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Radio Free Acton redux: John Stonestreet doesn’t want to talk about sex

On this remastered episode of Radio Free Acton, we revisit an interview we had with John Stonestreet, President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. We examine the major contributions of Christianity to western culture, try to figure out if there’s a reasonable system of thought that could replace it in our society, and explore a bit of what the secular left has replaced Christianity with. Spoiler alert: it’s sex. Check out these additional resources on this week’s podcast topics:...

Explainer: What you should know about the Right to Try Act

Last week, Congress passed and the president signed into law the “Right to Try Act,” legislation President Trump had touted in his previous State of the Union address. Here is what you should know about the new law. What is “Right to Try”? Right To Try is the concept that terminally ill Americans should be able to try medicines that have passed Phase 1 of the FDA approval process and remain in clinical trials but are not yet on pharmacy...

Are Orthodox Christians naturally statists?

A recent study concluded that members of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the second-largest church in Christendom, are likely to support left-wing economic policies. But that does not mean, says Krassen Stanchev in this week’s Acton Commentary, that Orthodox Christians are naturally statists: It is probably true that historically Orthodox countries (the study lumps in believers and non-believers alike) would fall into the group of those supporting greater government intervention in the economy. This has been the case in the last...

‘Global trade is not a gunfight at the O.K. Corral’

Some mental images are especially vivid. One phrase stands out in the war of words preceding the brewing U.S.-EU trade war. “Global trade is not a gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” said French finance minister Bruno Le Maire last Thursday, after President Trump imposed new tariffs on steel and aluminum. The most famous shoot-out in the Old West has been immortalized in the 1957 film of the same name, as well as numerous other Hollywood vehicles. To my mind, none...

Kuyper Conference: Faith, Freedom and Education

Last month the Acton Institute co-sponsored the 2018 Kuyper Conference hosted by Calvin College & Seminary. Acton’s support of the conference included the organization of a panel discussion on “Faith, Freedom, and Education,” which featured Harry Van Dyke of Redeemer University College, Charles L. Glenn of Boston University, and Beth Green of Cardus. Kevin den Dulk of Calvin College moderated the discussion, which included some parisons and lessons for today. The video of the session is now available: The Abraham...

Bad economic news hits people harder than good news

From the perspective of well-being, is it better to win $100 or to not lose $100? If you assume that winning is obviously better, you’ve probably never been in a casino. Almost anyone who has gained and lost similar sums of money gambling knows that losing hurts more. Humans seem to be hard-wired for what is called loss aversion. Loss aversion, a concept in cognitive psychology first identified by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, can be summed up as “losses...

The world is getting better, but the Enlightenment (alone) won’t save us

Global poverty is on the decline. Innovation and exploration continue to accelerate. Freedom and opportunity are expanding across the world. Meanwhile, political pundits and chin-stroking “experts” continue to preach of our impending doom. Why so much pessimism in a prosperous age? “I have found that intellectuals hate progress and intellectuals who call themselves ‘progressive’ really hate progress,” says Steven Pinker, author of the new book, Enlightenment Now. “Now, it’s not that they hate the fruitsof progress, mind you…It’s the ideaof...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

How Dispensationalism Got Left Behind

Whether we like it or not, Americans, in one way or another, have all been indelibly shaped by dispensationalism. Such is the subtext of Daniel Hummel’s provocative telling of the rise and fall of dispensationalism in America. In a little less than 350 pages, Hummel traces how a relatively insignificant Irishman from the Plymouth Brethren, John Nelson Darby, prompted the proliferation of dispensational theology, especially its eschatology, or theology of the end times, among our ecclesiastical, cultural, and political...

Apr 12, 2026

Adam Smith and the Poor

Adam Smith did not seem to think that riches were requisite to happiness: “the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for” (The Theory of Moral Sentiments). But he did not mend beggary. The beggar here is not any beggar, but Diogenes the Cynic, who asked of Alexander the Great only to step back so as not to cast a shadow upon Diogenes as he reclined alongside the highway....

Apr 12, 2026

Spurgeon and the Poverty-Fighting Church

Religion & Liberty: Volume 33, Number 4 Spurgeon and the Poverty-Fighting Church by Christopher Parr • October 30, 2023 Portrait of Charles Spurgeon by Alexander Melville (1885) Charles Spurgeon was a young, zealous 15-year-old boy when he came to faith in Christ. A letter to his mother at the time captures the enthusiasm of his newfound Christian faith: “Oh, how I wish that I could do something for Christ.” God granted that wish, as Spurgeon would e “the prince of...

Apr 12, 2026

Jesus and Class Warfare

Plenty of Marxists have turned to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity. Memorable examples include the works of F.D. Maurice and Zhu Weizhi’s Jesus the Proletarian. After criticizing how so many translations of the New Testament soften Jesus’ teachings regarding material possessions, greed, and wealth, Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has gone so far to ask, “Are Christians supposed to be Communists?” In the Huffington Post, Dan Arel has even claimed that “Jesus was clearly a Marxist,...

Apr 12, 2026

Lord Jonathan Sacks: The West’s Rabbi

In October 1798, the president of the United States wrote to officers of the Massachusetts militia, acknowledging a limitation of federal rule. “We have no government,” John Adams wrote, “armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, and revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.” The nation that Adams had helped to found would require the parts of the body...

Apr 12, 2026

Creating an Economy of Inclusion

The poor have been the main subject of concern in the whole tradition of Catholic Social Teaching. The Catholic Church talks often about a “preferential option for the poor.” In recent years, many of the Church’s social teaching documents have been particularly focused on the needs of the poorest people in the world’s poorest countries. The first major analysis of this topic could be said to have been in the papal encyclical Populorum Progressio, published in 1967 by Pope...

Apr 12, 2026

Up from the Liberal Founding

During the 20th century, scholars of the American founding generally believed that it was liberal. Specifically, they saw the founding as rooted in the political thought of 17th-century English philosopher John Locke. In addition, they saw Locke as a primarily secular thinker, one who sought to isolate the role of religion from political considerations except when necessary to prop up the various assumptions he made for natural rights. These included a divine creator responsible for a rational world for...

Apr 12, 2026

Mistaken About Poverty

Perhaps it is because America is the land of liberty and opportunity that debates about poverty are especially intense in the United States. Americans and would-be Americans have long been told that if they work hard enough and persevere they can achieve their dreams. For many people, the mere existence of poverty—absolute or relative—raises doubts about that promise and the American experiment more generally. Is it true that America suffers more poverty than any other advanced democracy in the...

Apr 12, 2026

C.S. Lewis and the Apocalypse of Gender

From very nearly the beginning, Christianity has wrestled with the question of the body. Heretics from gnostics to docetists devalued physical reality and the body, while orthodox Christianity insisted that the physical world offers us true signs pointing to God. This quarrel persists today, and one form it takes is the general confusion among Christians and non-Christians alike about gender. Is gender an abstracted idea? Is it reducible to biological characteristics? Is it a set of behaviors determined by...

Apr 12, 2026

Conversation Starters with … Anne Bradley

Anne Bradley is an Acton affiliate scholar, the vice president of academic affairs at The Fund for American Studies, and professor of economics at The Institute of World Politics. There’s much talk about mon good capitalism” these days, especially from the New Right. Is this long overdue, that a hyper-individualism be beaten back, or is it merely cover for increasing state control of the economy? Let me begin by saying that I hate “capitalism with adjectives” in general. This...

Apr 12, 2026