“2016 Presidential elections in Pittsburgh” by Gene J. Puskar, April 13, 2016. AP The snow has finally melted in West Michigan, which means it’s time for the year’s second issue of Religion & Liberty. Recent news cycles have been plagued with images of angry Americans, students protesting and populist discontent. The 2016 presidential election has really brought to light that the American people are angry—specifically with American leadership. Here at the Acton Institute, we’re interested in looking more deeply at...

What is Brexit? British, Irish, and Commonwealth citizens will vote next month on the question “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” Brexit is merely the shorthand abbreviation for “British exit,” which refers to the UK leaving the European Union. What is the European Union? After two World Wars devastated the continent, Europe realized that increasing ties between nations through trade mightincrease stability and lead to peace. In 1958, this led...

For a limited time (May 26-28), Ismael Hernandez’ new book, Not Tragically Colored: Freedom, Personhood, and the Renewal of Black America will be free to download. Despite a seemingly endless series of programs, discussions, and analyses—and the election of the first African-American president—the problem of race continues to bedevil American society. Could it be that our programs and discussions have failed to get at the root of the problem? Ismael Hernandez strikes at the root, even when that means plunging...

Since its inception in the 1990s, the payday lending industry has grown at an astonishing pace. Currently, there are about 22,000 payday lending locations — more than two for every Starbucks — that originate an estimated $27 billion in annual loan volume. But payday lenders may soon face some petition. A few of the largest consumer banks in America are considering goingto market with new small-dollar installment loan products, reports the American Banker. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the...

With the rise in popularity of social democracy (a highly regulated market economy), Samuel Gregg has some words of warning against the system. “[T]he briefest of surveys of European social democracy’s history,” he writes in a new article for the Stream, “illustrates how these policies invariably induce the type of slow-motion decline that’s turned much of today’s European Union into the sick man of the global economy.” Americans looking to Bernie Sanders for a social democratic answer to their problems...

Image credit: Guy Mendes A new documentary, The Seer: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, misses the real story on U.S. farming productivity, says Bruce Edward Walker in this week’s Acton Commentary. Perhaps it’s the fact that the bulk of the film’s running time ignores two-thirds of what, for me, makes Berry so special – his fiction and poetry – in favor of what renders him more of a curmudgeon, which is his activism against industrial agriculture. Somebody cue up the...

Our most recent issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality, vol. 19, no. 1, has now been published online and print issues are in the mail. In addition to our regular slate of articles examining the intersections between faith, freedom, markets, and morality, this issue contains a new entry in our Scholia special feature section: “Advice to a Desolate France” by Sebastian Castellio. Writing in 1562, Castellio was one of the first early modern defenders of freedom of religion...

The U.N’s World Health Organization (WHO) recently released it’s latest version of World Health Statistics, a definitive source of information on the health of the world’s people. Here are seven figures from the report about life expectancy that you should know: 1. Life expectancy increased by 5 years between 2000 and 2015, the fastest increase since the 1960s. Those gains reverse declines during the 1990s, when life expectancy fell in Africa because of the AIDS epidemic and in Eastern Europe...

It’s all over but the chanting, which seemingly will continue unabated until religious shareholder activists bring panies to heel. What the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility hyperbolically billed as “a watershed year” trickled into a puddle of disappointment yesterday for shareholder activists’ climate-change resolutions. The chanting began outside Dallas’ Morton E. Meyerson Symphony Center and the Chevron Park Auditorium in San Ramon, Calif., prior to the annual shareholder meetings conducted, respectively, by ExxonMobil Corp. and Chevron Corporation. Real chanting, dear...

“It doesn’t matter how talented, how anointed, how gifted, how passionate, or how willing you are if you’re not fit to do the things that God has called you to do.” –Candace Payne Candace Payne, now widely known as “Chewbacca Mom,” became an internet sensation thanksto a spontaneous video in which she joyfully donned a toy mask of the beloved Wookiee. Having now broken multiple records for online views, Candace is now appearing ontalk shows and at media venuesacross the...