Religion & Liberty Online Archives

History

November 03, 2017

Edmund Burke, free marketer

It’s not just millennials and other young people who are souring on free markets (44 percent according to a new poll) — there’s also a growing disenchantment among some conservatives. Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg explains the conservative angst as rooted, among other things, in the threat that upheaval in market economies presents to the “permanency, order, tradition, and strong and rooted communities.” Continue Reading...
October 05, 2017

What a Chinese economist learned from American churches

“Only through awe can we be saved. Only through faith can the market economy have a soul.” -Zhao Xiao When French diplomat and historian Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in the 1830s, he marveled at the “associational life” of American communities, noting the particular influence of religion and local churches. Continue Reading...
September 13, 2017

The spiritual core of liberty

Last week FEE published an essay by economist Dierdre McCloskey titled “The Core of Liberty is Economic Liberty.” McCloskey writes, [E]conomic liberty is the liberty about which most ordinary people care. Continue Reading...
August 15, 2017

Thoughts on Christians and race-identity issues

Here’s the deal, short and straight to the point, in light of the events in Charlottesville: Christians should not be within ten miles of this race-identity stuff. Something like “white nationalism” cannot be reconciled with the Gospel’s leap across racial and national barriers. Continue Reading...
August 14, 2017

A call to reaffirm the rational roots of Western identity

In an article published at the Witherspoon Institute, Samuel Gregg argues for the reaffirmation of Western civilization, its roots and its accomplishments. We need not be “faithful Jews or orthodox Christians to affirm Western civilization’s achievements,” but it is vital that we realize “these faiths’ indispensable role in the growth of Western culture,” he writes. Continue Reading...
August 10, 2017

Brains and brawn: Does manual labor belong in the modern economy?

As economic prosperity continues to spread, and as the American economy completes its transition into the age of information, manual labor is increasingly cast down in the popular imagination. When our youth navigate and graduate from high school, they receive a range of pressures to attend four-year colleges and pursue various “white-collar” careers, whether in finance or law or tech or the academy. Continue Reading...