Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Christian Social Thought

May 22, 2012

The Spiritual Temptation of the Welfare State

The conditions under which the government transfers wealth are different than the conditions under which the church transfers wealth, says James R. Rodgers. Yet many Christian leaders are tempted to use the power of the state to do what is required of the church: Ginning up donations, however, is the hard road. Continue Reading...
May 21, 2012

Catholic Diocese of Washington, DC and Forty Other Groups Sue Obama Administration

At least forty Catholic dioceses and organizations in the United States have filed suit against the Obama Administration for violation of First Amendment rights.  According to CNSnews.com, The suits filed by the Catholic organizations focus on the regulation that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced last August and finalized in January that requires virtually all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that can cause abortions. Continue Reading...
May 21, 2012

If Christ is Lord, Everything Matters

Recently we had an excellent discussion on twitter about the following idea that @JakeBishop8 shared: “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” Continue Reading...
May 14, 2012

Are Islam and Liberal Democracy Compatible?

This was the topic of our latest Campus Martius discussion group at the Istituto Acton office in Rome. Our guest speaker was law professor David Forte, who presented some of the challenges in furthering liberal democracy in Muslim-majority countries. Continue Reading...
May 09, 2012

The Impious Legacy of US Education

“Even the conventional everyday morality,” writes Vladimir Solovyov, demands that a man should hand down to his children not only the goods he has acquired, but also the capacity to work for the further maintenance of their lives. Continue Reading...
May 02, 2012

The Nobility and Greatness of Work

May 1st was the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker on the Catholic calendar, and in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI offered a short reflection on human labor when speaking to construction workers (via Whispers in the Loggia): I’m taken in mind to how, in the New Testament, in the profession of Jesus before his public ministry, the word “tecton” appears, which we translate as “carpenter,” because then homes were mostly homes of wood. Continue Reading...