Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Christian Social Thought

November 27, 2013

When Economic Moralism Clashes with Reality

With the November 26 publication of Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, we have the first teaching document that is truly his own. And it very much shows, both in style and content, compared to the encyclical Lumen Fidei, which was mostly written by Pope Benedict XVI. Continue Reading...
November 27, 2013

Cost Of Survival In Syria? Body Parts

Imagine the horror of losing friends and family members. Fleeing your homeland. Scrambling to survive in a refugee camp that is over-crowded and under-sourced. You are now prey for bounty-hunters. The price: your kidney. Continue Reading...
November 26, 2013

Burden Bearing and Biblically Based Healthcare

Over the past year, public discussion about the Affordable Care Act has led many Christians to question the proper roles of government and business in providing healthcare. Too often, though, the question left unexamined is what role the church should have in responding to the medical needs of the community. Continue Reading...
November 26, 2013

The End of Urban Ministry

Derick Scudder, senior pastor at Bethel Chapel Church, an evangelical congregation in the northern part of Philadelphia, recently completed a 4-part series explaining why he is “done with urban ministry.” Bethel Chapel is a “Bible-teaching church focused on the Good News that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. 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...
November 22, 2013

Israel Really Wants A King (Part I)

I recently posted some thoughts at The Power Blog on “God’s Problem With Centralized Power”, which took a macro view of what I believe to be God’s clear disdain for mankind pursuing their own ends instead of His articulated purposes when it comes to how we organize ourselves communally. Continue Reading...
November 21, 2013

Catharsis and ‘Catching Fire’

Today at Ethika Politika, Elyse Buffenbarger weighs in on violence and voyeurism in The Hunger Games: Flipping between reality television and footage of the war in Iraq, Susan Collins was inspired to pen The Hunger Games. Continue Reading...