Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
New Blog of Note: The Immanent Frame
New Blog of Note: The Immanent Frame
Feb 15, 2026 3:33 PM

A new blog has been added to our blogroll sidebar (along with a much-needed round of housecleaning on old and out-of-date links). Announcement below:

The Social Science Research Council is pleased to announce the launch of The Immanent Frame, a new SSRC blog on secularism, religion, and the public sphere.

The blog is opening with a series of posts on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, including recent contributions from Robert Bellah, Wendy Brown, Jose Casanova, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, and Colin Jager. Robert Bellah has called A Secular Age “one of the most important books to be written in my lifetime,” and there will be more e on Taylor’s major work in the weeks ahead, with posts by Rajeev Bhargava, Akeel Bilgrami, Hent de Vries, Amy Hollywood, Tomoko Masuzawa, Joan Scott, and others. Meanwhile, Charles Taylor himself has just made his own contribution to the already ongoing conversations.

But The Immanent Frame won’t be limited to discussions of A Secular Age. Later this fall we’ll also host a series of posts responding to Mark Lilla’s The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. And there will be posts on a variety of other topics too-from pluralism and the “post-secular” to international relations theory, religious freedom, and the future of shari’a.

This new SSRC blog will draw on, and is closely linked to, the Council’s expanding work on religion and the public sphere. We invite readers to email us ments or questions at [email protected].

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
What Christians should know about fractional reserve banking
Note: This is the latest entry in the Acton blog series, “What Christians Should Know About Economics.” For other entries inthe series seethis post. The Term:Fractional Reserve Banking What it Means:Understanding fractional reserve banking is easier if we separate what it is (which is rather simple to explain) and the effects the system produces(which is slightly plicated). Let’s start by taking the term fractional reserve banking and working backwards. First, there is the banking part. For our purposes we mainly...
Sarah Stanley: Profile of North Korean artist Sun Mu
Today at The Federalist, Acton associate editor Sarah Stanley penned an article profiling an artist from North Korea who goes by the name of Sun Mu.This profile is inspired by a recent documentary that highlights the lifeof the artist. Sun Mu defected from the oppressive state in the late 1990s and since then has been creating art that depicts the story of his life in North Korea. In order to protect his family, Sun Mu can’t use his real name....
How Texas churches are fighting predatory lending on behalf of the poor
How should Christians address predatory lending that takes advantage of the poor when they are in dire straits? As I’ve argued before, I believe a helpful first step is to get churches and other faith-based organizations involved in providing short-term loans and financial counseling. But sometimes education and sacrificial generosity is not enough to solve the problem, munities have to pursue other measures. A prime example is found in Texas where several groups—including an alliance of Baptists and Catholics—worked to...
Acton Institute’s Assisi conference explores roots of poverty, engines of wealth
On September 12-14 the Acton Institute’s Rome office hosted its third annual “Economics, Development and Human Flourishing” conference in Assisi for seminarians and formation staff of the Vatican’s Pontifical Urban College. Intense discussion and open debate was stimulated by challenging lectures on economics, political philosophy, anthropology, and Catholic social doctrine. The lectures were reinforced by showings of the Institute’s video curriculum “PovertyCure”, a six-episode DVD rich in graphic content, intellectual analysis and dramatic stories about poverty in Africa, Asia and...
Angus Deaton schools Italians on economics
But was anyone listening? That’s my question after attending the 2015 Nobel-prize-winning economist‘s talk last night in Rome at the Vatican-sponsored Cortile dei gentili(Court of Gentiles). Like the other speakers, Deaton voiced his concerns about e inequality. Unlike the others, however, he said much of it is caused by crony capitalism, a term whose meaning seems to have been lost on the Italian interpreter and hence the audience. She described it as “a type of capitalism” and “negative capitalism” but...
Is there something inherently evil about Capitalism?
What is the role that Christians play in business and the marketplace? A recent episode of Equipped with Chris Brooks, titled “Is Capitalism bad business?” wrestles with that question and more. During his introduction, Brooks explains why he was pondering the question and there are a couple of reasons. The majority of “Equipped” listeners are not clergy, but men and women who work in the marketplace. Because of that, Brooks wants to talk about the “good that business does” and...
Catholicism in a world of secular moralism
Acton Institute Director of Research, Samuel Gregg, wrote a piece for The Catholic World Report yesterday talking about Catholics in an age of secular moralism. Often times, Catholics fall into a trap of reducing their faith to various political, economic, and social agendas, losing sight of what is at the core of true Catholicism. This is what Gregg calls secular moralism. Gregg explains this “new morality:” Moralism, however, isn’t limited to the Christian realm. It has many secular counterparts. Prominent...
A husband’s unemployment increases the risk of divorce
As I note every month when reporting on the latest unemployment data, jobs are one of the most important aspects of a morally functioning economy. They help us serve the needs of our neighbors and lead to human flourishing both for the individual and munities. Conversely, not having a job can adversely affect spiritual and psychological well-being of individuals and families. In fact, a new study finds that for marriages formed after 1975, a husbands’ lack of full-time employment is...
Finance, Faith, and Human Flourishing
Samuel Gregg lecturing at Acton University. Samuel Gregg’s most recent book For God and Profit continues to receive great reviews. The most es from author and speaker John Horvat, II at The Stream. Horvat begins his review by highlighting the way Gregg reconciles the pursuit of profits with Christianity. He says this: Early in the book, Gregg establishes that profit through finance can be realized “provided that es first and that the profit is (1) understood as a means to...
We hate politics and the media because they lower our status
“I have a simple hypothesis,” writes economist Tyler Cowen. “No matter what the media tells you their job is, the feature of media that actually draws viewer interest is how media stories either raise or lower particular individuals in status.” Cowen believes this explains why people “get so teed off” at the media: The status ranking of individuals implied by a particular media source is never the same as yours, and often not even close. You hold more of a...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved