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Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe

During World War II, when Britain was fighting against the evils of Nazism, the director of religious programming at the BBC, asked C.S. Lewis to give some talks about faith. The Oxford professor reluctantly agreed, and on August 6, 1941, at 7:45 in the evening he gave his first broadcast. This first broadcast on right and wrong would go on to e the most read radio series in British broadcasting history, and was used as the first chapter of Mere...

Just because something’s popular doesn’t make it prudent

Along with “democratic socialism,” “protectionism,” and “Berning,” the word “populism” has e part of 2016 America’s vernacular thanks to the circus that is the presidential election. Like it sounds, “populism” deals with popularity, in this case among American voters. In a new op/ed for the Detroit News, Samuel Gregg explains why populism will absolutely not make America great again. This isn’t the first time populism has appeared in American or world history. “It often manifests itself,” Gregg argues, “whenever enough...

How a Cuban Ball Player Escaped Communism for the Majors (and Much More)

Three years ago, Dalier Hinojosa was making the equivalent of $5 to $20 per month playing baseball in the state-run Cuban league. Having nowdefectedfrom the country, escaping first to Haiti and now to America, Hinojosa will make $514,000 this season, playing for the Phillies. In a profile at , we learn more about the trials of his journey, which involved a high-risk, 12-hour escape at sea, joined by his wife and a smuggler in a small motorboat: You never think...

Minimum Wage Advocates: ‘Sure a $15 Wage Will Increase Unemployment. So What?’

In almost every long-term clash over a cultural or political policy, es a point that I’d call the fort-level concession.” If the agenda of one side has been won — or has at least moved sufficiently toward achieving victory — the winning side often fortable making concessions about claims that they may have previously denied. Initially, they will firmly state, “The claims of our opponents are overblown; the detrimental effect they predict will never happen.” Once they’ve won the public...

Finding meaning and beauty as a fast food worker

“This is not what I thought I’d be doing at twenty-seven.” So says Stephen Williams, who, while enjoying and appreciating much of his daily work at his local Chick-fil-A, continues to feel the various pressures of status, mobility, and vocational aspiration. “I love pany, and I am grateful for the environment here and for the paycheck,” he writes in a series of stirring reflections. “But it’s humbling to tell many of my plished, high-flying friends that I am not currently...

A Simple Tool for Measuring Economic Well-Being

Is the average American better off today economically than they were 4 years ago? What about 40 years ago? How would you go about answering those questions? In this video economist Alex Tabarrok explains the difference between nominal and real GDP and shows us a simple tool that can help us determine if our economic well-being as a nation is increasing or decreasing. ...

Why We Should Oppose Both Skynet and Minimum Wage Increases

I oppose implementing Skynet and increasing minimum wage laws for the same reason: to forestall the robots. It’s probably inevitable that a T-1000 will return from the future to terminate John Connor. But there is still something we can do to prevent (at least for a time) a TIOS from eliminating the cashier at your local McDonalds. In Europe, McDonalds has ordered 7,000 TIOSs (Touch Interface Ordering Systems) to take food orders and payment. In America, Panera Bread will replace...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

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 21, 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 21, 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 21, 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 21, 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 21, 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,...

Mar 21, 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 21, 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 21, 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 21, 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 21, 2026