Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Christian Social Thought

January 10, 2021

Today is Lord Acton’s 187th birthday. His philosophy should guide our next two centuries

Sunday January 10, 2021, is Lord Acton’s 187th birthday. This difficult era of a global pandemic, a crisis in institutions, and civil unrest seem strange times indeed to look back on the life and legacy of a Victorian historian of ideas – but, as Lord Acton himself remarked, “if the Past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and surest emancipation.” Continue Reading...
January 05, 2021

Is Raphael Warnock right that ‘the early church was a socialist church’?

Raphael Warnock, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Georgia, believes that the Bible teaches socialism and that embracing a Marxist economic platform “actually makes you a Christian.” In a sermon delivered in 2016 in Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, Warnock chided that “evangelicals who stand on the Bible” but reject socialism need to “go back and read the Bible.” Continue Reading...
July 14, 2020

Integralism’s biggest fallacy

Recently, conservative circles have seen a sharp uptick in support for “Integralism.” Integralism is the belief that “the state should officially endorse the Catholic faith and act as the secular arm of the Church by punishing heresy among the baptized and by restricting false religious practices if they threaten Catholicism,” according to Robert T. Continue Reading...
June 25, 2020

America’s two warring views of race

America’s current racial strife has roots deeper than recent controversies involving the police. One factor greatly exacerbating these tensions is the contrast in worldviews over the relative importance of “race” in one’s life and how those in dialogue view the American founding, according to Ismael Hernandez, executive director of the Freedom and Virtue Institute and a longtime lecturer at Acton University. Continue Reading...