Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Reason and faith at the Heritage Foundation
Reason and faith at the Heritage Foundation
May 9, 2025 9:24 PM

Since my book Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization appeared in June this year, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the reception.

The book seems to have touched upon topics that, while not at the forefront on daily political debate, are on many people’s minds and underlie some of the bigger questions that are to be found just beneath the surface of many contemporary discussions in Western countries.

It turns out that subjects like the relationship between reason and faith, or the roles played by Judaism and Christianity in shaping the West, or the relationship between religion and the various Enlightenments since the late seventeenth century, are of deep interest to people of different backgrounds and from across the theological, philosophical, political and economic spectrum.

One of the many benefits for authors of doing interviews about their books and responding to ments and critiques is that more space is opened up for wider conversations around a book’s themes and their implications for subjects that authors themselves may not have hitherto considered. That, after all, is one of the purposes of writing books: to stimulate discussion and reflection on ideas and their implications for how we understand the past and how the future may unfold.

To that end, I’d like to alert people to a presentation about Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization that I’ll be making on Tuesday, September 24, at the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. between 12pm and 1pm.

Details about how to register to attend can be found here. For those who can’t be there in person, the event is going to be livestreamed. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and to be signed by myself. I hope that many readers of Acton’s blog and supporters of Acton’s work are able e.

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
Rev. Sirico Responds to NPR’s ‘Christian Is Not Synonymous With Conservative’
Jon Erwin, director of the pro-life October Baby movie, was recently interviewed by National Public Radio and, in the background article that panied the audio, the network reported his view that Christians didn’t feel very e in Hollywood’s munity. This provoked a lot ment by NPR listeners about what, really, a Christian is. The title of the NPR article, “‘October Baby’ Tells A Story Hollywood Wouldn’t” probably had something to do with that. Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos followed up the interview...
Who Keeps the Keepers?
Sam Gregg’s response to President Obama’s latest invocation of the “my brother’s keeper” motif brings out one of the basic problems with applying this biblical question to public policy. As Gregg points out, the logic of the president’s usage points to the government as the institution of brotherly love: But who is the “I” that President Obama has in mind? Looking carefully at his speech, it’s most certainly not the free associations munities that Alexis de Tocqueville thought made 19th-century...
The Global Assault on Religious Liberty
Despite the rise of globalization and democracy, violent persecution of Christians, Jews, and other religious minorities is still mon in many parts of the world. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has released its latest survey of religious freedom and as Doug Bandow reports, it makes for grim reading: Dictators have been falling in the Middle East, but that doesn’t mean freedom is inevitably expanding. Unfortunately, the Arab Spring has turned into something far different than hoped. Especially for...
How Property Rights Solve Policy Problems
Whether a problem is a matter of “public policy” or “private-policy” often depends on how we think about property rights, says economist David R. Henderson. Take, for example, the debate about whether evolution or Intelligent Design theory should be taught in schools: Should schools teach evolution or intelligent design or both? Many people might be tempted to say that the answer depends on which is true: evolution or intelligent design. But what if what one person thinks is true another...
Rick Warren on Obama’s Economic Gospel
On Sunday Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren appeared on ABC’s This Week and was asked if he agreed with President Obama’s economic gospel. As Kathryn Jean Lopez says, “I’m thinking the president probably wishes he picked a different pastor for the inaugural prayer.” Warren’s answered the question by saying: Well certainly the Bible says we are to care about the poor. There’s over 2,000 verses in the Bible about the poor. And God says that those who care about the...
Consumers Acting Badly
I found this video on NPR’s ‘Planet Money’ intriguing. A young woman reflects on the cost of her wedding dress, which she’s obviously worn once. She recognizes that there is enormous emotional attachment to this garment, but there is something going on in terms of how much she spent; she just can’t quite put her finger on it. She eventually finds out that she probably over-paid by about $1200. She believes she has been ripped off. There are a few...
On Call Through Video
We are continuing to interview people in different areas of work to showcase what being On Call in Culture looks like on a daily basis. Today we introduce Rachel Bastarache Bogan, video editor for SIM. Learn more about Rachel at As a child, Rachel was surrounded by creativity including music and painting. Her favorite gift was a “box full of opportunity” that someone had filled with random knick knacks from a craft store. When she was five years old, she...
Musings for Good Friday
A marvellous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonour and disgrace has e the glorious monument to death’s defeat. ~ Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word. Job in the Old Testament called out to God begging for a mediator or advocate, begging for somebody who could understand the depth of his affliction and agony (Job 9). Such is the beauty of Christ that he came not to teach...
Market Economies with Churches and Market Economies without Churches
Zhao Xiao, a government economist in China, on the differences between market economies with Churches (like the U.S.) and market economies without churches (like China): Is it not integrity that you are pursuing? Then you ought to know: places with faith have more integrity. For China’s crawling economic reforms, this ought to be an important inspiration. Market economies with churches are different in another respect from those without: in the former, it is much easier to establish monly respected system....
The Wrong Kind of School Choice
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Be incarnationally present with a man who can’t fish and you’ll teach him how to be “missional” while on an empty stomach. This update on the ancient Chinese proverb isn’t entirely fair to my fellow Christians (mainly my fellow evangelicals) who believe that one of the most important ways we can help those in need is...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved