Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Christian Social Thought

February 27, 2015

Net Neutrality News & Roundup

Yesterday the FCC reclassified Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act, with additional provisions from Title III and Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Continue Reading...
February 18, 2015

Look Under the Bed! ‘Rand-Baiters’ Target Conservative Catholics

Over at The Stream, John Zmirak takes on a new McCarthyism which he says smears small-government Catholics as libertarian heretics. He compares the “outrageous instances of red-baiting” during the 1950s to the current practice by some leftist Catholics who tar conservative opponents indiscriminately as devotees of Ayn Rand, whether or not they have actual evidence of such sympathies. Continue Reading...
February 17, 2015

Would Kuyper go to Mars?

In his otherwise excellent work The Problem of Poverty, the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper, as a man of his time (the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), commended the merits of colonialism as if there were not already people in other lands with their own calling to “till the earth” that God had made. Continue Reading...
February 17, 2015

New Report: Orthodox Monastic Communities in the United States

The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America has published a new report on Orthodox Monastic Communities in the United States (here). The report contains a lot of great information (“great” for nerds like me, anyway), including a whole section entitled, “‘Monastic Economy:’ Ownership of Property and Sources of Income in US Orthodox Monasteries.” Continue Reading...
February 11, 2015

Book Giveaway: Win All 4 Primers on Faith, Work, and Economics!

Through Christian’s Library Press, the Acton Institute has published four tradition-specific primers on faith, work, and economics, including Baptist, Wesleyan, Pentecostal, and Reformed perspectives. Each offers a distinct contribution to the subject, and when taken together provides a rich and coherent framework for Christian stewardship. Continue Reading...
February 03, 2015

How Puritans Became Capitalists

In his book, Heavenly Merchandize, Mark Valeri, professor of church history at Union Presbyterian Seminary, finds that the American economy as we know it emerged from a series of important shifts in the views of Puritan ministers: IDEAS: You’re saying that the market didn’t rise at the expense of religion, but was enabled by it? Continue Reading...
February 02, 2015

Thomas Merton on Marxism and Monasticism

A friend of mine recently shared this short clip of Thomas Merton’s last lecture. He has some interesting things to say about communism and monasticism, as well as what is clearly a sly promo for Coca-Cola at the end. Continue Reading...