Religion & Liberty Online Archives

History

October 02, 2024

Video Vikings and Christian Conversion

When Viking reenactors (like me) chat around campfires among our wedge-shaped tents, certain topics are likely to come up in conversation. One favorite: everything that’s wrong with the History Channel’s Vikings TV series (2013–2020). Continue Reading...
July 04, 2024

What to the Abolitionist Was the Fourth of July?

In academia and culture alike, it has become fashionable to dismiss the principles associated with American independence as shortsighted at best and intentionally exclusionary at worst. “Neither Jefferson nor most of the founders intended to abolish slavery,” wrote Nikole Hannah-Jones in the New York Times Magazine debut of the 1619 Project in August 2019. Continue Reading...
June 18, 2024

The Waning of the Modern Age

Happy centennial, Johan Huizinga! He wrote his famous history book, The Waning of the Middle Ages, in 1919, but an English translation came out in 1924 and changed the way many thought about writing history. Continue Reading...
May 30, 2024

A Graves Goodbye to WWI

This year marks the 95th anniversary of the book that for many solidified the view that World War I dealt a deadly a blow to European culture: Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That. Continue Reading...
March 28, 2024

John Williamson Nevin and the Revival of the Evangelical Mind

While the long 19th century gave birth to a variety of intellectual movements, it also saw its fair share of anti-intellectualism. The fallout from the Second Great Awakening was one such example; this era of American religious life witnessed the rise of pietism and biblicism, both of which called into question the value of both classical theological education and church history as a guide to biblical interpretation. Continue Reading...
March 15, 2024

The Ides of Death

The name of the Acton Institute’s magazine, Religion and Liberty, seems to many people an oxymoron. The word “religion” apparently emerged from religare, “to bind together, to constrain.” How can something that binds be liberating? Continue Reading...