Religion | Religious News - www.mreligion.com

6 Quotes: Richard John Neuhaus on politics and religion

Richard John Neuhaus, founder of First Things magazine, died ten years ago today. Fr. Neuhaus was a Lutheran minister before ing a Catholic priest, and a radical liberal activist before ing a leading voice for religious and political conservatives. In honor of this anniversary of his passing, here are six quotes by Fr. Neuhaus on politics and religion: On politics, culture, and religion: “Politics is chiefly a function of culture, at the heart of culture is morality, and at the...

Reviving the spirit of free trade

The current support for tariffs in the United States has left me disappointed, frustrated, and in many unproductive debates. The French political philosopher, Frédéric Bastiat, best articulated my sentiments in an 1847 letter to Richard Cobden, “And I want not so much free trade itself as the spirit of free trade for my country. Free trade means a little more wealth; the spirit of free trade is a reform of the mind itself, that is to say, the source of...

Alejandro Chafuen in Forbes: Michelin short business (and personal) guide

Alejandro Chafuen, Acton’s Managing Director, International, describes in Forbes how a good businessman ought to be first a good man. The principles that guided François Michelin apply not only in business but also in personal life. Michelin is a French surname, but it is also a synonym for quality tires and restaurant mendations. This article, however, is not about the current state of this $18 pany but about some of its most important roots: the principles that guided François Michelin...

Radio Free Acton: A first step towards criminal justice reform; The human cost of unemployment part II

On this episode of Radio Free Acton, producer Caroline Roberts speaks with Sarah Estelle,associate professor of economics at Hope College. Caroline and Sarah discuss the subject of criminal justice reform in light of the recently passed, bipartisan bill, The First Step Act, covering specific policies in the new bill and effects of the current criminal system. After that, award winning reporter Anne Marie Schieber continues exploring the effects of unemployment. Last week,we showed the importance of being in the right...

How do we measure inflation?

Note: This is post #105 in a weekly video series on basic economics. Inflation is an average rise in prices. But how exactly is this average rise in prices measured? In this video by Marginal Revolution University,Alex Tabarrok explains how inflation in the United States can be measured using theBureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI)—a weighted average of the price increases. We can calculate the inflation rate by the percentage change in the CPI over a given period...

The particular genius of conservatism

The U.S. Constitution is a work of both the historical experience of the Founding Fathers and of the eminently Protestant culture to which they belonged. It is probably futile to try to understand the legal meaning of the Constitution without first grasping its historical and cultural significance. In the Federalist Papers, John Jay makes an unequivocal defense of mon understanding among the Framers: that the nascent republic was blessed because its citizens shared the same language, religion, and ancestries. In...

What Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets wrong about Europe

During her interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, newly sworn in Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez justified her vision of democratic socialism by invoking a caricature of Europe. When asked if she wanted to turn the United States into a version of Venezuela or the Soviet Union, Ocasio-Cortez demurred with an incredulous smile. “What we have in mind,” she said, according to the transcript, “and what of my — and my policies most closely re— resemble what we see in the U.K.,...

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....

Jun 27, 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...

Jun 27, 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...

Jun 27, 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...

Jun 27, 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...

Jun 27, 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...

Jun 27, 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...

Jun 27, 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...

Jun 27, 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...

Jun 27, 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,...

Jun 27, 2026