Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Christian Social Thought

Westminster Abbey praises God for the NHS

Westminster Abbey held a service on Thursday commemorating the 70th anniversary of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS). At the service Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, said that the “NHS is the most powerful and visible expression of our Christian heritage, because it sprang out of a concern that the poor should be able to be treated as well as the rich.” Continue Reading...

How can a Catholic be a socialist?

In a Turing Test, a computer tries to pass for human in a natural language conversation. During the test a human judge engages in the conversation but doesn’t know if it’s with a human or a machine emulating human responses. Continue Reading...

Video: Rev. Ben Johnson on First Things blaming democracy and capitalism for abortion

Rev. Ben Johnson, editor of the Acton Institute Religion & Liberty Transatlantic project, appears on the Stephen Herreid Show on YouTube to talk about his critique of First Things editor Matt Schmitz’s essay which blamed democracy and capitalism for Ireland’s repeal by referendum of its 8th Amendment, which “recognizes the equal right to life of the pregnant woman and the unborn.” Continue Reading...

How property rights originated from Christian theology

Property rights originated from Christian theology, and have proven themselves empirically over the past couple hundred years, says economist Eric Falkenstein. “The liberal ideas that gave rise to the Enlightenment are generally thought (eg, Steven Pinker) to be a break from a religious thinking,” adds Falkenstein. Continue Reading...

How Kuyper can bring evangelicals and Catholics together

Have Catholics sacrificed the integrity of their faith tradition by allying with conservative evangelicals (like me)? Matthew Walther, a national correspondent at The Week, thinks so. Walther claims the alliance between Catholics and evangelical Protestants was born of supposedly shared values. Continue Reading...

Bernie Sanders, jobs, and what work really is

Last month the Washington Post reported, “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will announce a plan for the federal government to guarantee a job paying $15 an hour and health-care benefits to every American worker “who wants or needs one,”…” These jobs would be the product of hundreds of government projects initiated in, “…infrastructure, care giving, the environment, education and other goals.” Continue Reading...