Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'religion'

The Religious Ransom of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

I’ve watched hundreds of westerns over the years, and 48 years ago even wrote my doctoral dissertation on the politics of the genre from 1948 to 1962. I wasn’t surprised when movie watcher Hannah Long early this year called The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) the best western ever made: John Ford’s film makes the top 10 on just about everyone’s list. Continue Reading...

Get Back to Work if You Know What’s Good for You

David L. Bahnsen’s new book, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life, proposes a counterintuitive, if not contrarian, thesis. An extremely successful businessman (his firm, The Bahnsen Group, manages over $5 billion in assets) and a bona fide nerd who loves to write about faith, politics, and economics, Bahnsen argues that we’re not overworked—we’re underworked. Continue Reading...

Can This Man—and the Black Church—Save America?

America is facing the political rerun from hell: a seemingly inevitable rematch between two of the most divisive presidential candidates in recent memory. We’re once again headed for the partisan trenches in this most beloved of quadrennial fiascos: the battle to see which very senior citizen will have access to nuclear codes (and the presidential X account) for the next four years. Continue Reading...

Discriminating Harvard

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA), which invalidated the use of race as a criterion for college admissions, dominated several summer news cycles and prompted no shortage of opinion pieces and responses. Continue Reading...

Tim Keller Lives

I’ve been a Christian for almost half a century, sometimes with a critical spirit toward sermons. So I’ll now write something I’ve never written before and never expect to write again: the best preacher I’ve ever heard “died” last Friday. Continue Reading...

Liberty Is Not the Product of Any One Religion

Paul D. Miller, a professor of the practice of international affairs at Georgetown University, has argued in a recent essay in Christianity Today that Christianity is not necessary for democracy. Miller challenges “conservative evangelicals” who believe that “Christianity is necessary for a free society.” Continue Reading...

To Save the West, Leave the Cave

Spencer Klavan’s How to Save the West: Ancient Wisdom for 5 Modern Crises identifies five crises he believes are plaguing the West and slowly undermining America: Reality, the Body, Meaning, Religion, and Regimes. Continue Reading...