Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Arts

March 24, 2014

Lorde, Poverty, and Envy

At Reason Thaddeus Russell argues that Macklemore and Lorde embody a kind of progressive cultural critique of capitalism, captured in the attack on “conspicuous consumption” made famous by Thorstein Veblen. Russell traces the “progressive lineage” of this critique: “Their songs continue a long tradition, rooted in progressivism, of protests against the pleasures of the poor.” Continue Reading...
March 17, 2014

Radio Free Acton: For The Life Of The World

In this edition of Radio Free Acton, Paul Edwards goes behind the scenes at the premiere of For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles, the new curriculum produced by the Acton Institute that examines God’s mission in the world and our place in it. Continue Reading...
March 12, 2014

The Four Questions of Christian Education

One of the advantages of living in a free society is that parents have multiple options for how they can educate their children, including enrolling them in religious education. Christian education is unique in that teachers can integrate faith and learning in the classroom to unlock academic disciplines from mere materialistic or rational concerns to direct interdependence and collaboration with the providential work of the Triune God in his plan to redeem the entire cosmos. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2014

Pete Seeger, 1919-2014

Pete Seeger performing the Woodie Guthrie song “This Land is Your Land” at President Obama’s “We Are One” Inaugural Concert, January 19, 2009. Environmentalist, agent provocateur, leftist activist, recovering Communist and ardent redistributionist – all apply to the folksinger who died Monday in New York at the age of 94. Continue Reading...
December 27, 2013

The Prince and the Pirate

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the publication of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, and over at The University Bookman I have written up some thoughts on the modern classic, “As You Wish: True (Self-)Love and The Princess Bride.” Continue Reading...
November 26, 2013

‘Catching Fire’ and the Call to Freedom

Last weekend the second film based on the immensely popular Hunger Games series of books, Catching Fire, opened in theaters. One interesting way to view the world of Panem, Suzanne Collins’ totalitarian society that serves as the setting for the drama, is as a synthesis of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Continue Reading...
October 30, 2013

Poet Christian Wiman: Getting Glimpses Of God

Former editor of Poetry magazine Christian Wiman struggles, like many of us, to make sense of suffering and faith. His struggle is poetic: God goes belonging to every riven thing. He’s made the things that bring him near, made the mind that makes him go. Continue Reading...
October 18, 2013

Drawing Attention To God’s Thumbprint In The World

Every artist, whatever the medium, is a pale example of our Creator God, and the best artists know that. James Lee Burke, whose novels are full of violence and glimpses of evil, seems to be an unlikely candidate for drawing attention to “God’s thumbprint” in our world, but he consciously does just that. Continue Reading...