Religion & Liberty Online

“When the enemy is Hitler,” F.H. Buckley writes, “and the world is divided between Schmittian friends and enemies, everything is permitted.” Such divisive contemporary issues as Black Lives Matter, the Israel-Palestine war, and trans rights leave little room for compromise and much for demonization. Continue Reading...

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November 19, 2024

The Hidden Ideology of Megachurch Marketing

As an unofficial member of “Weird Christian Twitter,” I had kept up fairly well with the onslaught of pastoral sex scandals this past summer. It was only a peek into an otherwise quite active stream of controversy over how abuse cases had been handled (or just ignored) by prominent evangelical leaders, from the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and from John MacArthur to Doug Wilson. Continue Reading...

November 15, 2024

How the West Moved Beyond Racism and Tribalism

John M. Ellis’ A Short History of Relations Between Peoples: How the World Began to Move Beyond Tribalism is an important book. It defends the values and history of Western civilization underlying the political and economic systems that have produced the prosperous and multifaceted world Westerners currently enjoy. Continue Reading...

November 14, 2024

Living in Wonder Enchants the Heart but Leaves the Mind Confused

It’s commonly noted that the Western world is showing signs of decline. With historically high rates of depression and anxiety, low trust in institutions, and rapid population decline, many fear the consequences if nothing changes. Continue Reading...

November 13, 2024

Preserving Our Identity as Makers

Ted Gioia, in his superb Substack “The Honest Broker,” recently verified one of the most disturbing trends in technology today: the way the presence of AI-created art and images is destroying our access to human-made art and images. Continue Reading...

November 12, 2024

The Islamic Secular and the Seeds of Freedom

Once in a while a new book in religious studies comes out with a bold thesis, challenging old assumptions and raising some eyebrows. The Islamic Secular, a thick, dense, and elaborate monograph by Sherman A. Continue Reading...

November 08, 2024

J.R.R. Tolkien on War

For his creation of Middle-earth, drenched in cultural and linguistic inventiveness, and rich in theological undertones, J.R.R. Tolkien is deservedly credited as one of the first and best creators of the modern fantasy genre. Continue Reading...

November 07, 2024

China: Greatest Threat or Paper Tiger?

With the Russo-Ukraine War and Israel’s battles with Hamas and Hezbollah comprising most of corporate media commentary on U.S. foreign policy for more than a year, it’s easy to overlook that many wonks label China our nation’s top security threat. Continue Reading...

November 06, 2024

Why Are Some Countries Still Poor?

This year’s Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to Daron Acemoglu (MIT), Simon Johnson (MIT), and James A. Robinson (U of Chicago) for their work investigating why some countries flourish while others don’t. Continue Reading...

November 04, 2024

Death of a Liberation Theologian

A decade or so ago, I boarded a Miami flight headed for Detroit and found myself sitting next to a short, elderly, Latin American gentleman. Throughout the flight, we exchanged the usual pleasantries that characterize such travel. Continue Reading...

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