Religion | Religious News - www.mreligion.com

The ground is shifting under Francis Fukuyama’s feet

In his new book, the author of The End of History attempts to explain how liberalism is threatened by illiberal elements on the left and right. But flaws in his analysis almost guarantee that this is not the end of the discussion. Read More… In Liberalism and Its Discontents, Francis Fukuyama aims to defend liberal political ideas and institutions against rising and now entrenched detractors from the postliberal left and the right. As he notes, “liberalism is under severe threat...

Income inequality is not a problem for government to fix

Taxing the rich to make others richer is a recipe for e stagnation, petition. Read More… Implicit in concerns about rising e inequality is a critique of the underlying system that generated that inequality: a free market regulated petition. In a free market, people are rewarded with earnings that correspond to the value they create for others. For this to happen, however, everyone ideally has an equal opportunity to earn an ever expanding e. The perceived problem is that such...

John Wesley teaches us the true value of money

Many believe that money is the root of all evil, when in fact the Bible says “love of money” is the root of all evil. But a healthy e, even wealth, can also be a blessing that enables us to bless others. Read More… John Wesley, the father of Methodism, defended a rigorous and intentional plan for Christlikeness that would touch every aspect of a believer’s life. Caring intensely for the poor, he endeavored to create short, easy-to-read “penny pamphlets”...

Your job is not your vocation

What we do to sustain life and what we’re called to do for the good of the gospel and our neighbor are two different things. But the first can be put in the service of the second. Read More… It is sometimes claimed—wrongly—that until the Reformation, the only vocations known to Christian teaching were monastic and/or clerical. One might be called to a monastery or called to the priesthood, but ordinary work, family life, secular singleness—these are the things of...

Jurassic World: Dominion is transhumanism as entertainment

If only men weren’t necessary for reproduction is the theme of the latest installment in the Jurassic World trilogy. Fun for the whole family, so long as, you know, there are no dads. (And yes, spoiler alert.) Read More… There’s a new Jurassic World movie out in theaters, to round up the post-Spielberg trilogy that began in 2015 and continued in 2018, a long time for a trilogy these days—the Star Wars sequel trilogy came out in four years, as...

Does The Godfather believe in America?

Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic masterpiece shines a light on how attempts to subvert American institutions in the name of a higher, personal justice can fail calamitously. In the end, human nature will not be subverted. Read More… This month the Tribeca Film Festival celebrated the 50th anniversary of the premiere of The Godfather, an important movie, a movie we at some point got in the habit of calling iconic, and we might remember it made stars of...

The Right look at American conservatism deserves your attention

In his new book, Matthew Continetti details the 100-year history of the battles between the “Right” and conservatives, between populism and neoconservatism. In short, there were more than a few Donald Trumps before 2016, and Conservatism Inc. isn’t dead yet. Read More… In January of 1992, the libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard published an untimely reflection in the traditionalist journal Chronicles. The conservative and Republican elite had effectively scuttled former Klansman David Duke’s bid to e governor of Louisiana. In the...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

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....

Oct 24, 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...

Oct 24, 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...

Oct 24, 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,...

Oct 24, 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...

Oct 24, 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...

Oct 24, 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...

Oct 24, 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...

Oct 24, 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...

Oct 24, 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...

Oct 24, 2026