Religion & Liberty Online Archives

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June 14, 2006

Follies of the Wise

Here’s a link to the introduction to Frederick Crews’ new book, Follies of the Wise, which includes the following statement: Having made a large intellectual misstep in younger days, I am aware that rationality isn’t an endowment but an achievement that can come undone at any moment. Continue Reading...
June 08, 2006

Why I am a classical liberal

Social and political theory is widely and, quite often, grossly misunderstood. What we call conservatism today, at least in several very important ways, was once called federalism, or classical liberalism. Continue Reading...
May 19, 2006

Toward “peaceful coexistence” in India

I blogged last week on the ongoing dispute between China and the Vatican. Another demographic giant with tremendous economic potential—and some religious freedom issues—is India. ZENIT reports on Pope Benedict’s address to the new Indian ambassador to the Holy See (May 18 daily dispatch). Continue Reading...
May 12, 2006

Tax those greedy Christians

Over at the Alabama Policy Institute, Gary Palmer takes on University of Alabama law professor Susan Pace Hamill and her assertion that Christians have an obligation to pay higher taxes. In “No Biblical Mandate for Higher Taxes,” Palmer examines her “theocratic tax inquisition.” Continue Reading...
May 05, 2006

A time to tear, a time to speak

“There is a time for everything, / and a season for every activity under heaven…a time to tear and a time to mend, / a time to be silent and a time to speak” (Ecclesiastes 3:1,7 NIV). Continue Reading...
May 02, 2006

Religion, economics, and the zoo

Ota Benga Sometimes the spirit of an age prevails with such force that it moves the highest pinnacles of cultural influence to support the grossest indignities. Consider the early 1900s. During this time, the prevailing zeitgeist of Darwinism gave rise to the tragic dehumanization of a Pygmy named Ota Benga. Continue Reading...
May 01, 2006

St. Joseph the Worker

Today is the feast of St. Joseph the Worker: Work is a good thing for man-a good thing for his humanity-because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfilment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes “more a human being”. Continue Reading...
April 24, 2006

The morality of narrative imagination

While doing research for my upcoming lecture at the Drexel University Libraries’ Scholarly Communication Symposium, I ran across this excellent book by Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (New York: Free Press, 1997). Continue Reading...
April 19, 2006

Ideology and terror

The name Robespierre is synonymous with terror and mass murder. But the author of The Terror that accompanied the French Revolution was also the prototype of the revolutionary leader who would become all too familiar in the 20th Century. Continue Reading...
April 04, 2006

First Things imbroglio

A former editor at First Things, Damon Linker, has written a piece for The New Republic, which attacks, among others, his former boss, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Linker claims that Neuhaus is a “theocon,” who wants to merge religious authority and political power. Continue Reading...