Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Book Reviews

November 15, 2023

The Satanic Virtues

I’ve been rereading Milton’s Paradise Lost. I am not alone in this; earlier this year, every time I checked Twitter, someone was commenting on Paradise Lost. There seemed to be a gravitational pull toward Milton’s epic. Continue Reading...
November 10, 2023

God vs. Absurdity

“In fact, the fundamental claim of this book is that if one believes the world actually is intelligible—that things make sense, and ultimate explanation can be had—then God exists.” This is the provocative thesis of philosopher and writer Pat Flynn, whose new book, The Best Argument for God, insists that the real philosophical dilemma we face is not between theism and atheism but between theism and absurdity, or a reality that is utterly unintelligible. Continue Reading...
November 09, 2023

Walker Percy’s Guide to These Deranged Times

Forty years ago, the philosopher and novelist Walker Percy published what is easily the strangest book of his writing career. Lost in the Cosmos distills the major themes of both his novels and his philosophical essays into a little over 250 pages of multiple-choice questions (and peculiar answers), hypotheticals, and brief stories. Continue Reading...
November 08, 2023

Recovering the Melting Pot

Up until a few decades ago, it was common to think of the United States as a melting pot. People from all over the world would come to this great country, adopt American values, and learn English while also bringing a piece of their former culture to mix into the broader American culture. Continue Reading...
November 03, 2023

Discriminating Harvard

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA), which invalidated the use of race as a criterion for college admissions, dominated several summer news cycles and prompted no shortage of opinion pieces and responses. Continue Reading...
November 01, 2023

Overlooking Rural America

With magnifying glass in hand, a budding naturalist can learn a great deal about ants scuttling around the driveway. Were the ants to glance upward, however, they might learn even more about the eager eyes—blown up from the ant’s perspective to enormous proportions—looking down at them. Continue Reading...
October 31, 2023

Setting the World Ablaze, Thales-Style

Business and educational entrepreneur Robert L. Luddy is a conservative Catholic who embraces dynamism and adaptability in bringing visions to life. Thales Academy is one such vision. In his new book, The Thales Way, Luddy provides the blueprint for and origin story of this now immensely successful classical school franchise. Continue Reading...
October 27, 2023

Halcyon: A Resurrection Without Salvation

Set in the opening decade of the current millennium, Elliot Ackerman’s Halcyon is a tale based on many alternative historical events—most notably, that Al Gore won the 2000 election, oversaw the capture of Osama bin Laden shortly after the 9/11 attacks, declined to launch into the Iraq conflict, and, most relevantly, funded advanced medical research that made possible the book’s central premise: the ability to revivify the dead. Continue Reading...
October 20, 2023

Is Neoliberalism Dead?

Louis Menand wrote a curious article for the New Yorker called “The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism.” The article is curious on two fronts: First, though published in a progressive magazine, the article is largely judicious and fair to the concept of neoliberalism. Continue Reading...