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Why Religious Liberty Is Important for Institutions

Is religious liberty only for individuals or also for institutions? As Ryan Messmore explains, America’s founders thought that the Constitution’s “first freedom” is for both: True liberty must take account of the relational aspect of human nature. And truereligious liberty, in particular, must entail the freedom to exercise one’s faith in the various relationships and joint activities of day-to-day life. In other words, religious freedom applies to participation in institutions. Each one of those institutions—our particular school, church, workplace, etc.—takes...

Was Thomas More a proto-communist?

In Utopia, many modern intellectuals say Sir Thomas More advocates an ideal political and social order without private petition, citizens quarreling over worldly possessions, poverty and other “evils” supposedly brought on by a market-based society. At least that is the way social liberals, including left-leaning Christians, tend to interpret this great saint’s 1516 literary masterpiece, believing the English Catholic statesman’s work presents his vision of an ideal monwealth modeled on the early Church (even ifthose munist experiments failed). Recently, Istituto...

Are Young Millennials Less Religious or Simply Young?

Joe Carter recently posted a summary of a new studyconducted jointly by Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs that shows that college-aged Millennials (18-24 year olds) “report significant levels of movement from the religious affiliation of their childhood, mostly toward identifying as religiously unaffiliated.” He also noted the tendency of college-aged Millennials to be more politically liberal. Just yesterday, the same study was highlighted by Robert Jones of the Washington Post,...

Writing Tips for Your On Call in Culture Blog Entry

“Think, Think, Think” –Pooh It’s always hard to sit down and write. There are a million distractions that tempt us away from the keyboard or notepad and entangle us in the details of life. Not that these details are bad. In fact, as munity focused on being On Call in Culture, many of those details are the whole purpose. But before you get out there and answer the calling that God has put on your life as a dentist, professor,...

Video: Chuck Colson speaks at the Abraham Kuyper & Leo XIII Conference

On October 31, 1998, Charles Colson came to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan to deliver the closing address at Acton’s “The Legacy of Abraham Kuyper & Leo XIII” conference, sponsored jointly with Calvin Seminary. “This is a momentous time for the Church as we reflect on two thousand years since the birth of Christ, and as we approach the millenium. And the question, I suspect, that all of us are asking and that the Church should be asking across...

The Heritage Guide to the Constitution

Our friends at the Heritage Foundation have created an invaluable online tool for learning about the U.S. Constitution: The Heritage Guide to the Constitution is intended to provide a brief and accurate explanation of each clause of the Constitution as envisioned by the Framers and as applied in contemporary law. Its particular aim is to provide lawmakers with a means to defend their role and to fulfill their responsibilities in our constitutional order. Yet while the Guide will provide a...

Jacoby, D’Souza debate Religion in the Public Square

Susan Jacoby and Dinesh D’Souza met here in Grand Rapids at Fountain Street Church on Thursday, April 26, to debate the merits of religion in public discourse. The debate, co-sponsored by The Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, was titled, “Is Christianity Good for American Politics?” Susan Jacoby is program director at The Center for Inquiry and author of The Age of American Unreason and Alger Hiss and The Battle for History. She argued for the...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

Economics in the Catholic World

Up to recent times, the Catholic nations and regions were considered the poorest part of Christendom, “underdeveloped” not only financially but also materially. Lately, this has changed considerably, and today France and even Italy are economically stronger than predominantly Protestant countries such as Great Britain whose GNP they have overshadowed. In Europe, generally, industry is shifting its weight from the North to the South and East. Furthermore, the Institute for Sociology at the University of Chicago has made the...

Apr 14, 2026

The economics of sin taxes

“Sin Taxes” are so called because they are levied on modities, such as tobacco and alcohol, which are the objects of widespread disapproval. “Such taxes,” Paul Samuelson says, “are often tolerated because most people–including many cigarette smokers and moderate drinkers–feel that there is something vaguely immoral about tobacco and alcohol. They think these ”sin taxes“ stun two birds with one stone: the state gets revenue, and vice is made more expensive.” “Sin Taxes” is not a technical term in...

Apr 14, 2026

A Moral Solution to Moral Problems

During Mass one Sunday after the reading of the Gospel, I settled into the pew for the homily. I expected the usual treatment of the day’s readings and a passing reference to how we can apply the words of Scripture to our everyday lives. However, on this day, the homily would have a relevant meaning for individuals and churches throughout America. In his homily, the priest told of his first assignment after being ordained. He was to serve an...

Apr 14, 2026

The Moral Nature of Free Enterprise

In the marketplace, the consumer is “king.” To e wealthy in free enterprise usually involves mass production for mass material consumption. The free market rewards entrepreneurs for their correct anticipation of consumer demand. It showers people like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie with tremendous wealth, because they dramatically improved the consumer’s quality of life. Contrast this with socialist or pre-capitalist society. Those societies excel in producing an abundance of grinding poverty,...

Apr 14, 2026

Zoning as a Threat to Religious Liberty

If you take for granted your attendance at the church on the corner, it may be a good time to stop. You are about to be introduced to what many believe has e the worst threat to religious liberty in America: local zoning laws. In theory, zoning laws sound reasonable and those who back zoning regulations often have good intentions. However, the reality is that zoning controls are turning property rights, the freedom of assembly and the freedom of...

Apr 14, 2026

An Honor Well Deserved: Michael Novak

It is sometimes said that capitalism lacks poets. In twenty-five books and a career of lecturing and teaching all over the world, Michael Novak, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, had devoted much of his life to poetically explaining the crucial role of private initiative in public life. In doing so, he has roused the moral imaginations of scholars around the world. His service in defense of freedom has now been duly recognized. Mr. Novak has joined the...

Apr 14, 2026

Mia Immaculee Antoinette Acton Woodruff

The phone rang at 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 5th. “Her heart gave up” was how a mutual friend announced Mia’s death. Marie Immaculée Antoinette Acton, later the Hon. Mrs. Douglas Woodruff, was dead at 89. I had seen her scarcely two weeks prior and knew that the end was near: “One can live too long, Jim,” she had said. Though she had often joked about the nuisance of what she described as her “creeping decrepitude,” there was a...

Apr 14, 2026

On A New Women's Movement: Going Beyond 'Having It All'

…The starting point for most discussions of women’s issues is the observation that women earn less money than men, with e equality as the implicit touchstone for the desirability of policies, personal or public. But defining one’s well-being in terms of one’s e is not self-evidently correct. In fact, it is extremely problematic to argue that one’s e is an accurate measure of one’s wealth, even on strictly economic grounds. The overall claim is even more problematic if we...

Apr 14, 2026

Nurture and Natural Law

When I was six or seven, growing up in Somerville, Massachusetts, my father took me into Boston to walk the Freedom Trail. As we progressed along the Trail, smelling the dust and exhaust fumes of old Boston, my father led me back into the eighteenth century. We strolled over the Common, and looked into Old South Church (the Tea Party started here, he pointed out), down to the Old State House (the Massacre happened in front of it), Fanueil...

Apr 14, 2026

Justice, Mercy, and Economics

Justice and mercy. What are they? At one time or another, everyone has experienced feelings of anger and indignation when they were violated by others. Everyone has an inherent sense of what is just, and that sense is heightened when one is the victim of injustice. Likewise, it is perhaps safe to say that everyone has either been the recipient of someone else’s benevolence, personally extended benevolence to someone else, or has seen benevolence bestowed upon someone else. Yet,...

Apr 14, 2026