After a long fight, West Michigan Manufacturer, Autocam Medical LLC has finally received “permanent protection” from the controversial HHS Mandate or “abortion pill mandate.” In 2013, pany was told it had ply with the mandate, despite owner John Kennedy’s and his family’s beliefs regarding the use of contraceptives and abortifacients. However, Hobby Lobby’s win in the Supreme Court last year reversed Autocam’s ruling and brought the case back to court. Yesterday, the District Court for Western Michigan guaranteed that pany...

One holdover from 2014 into the new year is the cry for an increase in the minimum wage. President Obama pledged (in a December 2014 speech) to bump the minimum wage up to $9/hour nationally. Many believe that this move will help stimulate the still-sluggish economy. Michael R. Strain, at the American Enterprise Institute, isn’t wholly against raising the minimum wage, but he’s not wholeheartedly for it, either. He thinks we are asking the wrong question. Do we need to...

Jeff Gardner was frustrated. As a photo-journalist working primarily in the Middle East, he is witness to the violence towards Christians on a daily basis, but the rest of the world seems unconcerned. Gardner realized it wasn’t that people didn’t care, but that they just didn’t know. It truly was an “out of sight, out of mind” situation. Gardner set out to fix this. In the fall of 2013, Gardner launched the Picture Christians Project. He hopes to a put...

What should Westerners make of Vladimir Putin? Some view the Russian president as a type of Western democratic politician while others think he is shaped by Chekism, the idea that the secret political police control (or should control) everything in society. But John R. Schindler, an Orthodox Christian, thinks the West may be underestimating the influence of militant Russian Orthodoxy on Putin’s worldview: In his fire-breathing speech to the Duma in March when he announced Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Putin...

For the past three decades China has been the world’s fastest-growing major economy, with growth rates averaging 10 percent a year for 30 years. As Brian J. Grim, founder and president of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, notes, there are many reasons for the growth, such as market mechanisms, modern technology and Western management practices. But one factor that is often overlooked is the role of Christianity: A study by Purdue University’s Fenggang Yang (cited recently in the Economist)...

Lord Acton famously said that, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Joseph Pearce finds fort can play a similar role in our lives and that fort corrupts absolutely.” That is why we tend to numb ourselves with distractions, from mood-altering drugs to social media: Shortly after Odysseus and his men leave Troy, heading home after the interminable siege and ultimate destruction of that City, they land on the island of the Lotus-Eaters. After the horrors of war,...

Russell KirkTo kick off this special Summer/Fall 2014 double issue of Religion & Liberty, we talk with scholar Bradley J. Birzer whose new biography of Russell Kirk examines the intellectual development of one of the most important men of letters in the twentieth century. We discuss the roots of Kirk’s thought and how it developed over time, in a characteristically singular fashion. Kirk, the author of The Conservative Mind, was not easily pigeonholed into ideological categories – fitting for a...

The ancient Greeks (or maybe it was Oscar Wilde) said that when the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers. Getting what you asked for can turn out to be deeply problematic, as the supporters of Obamacare on the Harvard University faculty are discovering. As the New York Times reports, For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But...

Last June the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a rule change on carbon-dioxide emissions that would affect energy producers, especially in states that rely on coal-fired power plants. The change is being sold as an attempt to curb global warming, though even it’s supporters grudgingly admit it won’t have much, if any, effect. The change is so small—equivalent to a roughly 6 percent cut in overall US emissions, a 1 percent cut in total global emissions—that’s it’s impact may not...

Remember when you bought that first thing – a car, maybe – with your own first e? Remember the feeling of pride it gave you? You’d scrubbed pots and pans in the diner kitchen all summer. Or maybe you were the “go-to” babysitter for everyone in your church. You earned that money, and you bought yourself something. Now imagine living in a world where that could never happen. You are told by the government that they will care for your...