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 03, 2017

When is Tax Freedom Day 2017 in the EU?

Tax Freedom Day dawns in the U.S. earlier than 26 of the EU’s 28 member states. For two European nations, the date when employees stopped paying taxes and began earning money for themselves and their families came last week. Continue Reading...
July 31, 2017

Free trade is good stewardship of creation

Christians seeking to be good stewards of God’s creation sometimes find themselves torn. The environmentalist movement tells them that the most destructive force ever unleashed upon Mother Nature is rapacious “neoliberal” capitalism, which they also know has has been the greatest producer of wealth in history. Continue Reading...
July 26, 2017

The one virtue personified by all good fathers and entrepreneurs

  It has become passe to accuse defenders of the free market of selfishness and atomization. Even Pope Francis recently denounced “libertarian individualism.” But Mihail Neamtu, in a new essay for Religion & Liberty Transatlantic, argues that open markets rely on one specific virtue, best exemplified by fathers and entrepreneurs, which requires them to care for others: Over nearly half a century, secular academia, pop culture, and the managerial welfare State have undermined an important moral quality of the West: individual responsibility, rooted in inherent human dignity. Continue Reading...
July 25, 2017

Brexit: From poultry to prosperity

An unusual debate – over chlorinated chickens, of all things – is showing how Brexit and free markets can lead the UK and the developing world to greater flourishing. The debate has been brewing for years. Continue Reading...
July 21, 2017

The kind of ‘tolerance’ the West needs

In the modern lexicon, “tolerance” stands alongside “equality” as an unquestioned and absolute good, a cornerstone of transatlantic values. True tolerance has brought the West unparalleled prosperity. But what kind of “tolerance” should we advance, and what other cultural concepts must support it? Continue Reading...