Rev. Ben Johnson is Executive Editor of the Acton Institute's flagship journal Religion & Liberty and edits its transatlantic website.
Posts by Rev. Ben Johnson
May 18, 2020
The 1619 Project’s introductory essay, written by Nikole Hannah-Jones, won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary—and, notably, not for history or public service. That distinction is illuminating. The 1619 Project makes unfounded assertions about the role of slavery in American political and economic history, and it inverts reality to portray slave owners as the embodiment of free-market principles.
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May 13, 2020
Perhaps nowhere is the disconnect between private citizens’ views of reality and those of the government in greater contrast than the role of religion in society. Acton Institute President and Co-founder Rev.
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May 09, 2020
On May 6, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos unveiled new Title IX regulations concerning sexual harassment and sexual assault on campus. Despite outraged cries of “turning back the clock” that echo across both sides of the Atlantic, the 2,033-page code reasserts the moral, ethical and legal norms that formed the basis of Western society.
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May 08, 2020
The government-focused debate over how to emerge from the coronavirus shutdown has been too dismissive of faith and private initiative, says Acton Institute President and Co-founder Rev. Robert A. Sirico in a new radio interview.
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May 05, 2020
On Friday at
The Stream, I wrote about the policy of releasing prisoners from penitentiaries in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Perhaps hundreds of those who have been released have committed new crimes, compounding the tragedies the American people must suffer during this global pandemic.
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May 04, 2020
William F. Buckley Jr. frequently told the joke about the doctor who asked his patient what he planned to do now that he had only a few months left to live.
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May 01, 2020
A growing number of conservatives have said the behavior of certain Ivy League colleges demands that the federal government seize their endowments. But will confiscating this source of nonprofit funds give the government a legal justification to do the same to tax-exempt churches?
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April 30, 2020
The Acton Institute is helping popularize a left-leaning professor’s stark criticism of the universal basic income among the world’s 275-million Francophones. A new French language translation of “Marx vs. the universal basic income” recounts the findings of Ive Marx, a supporter of income redistribution.
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April 23, 2020
Popular culture presents the human race as competitors in a selfish struggle for the survival of the fittest. However, new scientific research finds that the human race has a natural tendency to cooperate—and that religion increases philanthropic giving and voluntarism during a crisis.
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April 17, 2020
For a few moments, filmmaker Christopher Rufo’s documentary
America Lost seemed in danger of becoming an anachronism. But in the age of coronavirus shutdown orders, his portrait of life in the forgotten, jobless corners of America could not be more timely.
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