Religion & Liberty Online Archives

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December 19, 2008

Reading Russell Kirk

It’s the end of the year, so the book lists are out. I’m thinking about conservative icon Russell Kirk. If you want a really enjoyable and edifying read, I recommend you begin with The Roots of American Order. Continue Reading...
December 18, 2008

Milton’s Religious Vision of Liberty

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Milton, best known for his masterpiece, Paradise Lost. An essay by Theo Hobson, author of the newly-released Milton’s Vision: The Birth of Christian Liberty (Continuum, 2008), well summarizes Milton’s integrated theological, political, and social vision (HT: Arts & Letters Daily). Continue Reading...
December 09, 2008

Kathleen Parker and “Secular Reason”

Kathleen Parker has a major case of secular reason sickness and it needs to be cured. I’ll keep this short and simple. Here is an offensive line from one of Kat’s latest columns: How about social conservatives make their arguments without bringing God into it? Continue Reading...
November 27, 2008

Thanksgiving: the best holiday

In sports, there is a debate (between interesting and inane) about the meaning of a “Most Valuable Player” award: is it the best “individual” player (often measured in terms of a handful of statistics) or the player who is most valuable to his team (without that player, the team would not be nearly as good)? Continue Reading...
October 13, 2008

A ‘Nazi Think Tank’

Speaking of the Nazis, I highly recommend Heiko A. Oberman’s essay, “From Luther to Hitler,” contained in the posthumously published The Two Reformations (Yale University Press, 2003). The piece is short and pointed, well worth the read, and just one of a number of excellent essays in that collection. Continue Reading...
August 26, 2008

Chydenius and Malthus

Anders Chydenius (1729-1803) The answer of the Nordic philosopher and priest Anders Chydenius (1729-1803) applies equally well to his younger contemporary Malthus as to 21st-century neo-Malthusian paganism: Would the Great Master, who adorns the valley with flowers and covers the cliff itself with grass and mosses, exhibit such a great mistake in man, his masterpiece, that man should not be able to enrich the globe with as many inhabitants as it can support? Continue Reading...
August 13, 2008

Christians at the movies

As The Dark Knight sets box office records, and the Acton Institute plunges deeper into the business of film production, it might be an opportune time to revisit the question of Christianity and movies. Continue Reading...
August 06, 2008

Updates to the PowerBlog

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July 09, 2008

Canada’s common sense

An update on my post about “Canada’s Faltering Freedom” a few weeks ago: Common sense seems to have prevailed up north, as Canada’s human rights commission dismissed a complaint against journalist Mark Steyn for comments made about Islam, while the same body cleared a Catholic magazine of wrongdoing for its comments about homosexuality. Continue Reading...