As the Supreme Court considers how to rule in the Little Sisters of the Poor case, we have a timely edition of Radio Free Acton for your consideration.William B. Allen, Emeritus Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Political Science and Emeritus Dean, James Madison College, at Michigan State University, joins the podcast to talk about what the 2016 presidential race says about the national character of the United States, and emphasizes the centrality of the freedom of conscience...

What just happened? Earlier today the U.S. Supreme Court split 4-4 on a legal challenge to a California law that forces non-union workers to pay fees to public-employee unions. What was the case about? California law requires every teacher working in most of its public schools to financially contribute to the local teachers’ union and that union’s state and national affiliates in order to subsidize expenses the union claims are related to collective bargaining. California law also requires public school...

“For Martin Luther, vocation is nothing less than the locus of the Christian life,” says Gene Edward Veith in this week’s Acton Commentary. “God works in and through vocation, but he does so by calling human beings to work in their vocations.” In Jesus Christ, who bore our sins and gives us new life in his resurrection, God saves us for eternal life. But in the meantime he places us in our temporal life where we grow in faith and...

A simple example of hamburgers being made at home versus at a restaurant can help illuminate the explosion of prosperity since the Industrial Revolution, says Don Boudreaux in this Marginal Revolution University video. The story of the division of labor and development of specialized tools is an old story (Adam Smith introduced the concept in his Wealth of Nations), but it still has tremendous explanatory power about how prosperity is created. ...

“If Jesus were alive today, do you think he would fortable with the Communist Party government in China?” That’s a question BBC reporter John Sudworth asked Pastor Wu Weiqing, a Beijing based priest, who serves in an official, state-sanctioned church. The pastor replies without hesitation: “Absolutely. I think so.” Oh my. First of all, as the Easter holiday reminds us, Jesus is alive today. Second, Jesus would most definitely not fortable with the Communist Party government in China. And the...

Acton Institute Director of Research Samuel Gregg joined host Shelia Liaugminas on Relevant Radio’s A Closer Lookto examine those times and places where religion can e pathological – when divine and human reason are set aside. They look back ten years to Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Address, in which he addressed this issue in what would e one of the most controversial momentsof his papacy. You can listen to the interview via the audio player below. ...

Since 1938, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the first federal minimum wage in the U.S., a debate has raged about whether wage floors help or hurt workers. But thanks to a radical economic experiment in California, we may be only a few years away from having a definitive answer. California Gov. Jerry Brown and state legislators have reached an agreement to raise California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022. Under California’s plan, its minimum wage — already...

The early church father Tertullian once asked, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” by which he meant “What has Greek thought and philosophy to do with Christianity and its Biblical heritage?” Today we might ask a similar question, “What has Apple to do with Hobby Lobby?” or “What does the conflict between Apple and the federal government over encryption have to do with Hobby Lobby’s struggle with the government over religious liberty?” The answer is: More than you might...