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Bible College Credited as Major Reason for Angola Prison Transformation

The New York Times ran a piece over the weekend about the success of the bible college run through New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary at Angola Prison. Warden Burl Cain calls the college “the game changer,” and he added “It changed the culture of the prison.” Historically, Angola was known as one of the most violent and dangerous prisons in the country. Now Angola’s educational model is being replicated at other state penitentiaries across the nation. Maybe surprising to some,...

Audio: Samuel Gregg Discusses Tea Party Catholic on KTSA San Antonio

Samuel Gregg, Acton’s Director of Research, continues to promote his latest book,Tea Party Catholic, via radio interviews across the nation. This morning, he made an appearance on San Antonio’s KTSA radio, speaking with host Jack Riccardiabout the Catholic (and broader Christian) case for limited government, a free economy, and a system of ordered liberty. You can hear the exchange via the audio player below. [product sku=”1415″] ...

Catholic Chaplains Face Possible Arrest During Government Shutdown

There is a shortage of Catholic priests who serve members of the US military and their families, and it looks as if the government shutdown is going to make the situation worse. According to John Schlageter, general counsel for the Archdiocese for the Military Services, priests (whether they are active military or priests privately contracted by the military) will not be allowed to offer Mass or offer other religious services on military installations. (Some Protestant services may also be affected,...

A Failure to Save

Photo Credit: Alan Cleaver via Compfight cc This first appeared in my newsletter,Economic Prospect, inlate 2008. Looking back after five years I still like it. The American failure to save is matched by our insistence on spending to have it all. One part of the problem is the consumer’s love of debt. The other part is the government’s love of debt. Both love debt to enjoy things now and to put off the day of reckoning. How did we get...

Explainer: What You Should Know About the Debt Ceiling

What is the debt limit or debt ceiling? In most years the federal government brings in less revenue than it spends. To cover this difference, the Treasury Department has to issue government bonds which increases the national debt. The debt limit is legislative restriction on the total amount of national debt the Treasury is authorized to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations. What is the current debt limit? The current statutory limit on total debt issued by the Treasury...

The Devil and Antonin Scalia

In Stephen Vincent Benét’s 1937 short story, “The Devil and Daniel Webster“, the famous American statesman not only gets Jabez Stone, a farmer who sold his soul to the devil, out of the contract, he gets Mr. Scratch to agree “never to bother Jabez Stone nor his heirs or assigns nor any other New Hampshire man till doomsday!” Webster was likely an excellent lawyer, but if I was in a lawsuit with the devil today I think I’d rather have...

Government Shut-Down: Not So Bad, Really

The panda cam at the Washington, D.C. zoo is down. The IRS is still taking our money, but not refunding anything. Barricades are up around open air monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial and the WWII Memorial. Only 15 people, instead of the usual 90, are looking after the First Family. There are a number of government employees, such as the National Weather Forecasters, who aren’t getting paid. (By the way, the weather forecaster is South Dakota went to work...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

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...

May 1, 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,...

May 1, 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...

May 1, 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...

May 1, 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....

May 1, 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...

May 1, 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...

May 1, 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...

May 1, 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...

May 1, 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...

May 1, 2026