Rev. Ben Johnson

Rev. Ben Johnson is an Eastern Orthodox priest and served as executive editor of the Acton Institute from 2016 to 2021. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including National Review, the American Spectator, The Guardian, National Catholic Register, Providence, Jewish World Review, Human Events, and the American Orthodox Institute. His personal websites are therightswriter.com and RevBenJohnson.com. You can find him on X: @therightswriter.

Posts by Rev. Ben Johnson

August 23, 2017

The socialist threat to Catholic schools in Spain

The Spanish government is currently run by the center-Right People’s Party, led by Mariano Rajoy. However, should Spain’s socialist parties return to power, they have announced their intention to remove Catholic education from the curriculum and replace it with a secular curriculum that teaches fidelity to the government. Continue Reading...
August 21, 2017

Why Christians must get poverty and inequality right

Over the last two decades, global poverty has plummeted and the world’s poorest people have steadily climbed out of the shadow of death. Yet many Christians cannot distinguish between dire poverty and income inequality, falsely believe both are worsening, and oppose the very policies that have lifted the world’s poor out of malnutrition. Continue Reading...
August 16, 2017

Frank Bruni, Charlottesville, and the retreat from reason

On Saturday, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote a column that appeared to promote the same kind of identity politics that exploded in violence one day earlier in Charlottesville. He began: I’m a white man, so you should listen to absolutely nothing I say, at least on matters of social justice. Continue Reading...
August 11, 2017

Brexit’s £1.5 billion boon to charities

In the United States, it is considered scandalous when a partisan public official tries to deny a charity its tax-exempt status. But a combination of EU and UK law forces British charities to pay £1.5 billion in taxes to the government every year – something a leading charitable coalition says that Brexit could change. Continue Reading...
August 09, 2017

Classical high school students say this attribute defines the West

Josh Herring teaches history at a secular, classical academy – but as with all teachers, sometimes he learns valuable lessons from his students. As high school students at the Thales Academy progress from studying ancient cultures to modernity, they invariably tell him they are struck by one principle that sets the Judeo-Christian West apart from previous civilizations. Continue Reading...