Religion & Liberty Online Archives

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July 19, 2013

Jayabalan on Detroit Bankruptcy

In an interview with Vatican Radio, Acton Rome office director Kishore Jayabalan offers perspective on the bankruptcy filing yesterday by the city of Detroit. Jayabalan told the network that Detroit is “really a city that’s on its knees.” Continue Reading...
July 18, 2013

Tithing and the Economic Potential of the Church

Self-proclaimed “tithe hacker” Mike Holmes has a helpful piece at RELEVANT Magazine on how tithing could “change the world.” (Jordan Ballor offers some additional insights here.) Holmes begins by observing that “tithers make up only 10-25 percent of a normal congregation” and that “Christians are only giving at 2.5 percent per capita,” proceeding to ponder what might be accomplished if the church were to increase its giving to the typical 10 percent. Continue Reading...
July 16, 2013

Jonathan Witt: ‘Memo to Tinseltown’

The newly released movies, Lone Ranger and Iron Man 3 both feature an evil capitalist as the villain. Writing at The American Spectator, Jonathan Witt addresses this common practice in Hollywood: This media stereotype is so persistent, so one-sided, and so misleading that an extended definition of capitalism is in order. Continue Reading...
July 16, 2013

The Roots of Enduring Cultural Change

Over at Christianity Today, Andy Crouch confronts modern society’s increasing skepticism toward institutional structures, arguing that without them, all of our striving toward cultural transformation is bound to falter: For cultural change to grow and persist, it has to be institutionalized, meaning it must become part of the fabric of human life through a set of learnable and repeatable patterns. Continue Reading...
July 15, 2013

‘News’ Makes Us Dumber

Constantly in search of a sensational story, the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst once sent a telegram to a leading astronomer that read: “Is there life on Mars? Please cable 1,000 words.” Continue Reading...
July 15, 2013

D.C.’s ‘Big Box’ Minimum Wage Hurts the Poor

A mere recital of the economic policies of governments all over the world is calculated to cause any serious student of economics to throw up his hands in despair. What possible point can there be, he is likely to ask, in discussing refinements and advancements in economic theory, when popular thought and the actual policies of governments…have not yet caught up with Adam Smith? Continue Reading...
July 15, 2013

What Happened To ‘News?’

You remember “news”, don’t you? Every evening, a somber-faced reporter would come into your living room, and deliver the serious stories of the day. There was the body count from the Vietnam War, or the Watergate scandal. Continue Reading...
July 12, 2013

Pelosi and the ‘Bible Folks’

According to Breitbart, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday was caught making claims about “Bible Folks” that weren’t exactly accurate: Pelosi told the assembled media: ‘The fact is that many Republicans in our country support comprehensive immigration reform.The Continue Reading...
July 12, 2013

The Boston Beer Company’s Hypocrisy

As a brief follow-up to the story about the Samuel Adams beer company’s decision to redact “by their Creator” from a reference to the Declaration of Independence in a recent ad campaign, it’s worth examining again the company’s justification for that decision. Continue Reading...