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The citizens of California cannot undo the last 16 months of damage done by the government, but they can choose to contribute to a better solution. Read More… It’s been barely a month since California reopened, and some counties are already beginning to reinstate mask mandates, even for fully vaccinated residents. This is but the latest pivot in California’s ongoing response to the pandemic, marked by constant bureaucratic whiplash and a flood of social, economic, and political crises. During the...

Jimmy Lai contests charges of participation in unauthorized assembly during Tiananmen Square commemoration

The destruction of democratic principles are another facet of the Chinese Communist Party’s never-ending pursuit of absolute control. Read More… In 1989, authorities armed with assault rifles panied by tanks fired at millions of student-led pro-democracy, demonstrators killing thousands and arresting most others. Every year in Hong Kong, pro-democracy memorate the massacre by hosting a vigil that marks the June anniversary. Recently, Hong Kong is upping its crackdown, not just on pro-democratic demonstrations, but also on the memory of them....

Pro-democracy protester convicted of terrorism in Hong Kong under National Security Law

With this first NSL es a looming reality: It is necessary for Chinese citizens and those around the world should work to free the Chinese people from munist government’s pursuit of absolute control and decimation of their citizens’ liberty. Read More… In a historic ruling, a Hong Kong court convicted a protester of terrorism under Hong Kong’s National Security Law, or NSL, for the first time on July 27, The New York Times reported. Leon Tong Ying-kit was arrested on...

A biblical theology of work, Part 4: Enterprise and entrepreneurship

The divine economy is an enterprise economy and an entrepreneurial one. We would do well to honor, rather than disparage, those who create wealth and take entrepreneurial risk. They reflect God’s character and God’s purpose. Read More… Why does business matter to God? Well, if business does not matter to God then we render a large part of human existence meaningless. The church, however, seems to be incapable in so many ways of understanding business resulting in words such as...

Hong Kong protester sentenced nine years in prison under National Security Law

The Chinese Communist Party will not and cannot tolerate any opposition, verbal or otherwise, in order to maintain control of their citizens. The latest protestor trial opens the door to a more broad application of NSL on any phrase or word that poses a threat to the CCP’s absolute control of China. Read More… Leon Tong Ying-Kit became the first person to be sentenced under Hong Kong’s National Security Law, or NSL, on July 30, when a Hong Kong court...

Making community college free has hidden costs

The taxpayer-funded, one-size-fits-all approach of munity college distorts tradeoffs, inflates credentials, is dismissive of individual uniqueness and imposes a dubious pathway to improving lifetime earnings and vocational es. Read More… Education is the great equalizer. And a college education is one of the greatest ways to sharpen our unique gifts and talents before entering the workforce. President Joe Biden has proposed offering two years of munity college for any American, but here’s the problem: munity college “free” guarantees more associates...

New issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality explores ‘a world of change’

Acton’s latest volume offers thoughtful reflection on the intersection of economics and ethics amid the disruption of the pandemic. Read More… The newest issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality (Volume 24, Number 1) has been released in print and online at our website. In my editorial for the issue, I offer a preview of its contents: To use popular terminology, through reflecting on the “known unknown”—the hour of our deaths, the return of Jesus Christ—we fortify ourselves for...

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...

Jan 30, 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...

Jan 30, 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...

Jan 30, 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,...

Jan 30, 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...

Jan 30, 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....

Jan 30, 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...

Jan 30, 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...

Jan 30, 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...

Jan 30, 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...

Jan 30, 2026