Religious Liberty

March 11, 2020

Cleveland church must stop helping the poor or stop being a church: City govt

After being thrown out of a Cleveland church that doubles as a homeless shelter, a vagrant used a pistol to force his way back inside. Unfortunately, the gun-wielding intruder wasn’t the biggest threat to the facility’s survival: Its own government was. Continue Reading...

March 10, 2020

William Barr on how to resist ‘soft despotism’

Throughout the recent battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, the party’s drift from liberalism to progressivism has become abundantly clear, aptly representing our growing cultural divide between ordered liberty and what Alexis de Tocqueville famously called “soft despotism.” Continue Reading...

March 04, 2020

Acton Commentary: Liberty for AOC but not for thee

During a congressional hearing late last week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez likened Christians who refuse to perform medical procedures that violate their religious beliefs to Klansmen, segregationists, and slaveholders. But in this week’s Acton Commentary, Rev. Continue Reading...

February 28, 2020

Clayton Christensen: ‘If you take away religion, you can’t hire enough police’

The Founding Fathers understood, in the words of John Adams, that “we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.” An Ivy League professor recently heard the same conclusion repeated by a Chinese Marxist. Continue Reading...

February 18, 2020

Churches face ‘transfer of ownership’ by socialist government: Bishop

A new chapter of the state’s oppression of religion in the Balkans began last December, when the socialist government of Montenegro passed a law allowing the government to strip a longstanding, recognized church of its property and potentially transfer it to another sect under more amenable leadership. Continue Reading...

January 28, 2020

Churches, tax exemption, and the common good

Are churches tax exempt as a matter of privilege or right? What does tax exception cost communities and churches? Christianity Today has been hosting an interesting debate on these issues. Paul Matzko, Assistant Editor for Tech and Innovation at the CATO Institute, argued in the cover story of this month’s issue that tax exemption comes at a high a cost to the communities in which they are located: This feeling that churches don’t contribute to the common good is not uncommon in America. Continue Reading...

January 24, 2020

Fact facts: President Trump’s new guidance on religion and prayer in schools

When students go back to school Monday morning, they will have more protections to exercise their constitutional freedom of religion than at any time in decades. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos issued updated federal guidelines requiring public schools to respect the religious liberty of students and teachers – or lose federal funding. Continue Reading...

January 09, 2020

Things are getting (even) worse for religious believers in China

There’s more depressing news from China. Its Religious Affairs Office has announced that, not only must all religious organizations get state approval for any activity they undertake, they are also expected to “spread the principles and policies of the Chinese Communist Party.” Continue Reading...

December 18, 2019

Turning points in Catholic social teaching

In a recent Acton Line podcast I began by asking Father Robert Sirico the very large question, what is Catholic social teaching and why is it important today? He answered that the Church has always had a social teaching but that when we usually discuss Catholic social teaching today we begin with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum. Continue Reading...

December 18, 2019

Acton Commentary: How socialism causes atheism

Most socialists have been atheists, but does accepting socialist economic principles make believers more likely to become atheists? This week’s Acton Commentary, which is the cover story of the newest issue of Religion & Liberty, explores survey data and anecdotal evidence that a socialist worldview can lead believers to lose their faith. Continue Reading...

< Previous 1 … 6 7 8 9 10 … 45 Next >