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Jesus Revolution and Generation Z’s Religious Crisis

A new movie starring Kelsey (Frasier) Grammer about the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and ’70s shows how true religious growth means turning passion into concrete action. Read More… My initial impression of the film Jesus Revolution was a simple one, albeit a bit self-centered from a Gen-Z movie reviewer: This isn’t a Gen-Z movie. Rife with bell-bottom jeans, hippie culture, and portrayals of anti-government angst, the film tells the origin story of the Jesus movement of the 1960s and...

Your Job Is Not Your Family

Calling a business, civic organization, or even school a “family” may be well-intended es with unintended consequences that do an injustice to the mitments that should be made to our actual families. Read More… e to pany—we are a family and we’re glad you’re part of it! You are not just a student here, you’re a member of the family. We’re not just a business. We’re a family. Businesses, schools, banks, massive corporations, even small nonprofits often speak of their...

When Human Flourishing Becomes Human Suffering

A new book, one in a series on “human flourishing” published by Oxford University Press, offers several essays on how theater can be used as a forum for radical-left grievance. When do we get to the flourishing part? Read More… When the Berlin Wall fell, it was monplace observation that there were more Marxists in New York City than in the USSR. If the new Oxford University Press book Theater & Human Flourishing is any indication, they have since relocated...

George Whitefield: Conflict and Conviction

One of the great evangelical preachers in church history left an indelible mark not only on all who heard him in his day but on anyone who wanted to reach the lost with the Gospel message of hope and reconciliation. Read More… George Whitefield’s first sermon after his ordination, in June 1736, prompted plaint to the bishop! He later printed the sermon with the title On the Nature and Necessity of Our Regeneration or New Birth. Whitefield was never far...

The Disordered Loves of The Last of Us

This hit HBO series is not just another zombie horror show. It’s an attempt to wrestle with how easily we can lose our humanity even before our worst nightmare is realized. But what does it mean to be human in a world without God? (And oh yeah, spoiler alerts.) Read More… The Last of Us is the latest prestige drama from HBO and has gained near universal critical acclaim, garnering the second-largest audience for the network since 2010, trailing only...

Jimmy Lai Fights the CCP for Access to Legal Counsel

Qualified lawyers could be the difference maker in Lai’s push for freedom. Read More… Jimmy Lai is one of the Chinese Communist Party’s most prominent targets, and for good reason. The 75-year-old Hong Kong entrepreneur now sits shackled in solitary confinement for the crime of fighting for democracy. Lai’s freedom may now hang on his access to top international lawyers, which the CCP has sought to curtail at every step of the legal process. Yet Lai remains mitted—if he can...

Why Christianity Is Necessary for Liberty

A recent article published in the evangelical magazine of record says that Christianity is not necessary for democracy. But its argument is muddled and use of terms confused. More important: it’s just plain wrong. Read More… Depending on one’s perspective, religious freedom was either born or died with the founding of the United States of America. The colonial powers of Europe of the late 18th century had dominant religious majorities and established churches. The American republic was founded with an...

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...

Jul 13, 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....

Jul 13, 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...

Jul 13, 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...

Jul 13, 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...

Jul 13, 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...

Jul 13, 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,...

Jul 13, 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...

Jul 13, 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...

Jul 13, 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...

Jul 13, 2026