Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Social philosophy'

August 29, 2014

Social Ethics in a Season of Suffering

In a review by Micah Watson of Get Your Hands Dirty: Essays on Christian Social Thought (and Action) earlier this year at The Gospel Coalition, Watson described the book as “akin to a social event with heavy hors d’oevres served throughout the evening.” Continue Reading...
July 24, 2014

Why Liberals Should Support the Hobby Lobby Decision

When the Supreme Court ruled on the Hobby Lobby case, the near universal reaction by liberals was that it was a travesty of epic proportion. But as self-professed liberal law professor Brett McDonnell argues, the left should embrace the Hobby Lobby decision since it supports liberal values: The first question was: Can for-profit corporations invoke religious liberty rights under RFRA? Continue Reading...
July 10, 2014

The Last Article on the Hobby Lobby Case You’ll Ever Need to Read

Are you sick to death of hearing about the recent Hobby Lobby contraceptive mandate kerfuffle? Me too. Yes, it’s one of the most important religious liberty cases in decades. But the constant debates about the case on blogs, newspapers, TV, radio, and social media, has left even those of us concerned about freedom beaten and exhausted. Continue Reading...
July 08, 2014

David Brat’s Religious Virtues

In a piece today for the NYT Magazine, economics reporter Binyamin Appelbaum examines David Brat’s fusion of faith and free-market economics. Appelbaum finds that mixture problematic, to say the least, but it’s hard to sort out whether it is the religious faith or the free-market sympathies that Appelbaum finds more troubling. Continue Reading...
July 02, 2014

American Freedom: Is It Overrated?

We Americans will celebrate 238 years of freedom this Friday. In 1776, the 13 colonies unanimously declared: When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. Continue Reading...
July 01, 2014

The Root of All Freedoms: Kuyper on Freedom of Conscience

The Obama administration’s HHS mandate has led to significant backlash among religious groups, each claiming that certain provisions violate their religious beliefs and freedom of conscience. Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling was a victory for such groups, but other disputes are well underway, with many more to come. Continue Reading...
June 27, 2014

From Steadfast Conservatives to the Faith and Family Left: Highlights from Pew Research’s Political Typology Survey

In discussions of political issues, the American public is too often described in a binary format: Left/Right, Republican/Democrat, Red State/Blue State. But a new survey by the Pew Research Center takes a more granular look at our current political typology by sorting voters into cohesive groups based on their attitudes and values: Partisan polarization – the vast and growing gap between Republicans and Democrats – is a defining feature of politics today. Continue Reading...
June 11, 2014

On the Universal Common Good

Today at Ethika Politika, I examine the longstanding claim of the Roman Catholic Church that the universal character of the common good in our present era necessitates a world political authority. Continue Reading...