Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY
/
Editor's note
Editor's note
Dec 23, 2024 2:07 AM

Currently there are serious concerns about economic prosperity in a nation that has for so long benefited from tremendous economic growth and stability. Likewise, some are deeply troubled about government proposed solutions and cures for our economic ailments. South Carolina's governor Mark Sanford brings substantial thought and credibility to free-market ideas while articulating the danger of greater centralized power.

Those paying attention to current events will be well aware that Governor San ford has risen to be perhaps the chief voice in opposing bailout and stimulus legislation out of Washington, no matter which political party is pushing more spending. We also add another important dynamic in our interview that you prob ably won't see in other interviews with the governor, and that focuses on his views of faith in the public square and what that means going forward in the current political climate.

S.T. Karnick is the editor of the American Culture website, and we are fortunate to feature a piece by him titled "Busting a Pop Culture Illusion." Karnick explains how Disney promotes the "life-without limits mindset." He also calls this mindset "one of the main progenitors of modern, statist liberalism." He praises the film Marley and Me, calling it "an excellent antidote to the Disney myth and the utopianism of modern liberalism."

Bruce Edward Walker offers some excellent thoughts concerning the conservatism of T.S. Eliot and Russell Kirk. Both men, because of their faith back ground, rightly recognized that the moral order rises above ideological fervor and Walker eloquently depicts the consequences on society and culture when the moral tradition wanes.

Kevin Schmiesing offers a review of Philip F. Lawler's The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture and Ray Nothstine reviews Theodore Roosevelt Malloch's Spiritual Enterprise: Doing Virtuous Business. Schmiesing clearly explains the reasons for the breach be tween Boston's Catholic leaders and the laity. He also effectively pulls in "Acton's spin" on Lawler's work for our readers. Nothstine's review of Spiritual Enterprise is valuable in that it recognizes there are moral deficiencies in the business world. Additionally, just as society needs moral reform to be healthy moving forward, moral reform needs to extend to an even greater degree in mercial sector.

In a Religion & Liberty issue where I believe we have written about and defended a lot of moral truths, it is so appropriate to give a voice to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who's haunting, timeless, and most importantly, truth telling words were pivotal in crushing Marxist-Leninism. His story and words are forever appreciated by those who cherish the kind of liberty that is fastened with a moral fabric upon the heart.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY
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,...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2024 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved