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Radio Free Acton: The debasement of human rights; Econ quiz on USMCA

On this episode of Radio Free Acton, John Couretas, Director of Communications at Acton, speaks with Aaron Rhodes, a human rights activist based out of Hamburg, Germany, about Aaron’s new book “The Debasement of Human Rights.” Where does the notion of human e from and how can we better defend it? Then Caroline Roberts, Producer of Radio Free Acton, talks to Stephen Smith, Professor of Economics at Hope College, about the new North American trade agreement, the USMCA. They discuss...

The Romer Nobel cheers human potential

“Just last week I was telling a colleague that I hoped Paul Romer would finally win the Nobel prize in economics,” says Victor V. Claar in this week’s Acton Commentary. “And then he did.” I’ve been a Paul Romer fan since I started teaching intermediate macroeconomics more than a decade ago—the “macro” course college students might take following the introductory one. Because most economics teaching involves good storytelling, I’ve thought a lot about how Romer fits into the story of...

Victory for Christian bakers, religion and property rights at UK Supreme Court

This morning, the UK Supreme Court ruled on behalf of Ashers Baking Company, a Christian-run family bakery in Belfast that refused to bake a cake with the message, “Support Gay Marriage.” The court found that its owners, the McArthur family, have the right to refuse to proclaim messages they oppose, as do all UK citizens whether on in favour of or against same-sex marriage. Rev. Richard Turnbull, a trustee of the organization that represented the family, reveals the details and...

Watch Samuel Gregg’s 10 minute defense of religion and freedom

Let me take a moment to brag about my colleagueSamuel Gregg, the Director of Research here at the Acton Institute. Almost every week we post an article or video by Gregg here on the PowerBlog, and yes, that’s partiallybecause he’s one of us. But we’d be promoting his work even if he wasn’t a part of Acton for the simple reason that Gregg is one of the most articulate defenders of ordered liberty in the world. Don’t just take my...

From ideology to imagination: How Russell Kirk brought me back to conservatism

This is the third in a series celebrating the work of Russell Kirk in honor of his 100th birthday this October. Read more from the serieshere. As a young college student entering the fray of campus debates, I became enthralled with a particular variety of libertarian thought. Though once a conservative, I began to pack my brain with the likes of Bastiat, Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard. I grew confident in my opinions about policy and was proud of the ideological...

Listen: The Christian case for capitalism

The Institute of Economic Affairs explores the ethical argument for a free economy – and why Christians are not making it. In the latest episode of its podcast, an Anglican priest and a Catholic scholar discuss that question, as well as Archbishop Justin Welby’s homily against Amazon, Jesus’ supposed condemnation of wealth, and why clergy tend to support government intervention into the economy. Fr. Marcus Walker, Rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church (COE) in London, speaks with Religion & Liberty Transatlantic...

Why now is the time to fight the evil of unemployment

Last Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate dropped to 3.7 percent in September, a low not seen since 1969. Many of us (including me, I was born in 1969) have never seen the unemployment rate this low in our entire lives. This is great news for America. But it’s also a problem—and an opportunity. The problem is that we may think we don’t need to be concerned about unemployment. In a sense, this is true....

RELIGION & LIBERTY

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 18, 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 18, 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 18, 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 18, 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 18, 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 18, 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 18, 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 18, 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...

Apr 18, 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 18, 2026