history – Religion & Liberty Online

March 19, 2025

The What Ifs and What Was of American History

Professor Walter A. McDougall’s new book, Gems of American History, is subtitled The Lecturer’s Art, an apt phrase for a collection of lectures delivered to audiences ranging from the Museum of the American Revolution to the Agnes Irwin School. Continue Reading...

December 19, 2023

William Wilberforce: Abolitionist, Reformer, Evangelical

On February 24, 1807, the House of Commons voted by 283 votes to 16 to end the trade in human slaves in all British territories. The outcome was testimony to the tenacity, zeal, and commitment of the most prominent evangelical Member of Parliament at the end of the 18th century, William Wilberforce (1759–1833). Continue Reading...

November 23, 2021

Negotiating “The Captive Mind” on American campuses

God being dead, Nietzsche warned us, meant that new gods had to be created to fill the void. Our age is godless in some ways, to be sure, but in other ways we have become polytheists with jealous gods competing for our allegiances. Continue Reading...

October 06, 2021

Books offer stability, renewal of American ideals

Long after we’ve all passed on, how will future generations remember us? One answer: books. Certainly there will be landmarks and buildings and other memorabilia that help our descendants understand our society as it exists today, along with the people who helped shape it. Continue Reading...

November 10, 2020

America remains

From the ancient Greeks and Romans – from Heraclitus and Polybius to Livy – Western civilization came to accept the idea that all governments, but especially free ones, go through distinct organic and biological stages. Continue Reading...

November 04, 2020

Race and covenant: recovering the religious roots of American reconciliation

In January 1862, Frederick Douglass, a former slave who became America’s greatest sociopolitical prophet of the nineteenth century, declared that America was facing Armageddon. “The fate of the greatest of all Modern Republics trembles in the balance.” Continue Reading...

October 29, 2020

How Amy Coney Barrett could save America

Although Amy Coney Barrett has only been a Supreme Court justice for a matter of days, she has the potential to act as the harbinger of a renewed America. She is not only potentially a new role model for working women, but she may also serve as the apostle who introduces Americans to a refreshingly positive view of their own Constitution. Continue Reading...

September 25, 2020

Explainer: Can the president appoint a Supreme Court justice during an election year?

President Donald Trump has decided to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just weeks before the 2020 election. Does he have the legal and constitutional power to do so? Continue Reading...

September 23, 2020

Explainer: Is there enough time to confirm a Supreme Court nominee before the election?

The prospect of appointing a Supreme Court justice so close to a presidential election has roiled political discourse. Is such a move unprecedented? Is it even possible? Here are the facts you need to know. Continue Reading...

August 21, 2020

The political theology of global secularism, part 2: secularization and the re-emergence of myth

This is part two of our series, “The Political Theology of Global Secularism.” You may read part one here. Check back frequently for forthcoming installments. – Ed. David Foster Wallace wrote of our secular age: [I]n the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. Continue Reading...

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