Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Reviews

January 07, 2026

His Stylus Was Mightier Than His Sword

Sometime in the late 340s B.C. in Athens, a feud between two powerful men, Apollodoros and Stephanos, culminated in the last of a series of lawsuits that the two had been bringing against each other for the better part of a decade. Continue Reading...
December 30, 2025

St. Augustine: Out of Africa

Quite a number of years ago, it was estimated that every year there are some 500 articles and monographs, both popular and scholarly, written throughout the world on the North African pastor-theologian-saint Augustine (354‒430). Continue Reading...
December 29, 2025

Is America Simply Jefferson vs. Hamilton?

Herbert Butterfield in his The Whig Interpretation of History argued that assessing the past in light of the present, what we call “presentism,” is the source of all historical errors. Our tendency to do so results from a very real problem: How do we impose some sort of narrative order on the complex, disparate, and voluminous material presented in historical reflection? Continue Reading...
December 23, 2025

A Book That Will Shock You

Dr. Michael Pakaluk, a philosopher and professor at the Catholic University of America, has written 11 books, but somehow this was the first to make it into my hands. Pakaluk is a bit of a legend in certain circles. Continue Reading...
December 18, 2025

The Case for Civil Religion

The organization Americans United for Separation of Church and State, founded in 1947, declares that the “U.S. Constitution is a wholly secular document” in making the case that America is and always has been a secular nation. Continue Reading...
December 17, 2025

There Is No Freedom Without Religious Freedom

Publishers often promote books as being “timely,” even when the book in question just seems like the latest on a picked-over topic. Eerdmans, the publisher of John D. Wilsey’s excellent Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer, uses the word “timely” to market Wilsey’s book, too. Continue Reading...
December 10, 2025

Ordering Our Loves for the Good of All

Earlier this year, Vice President J.D. Vance triggered quite a firestorm when he mentioned the Christian concept of ordo amoris, also known as the order of charity. “There’s this old-school—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way—that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,” Vance told Fox News host Sean Hannity. Continue Reading...
November 26, 2025

Avalon Is Thanksgiving for America

Barry Levinson was one of the most successful directors in America around 1990, when he made Avalon, an immigrant Thanksgiving movie trying to sum up the transformation of the American family in the 20th century. Continue Reading...
November 25, 2025

Rage Against the Machine. Or Don’t.

It’s unusual to be in the situation of reviewing a book no one will like. I don’t mean that literally; a handful of people will appreciate Paul Kingsnorth’s new book, Against the Machine, probably the same people who have followed his work for the past decade. Continue Reading...