Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Reviews

July 02, 2025

The Perennial Temptation: To Be as Gods

In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis suggests that technology functions as a bait-and-switch: Users think they’re getting power, but they’re actually giving up their freedom. “What we call Man’s power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by.” Continue Reading...
July 01, 2025

A Telltale Heart in Ukraine

There is blood seeping from under an otherwise ordinary shed door in the city. This possible sign of a crime sets in motion the plot of The Stolen Heart, Andrey Kurkov’s second installment in the delightful series of Kyiv mysteries, set nearly 100 years ago and following the low-brow exploits of a young policeman, Samson Kolechko (“The Ring”). Continue Reading...
June 19, 2025

Not by Beauty Alone

In the past 15 years or so, the general turn among Christians of all stripes (even, perhaps counterintuitively, Christians on the very far right) has been away from a rationalistic approach to the Faith and toward an affirmation of the mystery behind its doctrines. Continue Reading...
June 12, 2025

How Three Cinematic Jesuses Explain American Divisions

Although Americans disagree on almost everything, most of us still really love Jesus. According to a 2023 Barna study, 71% of Americans have a positive view of Jesus. This includes 84% of Christians (which raises questions about the other 26%), 58% of adherents of other faiths, and 40% of those with no faith. Continue Reading...
June 05, 2025

The Curious Task of ‘Abundance’

In their new and highly anticipated book, Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, both journalists and bestselling authors who align ideologically with the political left and American liberalism, refreshingly advocate for growth and abundance. Continue Reading...
June 04, 2025

Liberalism All the Way Down

In 2009, the economist Tyler Cowen began a TEDx Talk in open subversion of the format, telling the audience: “I was told to come here and tell you all stories, but what I’d like to do is instead tell you why I’m suspicious of stories. Continue Reading...
June 03, 2025

The Startling History of Capitol Hill Baptist Church

Whether in the Southern Baptist Convention or the American evangelical movement more broadly, the past 10 years have been rife with political and cultural controversy. Broader shifts in the direction of extreme polarization have infected the church perhaps more than any other social institution. Continue Reading...
May 28, 2025

Andor Understands that Politics Is About Love

Whittaker Chambers couldn’t have predicted that his defection from the Communist Party would start because of a toddler. It was the 1930s, and Chambers—an American spying for the Soviets—was watching his young daughter messily eat in her high chair. Continue Reading...
May 27, 2025

Our Dystopian Second Reality

The first paragraph of Daniel J. Mahoney’s The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now redeems the $29.99 price of admission. In a sentence therein, Mahoney states his thesis: The “ideological” project to replace the only human condition we know with a utopian “Second Reality” oblivious to—indeed at war with—the deepest wellsprings of human nature and God’s creation has taken on renewed virulence in the late modern world, just thirty-five years after the glorious anti-totalitarian revolutions of 1989. Continue Reading...
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