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October 19 is the birthday of Russell Kirk (1918-1994), whose book The Conservative Mind gave shape and direction to a rebounding transatlantic political and philosophical tradition. Kirk rooted conservatism, not in a political platform, but in a deep-seated respect for tradition, faith, order, morality, and precedent. On his birthday, we proudly share six of the greatest quotations from the Sage of Mecosta: Economics depends on morality Similarly, some people would like to separate economics from morals, but they are unable...

Redemption, not retreat: Betsy DeVos’ vision for redeeming U.S. education

The American people must limit the overreach of the federal government and the intrusion of the public school bureaucracy so that the family can reclaim its proper role in the education of its children, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said Monday night. In a tour de force speech at Hillsdale College, she contrasted the growth federal power with the shrinking power of America’s parents – and the dwindling returns America’s children receive from U.S. public schools. “I’d like to work...

Justice Amy Coney Barrett: a new model for working women?

Judge Amy Coney Barrett became Justice Amy Coney Barrett on Monday night. Barrett has called herself “a different kind of lawyer,” and now she’s breaking new barriers. ACB may serve as an innovative model for professional women, as well as an opponent of misguided government programs and policies that encourage workplace discrimination against women. “Tonight, Justice Barrett es not only the fifth woman to serve on our nation’s highest court, but the very first mother of school-aged children to e...

Fact check: the second presidential debate of 2020

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden faced off for their second and last debate of the 2020 campaign season on Thursday night at Belmont University in Nashville. The candidates offered viewers a far more staid and substantive exchange than their first debate – a low bar, to be sure. Despite the improved tone, did all of their factual assertions hold up? Here are the facts. Did no one lose coverage under Obamacare? And will BidenCare’s public option...

This church is rebuilding Detroit’s economic life

When reflecting on the church’s economic responsibility, some of us may envision an assortment of needs-based “outreach programs,” from food pantries and homeless shelters to short-term mission trips and fundraising drives. While these can be powerful channels for loving and serving our neighbors, we should consider the basic vision for human flourishing that precedes them. In addition to meeting immediate material needs, we are also called to affirm the dignity, callings, and gifts that people already have. “Solidarity means more...

Half of Gen Z supports Marxism/socialism. Here’s why.

A new poll reveals the disquieting extent of young Americans’ support for Marxism. However, it also divulges the reasons behind the popularity of collectivism and the seeds of its destruction. The number of young Americans who have a favorable view of Marxism has increased five-fold in just one year. According to the new survey, nearly one-third of the members of Gen Z – Americans between the ages of 16 and 23 – deem “Marxism” worthy of support. The term’s favorability...

Four years later, are the ‘deplorables’ better off?

Donald Trump strode into office in 2016 with a mission and a mandate. The mission was to e a champion for those who were being overlooked by the establishment. The mandate was to overturn the “swamp” and make real changes. Hillary Clinton infamously termed those who backed Trump a “basket of deplorables.” The term became emblematic of both the disdain shown by Hillary and the status of Trump’s base as underdogs. Populism is defined as the revolt of ordinary people...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

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...

Nov 27, 2025

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...

Nov 27, 2025

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....

Nov 27, 2025

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...

Nov 27, 2025

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...

Nov 27, 2025

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...

Nov 27, 2025

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...

Nov 27, 2025

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...

Nov 27, 2025

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,...

Nov 27, 2025

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...

Nov 27, 2025