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Mike Rowe interviews Charles Koch on work, cronyism, and criminal justice reform

Mike Rowe was recently criticized for his new partnership with Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, whose philanthropy for conservative and libertarian causes routinely garners controversy, despite its tremendous fruits. Rowe, himself an increasingly provocative figure, recently interviewed Koch on their core areas of collaboration, including work, the trades, cronyism, higher education, and criminal justice reform. Koch on the politicization of “work ethic”: Unless you learn to work by the time you’re in your 30s, you’re never that productive. So...

Interview: The Christian case for libertarianism

Is it possible to be both a Christian and a libertarian? In a ing book, Called to Freedom: Why You Can Be Christian & Libertarian, six Christian libertarians offer an emphatic, “yes,” exploring key tensions and challenging a mon critiques (whether from conservative Christians or secularlibertarians). The project is currently seeking funds via Indiegogo, where you can donate or pre-order your copy. Having already discussed the topic on numerous occasions with two of the book’s authors – Jacqueline Isaacs and...

When will the whole world have universal access to basic education?

Education—even at the most basic levels—not only makes poor countries richer, it also saves lives. For example, if sub-Saharan Africa were achieving universal lower secondary education for women by 2030, it would prevent up to 3.5 million child deaths from 2050-2060. Achieving universal upper pletion across the globe by that date would also prevent up to 50,000 disaster-related deaths per decade by 2040-2050. And by universalising upper secondary education in low e countries, the world could increase per capita earnings...

Justice, Torah and the Minimum Wage

This question of whether government should mandate a higher minimum wage is not a new one, says Curt Biren in this week’s Acton Commentary. In fact, es up in ancient Jewish texts — related to property rights, labor law and charity law: Economists have studied the idea, but they often disagree on its impact. Some can cite statistics that purportedly show that there is no marked decline in employment. Others have data to prove that the imposition of higher minimum...

Differing views on economic growth

Economic Growth in the U.S. has slowed pared to historical averages according to recent reports from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Some are claiming that this is okay and that it is “normal” while there are others who disagree and understand that economic growth is essential to a prospering society. This division among people on how they view economic growth also represents a division among the two major political parties on how they view economic growth. Director of Research here...

Rise of the ‘super-neo-reverse Malthusians’

The doom delusions of central planners and population “experts” are well documented and refuted, ranging fromthe early pessimism of the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthustothe morefanatical predictions of Paul Ehrlich. Through these lenses,population growth is a driver of poverty, following from a framing of the human person asa strain and a drain on society and the environment. As Michael Mattheson Miller has written, such thinking suffers from a zero-sum mindset wherein the economy (or any web of human relationships) is a...

Audio: Paul Bonicelli on WOOD Radio

Acton Institute Director of Programs Paul Bonicelli walked a few blocks down the road here in Grand Rapids, Michigan this morning for an in-studio interview with host Justin Barclay on WOOD Radio’s West Michigan Live. Paul is a recent addition to Acton’s staff and does a fine job of introducing himself, and also provides a preview of Acton’s ing fall events calendar. You can listen to the full interview via the audio player below. ...

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....

Apr 28, 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 28, 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...

Apr 28, 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 28, 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 28, 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 28, 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 28, 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 28, 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 28, 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 28, 2026