender is just a construct — is one example of today’s “madness of crowds,” writes commentator Donald Sweeting, president of Colorado Christian University.

But, he adds, one of the greatest examples of crowd madness was exhibited some 2,000 years ago when the mob assembled in the court of Pontius Pilate shouted “Crucify him! Crucify him!” when asked what should befall Jesus of Nazareth, whom Pilate himself found innocent. Egged on by self-serving leaders, the crowd asked Pilate to release an insurrectionist instead.

“On that Good Friday, it was not Jesus who was on the wrong side of history. The crowd was,” Mr. Sweeting writes.