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This Eastern European nation shows how foreign investment is patriotic

At a time when populist sentiments are on the rise on both sides of the Atlantic, the leader of one former Communist nation has affirmed that free markets open acrossborders area blessing. In anew essay at Religion & Liberty Transatlantic,Mihail Neamtu, Ph.D., argues that the wealth created by foreign investment furthers the national interest. In his mentary, titled“Romania chooses prosperity over populism,”he recounts thenation’s unusually bold embrace of international capital. Urged to keepforeigners out of its economy or restricttheir investment,...

Faithful compromise: Daniel as the ‘patron saint of our apocalyptic age’

In For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles, we routinely point to Jeremiah 29 as a primer for life in exile, prodding us toward active and integrative cultural and economic witness, and away from the typical temptations of fortification, domination, and modation. As Christians continue to struggle with what it means to be in but not of the world — whether in government, business, the family, or elsewhere — Jeremiah reminds us to “seek the welfare of...

How anti-Catholic bias from 140 years ago affects Protestant religious freedom today

WhenJames Blaineintroduced his ill-fatedconstitutional amendmentin 1875, he probably never would have imagined the unintended consequences it would have over a hundred years later. Blaine wanted to prohibit the use of state funds at “sectarian” schools (a code word for Catholic parochial schools) in order to inhibit immigration. Since the public schools instilled a Protestant Christian view upon its students, public education was viewed as a way to stem the tide of Catholic influence. While the amendment passed by a large...

Jack Donahue, RIP

It was with deep sadness that I learned today of the passing of John F. “Jack” Donahue. Jack truly was a renaissance man, packing significant and lasting plishments into his 92 years. If ever it could be said that I encountered a singular, real-life saint, Jack would qualify as that one person. At first blush, what impressed me most about Jack was his devotion to his wife of 70 years, Rhodora. The consummate family man, Jack raised 13 children with...

How Brexit helps ‘the least of these’

Brexit may suffer from the most uniquely invertedpublic perception in modern international affairs. The British referendum to leave the European Union – the most successful rebellion against global governanceto date – is depicted as a racist and xenophobic retreat into an isolated and atomized existence.In fact, it is only Brexit that allows the UK to leave behind Brussels’ schedule ofsubsidies and tariffs that deny developing nations access to the world’s largest market,setting millions on a path to independence and self-sufficiency....

Free trade propaganda from … Communist China?

In the wake of the last presidential election, the American people appear to be fracturing and shifting on the long-held consensus about the benefits of free trade. Meanwhile, state-owned television in the People’s Republic of China is churning out pro-trade propaganda such as this (HT Pethokoukis): Yet the underlying irony is a bit overstated, I’d suspect. According to AEI’s Dan Blumenthal and Derek Scissors, China’s One Belt One Road initiative aims to “create a network of infrastructure projects linking itself...

What that viral ‘wealth inequality’ video gets wrong

Globalization does not merely mean petition; it also means that the best minds from around the world can collaborate and, when necessary, correct one another’s conclusions. Scientists rely on this interplay of minds but so do other disciplines, not least economics, where clear thinking is perpetually in short supply. A foreign free-market think tank has made a e critique of a viral video titled “Wealth Inequality in America,” which has racked up more than 20 million views on YouTube. The...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

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,...

Mar 27, 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...

Mar 27, 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...

Mar 27, 2026

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...

Mar 27, 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...

Mar 27, 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...

Mar 27, 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...

Mar 27, 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....

Mar 27, 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...

Mar 27, 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...

Mar 27, 2026