Religion & Liberty’s issue featuring an interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn scholar Edward E. Ericson Jr. is now available online. Acton also published Solzhenitsyn & the Modern World by Ericson in 1994. It was a joy to have Ericson sit down with us in the Acton office to talk about Solzhenitsyn, his work, his life, and his legacy.

The issue also includes an excellent essay on the federalist and anti-federalist debate by Dr. John Pinheiro, a historian at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids. Pinheiro points out in the piece that the anti-federalists are important for understanding the balance between liberty and order in our Republic. He also adds that the anti-federalists are essential reading “if Americans hope to restore a sane balance between state and federal power.”

The two books reviewed in this issue are William F. Buckley Jr.: The Maker of a Movement by Lee Edwards and Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell. I wrote the review of the Buckley biography and Bruce Edward Walker adds the review of Sowell’s book. Walker is managing editor of The Heartland Institute’s InfoTech & News.

There is also an excerpt in this issue from Jordan Ballor’s new book Ecumenical Babel. The selection discusses Bonhoeffer’s views on the ecumenical movement.

This issue’s “In The Liberal Tradition” is Benjamin Banneker. Banneker is widely known for his work in assisting in the surveying of Washington D.C., but he was an also an plished almanac author, astronomer, and tobacco farmer as well. He overcame tremendous racial prejudice and was also a symbol for the early abolition movement. English Parliamentarian William Wilberforce praised his work on the floor of the House of Commons.