Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Religious Freedom and the Common Good
Religious Freedom and the Common Good
Apr 10, 2026 12:11 AM

What is the best test of mon good? How do you know if you have a society characterized by the flourishing of persons munity? Andy Crouch argues that we should look at the flourishing of the most vulnerable.

“There are all kinds of conditions in which the affluent, privileged, powerful majority can flourish,” notes Crouch in his talk at QIdeas in Nashville. “But the far more demanding test in any society is the fate of the most vulnerable—the youngest, the oldest, the most frail, the most marginalized.”

Crouch contends that “If you care about the flourishing of persons—especially the vulnerable munity—you will care about freedom of religion.”

(Via: Justin Taylor)

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 ONLINE
Only an EU ‘empire’ can secure liberty: EU leader
Is a European-wide patible with liberty? A prominent EU leader mended transforming the European Union into an “empire” at a UK political party conference this weekend, to sustained applause. “The world order of tomorrow … is a world order based on empires,” said Guy Verhofstadt, a Member of European Parliament (MEP) and the EU’s chief negotiator on Brexit. He is also leader of the EU’s Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe faction. ments came at the party conference of...
UN climate chief: Stop worrying and have babies
Climate change may well be a problem, but the chief of the United Nations’ agency on climate says it won’t destroy the world – and shouldn’t stop young people from having children. Alarmist rhetoric from “doomsters and extremists” that babies will destroy the planet “resembles religious extremism” and “will only add to [young women’s] burden” by “provoking anxiety,” he said. Petteri Taalas is no “climate-change denier.” He is secretary-general of theWorld Meteorological Organization (WMO), the UN’s special agency on weather...
U.S. surges into top 5 economically free nations
For the second year in a row, the United States has increased its ranking in parison of the world’s freest economies. The good news came as the Fraser Institute released its annual “Economic Freedom of the World” report this morning. “The U.S. has ascended back into the top five most economically-free countries in the world,” said Fred McMahon, research chair at the Fraser Institute, which is based in Canada. The United States fell to 16th place in 2015 but rebounded...
Fact check: 5 facts about the third Democratic debate of 2019
The Democratic Party held its third presidential debate on Thursday night. The 10 hopefuls made at least five proposals that were based on erroneous premises or that would harm the country. 1. Wealth inequality is destroying the world. Senator Bernie Sanders said he felt it was “unfair” pare his version of democratic socialism with the version practiced in Venezuela. But he distinguished himself from most of the field by promising bat wealth inequality: To me, democratic socialism means we deal...
Status and function: Drucker on the keys to a functioning society
This is the fifth in a series of essays on Peter Drucker’s early works. Peter Drucker published The Future of Industrial Man in the midst of World War II (1942). He was conscious of the need to defeat authoritarian governments beyond the battlefield. Free societies would have to prove themselves superior or the problems of fascism munism would continue to recur. In the book, he offered a formulation that he would go on to repeat in many other books and...
Four caveats about the Official Poverty Measure
The U.S. Census Bureau released the official poverty measure (OPM) yesterday. Although the numbers were encouraging, there are at least four caveats that everyone who reads these statistics should keep in mind. Without making these adjustments, we may have an inaccurate picture of poverty in the U.S. 1. The OPM does not include the effects of government welfare programs. As the Census Bureauexplains, “The official poverty definition uses money e before taxes and does not include capital gains or noncash...
The cosmic battle for economics: Toppling ideological idols with Christian wisdom
When I began my freshman year of college, I didn’t care much about economics. Having been raised in a conservative Christian home, I had adopted a generically pro-capitalism shtick, but it wasn’t much to stand on. As I arrived at my left-leaning Christian college, that lack of foundation soon became clear. I found myself swirling amid campus debates about “economic justice,” infused with lofty religious language. Progressive economic policies were championed with social-gospel gusto and the Acts-2 arguments for socialism...
Can a big bad state deliver us from evil?
Thirty five years ago the American novelist Thomas Pynchon asked the question, “Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?” The occasion was the then 25th anniversary of C.P. Snow’s Rede Lecture, “The Two Cultures of the Scientific Revolution,” which argued, way back in 1959, that our culture was increasingly polarized into “literary” and “scientific” factions unable to understand each other. Pynchon, from his 1984 vantage point argued: Today nobody could get away with making such a distinction. Since 1959, we...
Political idolatry: A Lutheran view
Is faith in politics “another Gospel”? A distinguished Lutheran scholar has weighed in on the matter, clearly delineating a Christian’s duty as a citizen from his duty to the Christ and his fellow body of believers. Gene Veith, the noted professor, provost, and editor, weighs in on the topic after taking notice of Acton’s article on President Trump’s recent “King of Israel” controversy. In his blogatPatheos, Veith shares insights gleaned from Lutheranism’s traditional “Two Kingdoms” theology. “The state’s purview is...
Charles Dickens, poverty, and emotional arguments
Why is it that the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century is so often our go-to mental paradigm for poverty? CapX’s John Ashmore, for instance, recently wrote of those who “feel an argument about poverty is plete without claiming we’ve somehow gone back to the 19th century.” Were there no poor people before that? (There were, obviously.) There are a number of possible answers – an increase in the concentration of poverty with growing urbanization and industrialization, which made poverty...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved