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The unintended consequences of ‘ban the box’ legislation

Series note: Most of us realize that, for all our disagreements, our neighbors often have the best of intentions. But when es to public policy, good intentions are not enough to create human flourishing. That’s why a primary task of the Acton Institute is “connecting good intentions with sound economics.” Without sound economics as a foundation, good intentions tend to lead to detrimental unintended consequences. In this occasional series we examine policies and practices that are well-intended, but have negative,...

The bishop, Balaam, and communism

‘Weltchronik. Böhmen’ by Rudolf von Ems Public Domain Lester DeKoster begins his book Communism and Christian Faith, now out in a new edition from Christian’s Library Press, with a quote from Bishop Joseph Butler’s sermon ‘Upon the Character of Balaam’: “Things and actions are what they are, and their consequences will be what they will be: why then should we seek to be deceived?” At first it seems transparently simple, obvious really, but in our day-to-day lives it is as...

Love as a tesseract

Earlier this week at Public Discourse I wrote an essay on the dangers of individualism and collectivism, illustrated with literary samples from C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle respectively. I drew the image of an individualist hell from Lewis’ The Great Divorce, citing Napoleon as an eternal exile, not on Elba or Saint Helena but into everlasting perdition. As Abraham Kuyper once wondered, in a way that strikingly echoes Lewis’ insights, “That development of the sinful nature in accordance with its...

The new middle: BMW joins the apprenticeship renaissance

I recently highlighted the rise of hands-on vocational training in educational institutions across the State of Colorado, wondering whether such developments might signal the beginning of anapprenticeship renaissance in the United States. Indeed, many panies and industries are taking a similar approach, experimenting with a range of models for cultivating human capital in the modern age. In South Carolina, for example, BMW is now expanding its apprenticeship program at one of its largest manufacturing plants. BMW currently trains about 35...

West silent as genocide lurks in Syria

“This month marks the seventh anniversary of the start of the Syrian Civil War,” notes Trey Dimsdale in this week’s Acton Commentary. “Syria was, albeit governed by dictator Bashar al-Assad, a stable nation but today it is in ruins, with so many fault lines and battlefields that it is nearly impossible to sort out the contending interests inside the nation. The ripples of the conflict have reached every continent.” The war has given rise to the Islamic State, has triggered...

Explainer: What you should know about the 2018 omnibus spending bill

On Friday, Congress passed—and President Trump signed into law—a massive new omnibus spending bill. Here are some key points you should know about this legislation: What is an omnibus spending bill? An omnibus (Latin meaning “for everything”) bill is one that includes diverse and unrelated topics into a single legislative package. An omnibus spending bill is thus a bill that includes a broad range of appropriations legislation related to federal government funding. How much spending is included in the omnibus...

5 Facts for World Water Day

Today is the 25th annual observance of World Water Day, a global initiative to focus attention on the importance of freshwater. Here are five facts you should know about safe and accessible water: 1. According to the United States Geological Survey Water Science School, almost two-thirds (71 percent) of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, though only 3.5 percent is freshwater. Out of the supply of freshwater: 68.7 percent is contained in ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow; 30.1...

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 25, 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 25, 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 25, 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 25, 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 25, 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 25, 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 25, 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 25, 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 25, 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 25, 2026