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Bob Dole left a legacy of civility and cooperation that is sorely needed today

The severe ideological divide that makes even debate impossible can only be bridged by a return to civility in dispute. Strong opinions civilly expressed is the best first step. Read More… One of the sadder deaths in 2021 was that of former Kansas senator Bob Dole. Wounded war-hero and long-serving politician, Dole was widely respected from people across the political spectrum not only for his skills but also for his willingness to try and work across divides to mon objectives....

The weight of sin: C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce has been adapted for the stage

If you thought good and evil were superstitious binaries that will one day be married, a new theatrical adaptation of Lewis’ parable will have you pining for a divorce. Read More… Humans are incredibly skilled at rationalizing sin. We prefer to gloss over sin rather than face it. And for good reason! To grapple with the true weight of our sin is a heavy burden indeed. And even when we do recognize sin, we are more likely to note the...

Elections in Hong Kong ratify Beijing’s control

The Hong Kong of old is quickly descending into a Beijing-controlled client state, with recent elections ensuring CCP-loyal functionaries enjoy top legislative positions. Read More… The People’s Republic of China (PRC) pletingthe destruction ofthe old Hong Kong. The last vestiges of free expression and democratic choice are disappearing. On January 4, the media site Citizen News closed due to the deteriorating legal environment. Theorganization explained: “We all love this place, deeply. Regrettably, what was ahead of us is not just...

Lenin’s ugly legacy of identity politics

The arch Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin died this day in 1924. Myths abound about his beliefs. They’re not what you think. They’re worse. Read More… “I broke sharply with all questions of religion,” said Vladimir Lenin, with typical vituperation. “I took off my cross and threw it in the rubbish bin.” Such was a metaphor for the dark turn made by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who came to be known by an alias, “Lenin.” He was born April 22, 1870, in...

Here’s how to offer reparations in a free society

The topic of reparations is often a nonstarter for many conservatives, but it shouldn’t be. There are classical liberal alternatives to simple government payouts that can begin to repay black Americans still suffering from the repercussions of Jim Crow racism. Read More… Today we mostly associate the idea of reparations for America’s black population with left-wing politics, and that’s no surprise. Only Democratic candidates for president, such as Marianne Williamson, mention reparations as part of their political platform. However, the...

The twilight of Christianity, the loss of authority, and our fragmented selves

The pervasive crisis of meaning contemporary Americans experience is directly related to a loss of moral agency and legitimate authority. That crisis manifests itself in ideological fervor, grasps at power and wealth, and immersion in mob activities that occasion in violence. Is there any hope for moral cohesion short of a Third Great Awakening? Read More… Political theorists have engaged in much debate concerning the “quarrel between the ancients and the moderns,” such quarrel evidence of the opposing claims of...

Don’t Look Up looks down on you

The most popular film on Netflix right now is either a successor to Dr. Strangelove or a self-righteous and overly obvious attempt to shame the average American. But it does have a lot more of Leonardo DiCaprio than you’ve seen before. Read More… The techno-gossip that passes for objective knowledge these days assures us that the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up was watched extensively—more than 321.5 million hours streamed. Does that mean about 150 million people around the world watched...

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...

Oct 31, 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....

Oct 31, 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...

Oct 31, 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...

Oct 31, 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...

Oct 31, 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,...

Oct 31, 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...

Oct 31, 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...

Oct 31, 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...

Oct 31, 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...

Oct 31, 2026