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Fact check: 5 facts about the fifth Democratic debate of 2019

The Democratic Party narrowed the number of presidential hopefuls to 10 at the fifth debate, held Wednesday in Atlanta. Several of their statements deserve greater scrutiny. 1. Elizabeth Warren: Freeloading billionaires? The 99 percent in America are on track to pay about 7.2 percent of their total wealth in taxes. The top one-tenth of one percent that I want to say, “Pay two cents more,” they’ll pay 3.2 percent in America. I’m tired of freeloading billionaires. I think it’s time...

The unfortunate lesson from Chick-fil-A’s surrender

Why do I care about Chick-fil-A’s decision to drop Salvation Army and Fellowship of Christian Athletes as they seek to properly “align their values” and make sure people understand “who they are”? prehend why Chick-fil-A wants to escape the censure of progressive elites. pany is a petitor. In terms of profit per square foot, they are the reigning champion in American fast food. When you have that strength and speed, you want to use it. pany has consistently been known...

The rise of ‘woke’ culture: Lessons on the power of institutions

We continue to see the ill effects of “cancel culture” and safetyism, whether through student-led riots and intimidation efforts at colleges and universities, the garden-variety intolerances of “woke capitalism,” or the self-destructive interventionism of “bulldozer parenting.” As far as how it’s e to be, we have explanations aplenty, from declines in religious life to the fraying of the social fabric to rises in political fragmentation and polarization. In an essay at Heterodox Academy, Musa Al-Gharbi points to yet another: a...

Hong Kong demands freedom in landslide election

The citizens of Hong Kong expanded their democratic revolution to the ballot box on Sunday, as pro-democracy parties won control of virtually every local government from pro-Beijing functionaries. Yesterday’s district council elections – the largest in history, with an estimated 71 percent of all registered voters (or 2.94 million of 4.13 million) participating – proved voters’ overwhelming support for the traditional rights enjoyed by the former British protectorate. The South China Morning Post described the landslide election as a “tsunami...

2019 Calihan Lecture Video: Religion, Society, and the Market

Last month, Prof. Giuseppe Franco received the 2019 Novak Award at the University of San Diego where he delivered the 19th Annual Calihan Lecture on “Religion, Society, and the Market: The Legacy of Wilhelm Röpke.” Watch the video now: TheNovak Awardrecognizes scholars early in their academic career who demonstrate outstanding intellectual merit in advancing the understanding of theology’s connection to human dignity, the importance of the rule of law, limited government, religious liberty, and freedom in economic life. Each Award...

Acton Line podcast: How property rights save the planet

Panic surrounding climate change and the environment is on the rise and doomsday predictions abound. Most headlines about the environment only tell one story: that the environment is on the decline and that this decline is a result of economic development. In March, The Guardian declared that “ending climate change requires the end of capitalism.” But in the midst of calls for the Green New Deal and calls to overhaul our economic system, there’s another story unfolding. Holly Fretwell, Director...

Nibbling at Dylan Pahman’s Chick-fil-A argument

As though guided by an invisible hand Dylan Pahman and I – independently and without coordination – each posted an essay about Chick-fil-A’s philanthropic giving within minutes of one another, each with slightly different emphases. Readers may see this as a conflict; however, probing the space between these analyses helps make sense of customer backlash, illustrates why “woke capitalism” of any variety is a miasma, and underlines that charitable decisions are best made by private individuals. Dylan quotes Milton Friedman’s...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

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...

Apr 21, 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...

Apr 21, 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...

Apr 21, 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...

Apr 21, 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...

Apr 21, 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...

Apr 21, 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....

Apr 21, 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...

Apr 21, 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...

Apr 21, 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,...

Apr 21, 2026