Rev. Ben Johnson is Managing Editor of the Acton Institute's flagship journal Religion & Liberty and edits its transatlantic website.
Posts by Rev. Ben Johnson
November 15, 2019
On Friday, November 8, a 22-year-old French college student set himself on fire outside the government agency that administers university housing and living allowances. The reason? The government had revoked his monthly benefits after he failed his courses for the second year in a row.
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November 14, 2019
When a public school receives a stained glass window from a church, it typically stirs controversy about the separation of church and state. Yet an elementary school has recently installed a window celebrating a self-described “Christian socialist.”
Willard Elementary School in Winchester, Indiana, has festooned its cafeteria with a window donated by the town’s First United Methodist Church, depicting the woman whose name the school bears.
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November 13, 2019
She set out to make a product to help the homeless endure life on the streets during Detroit’s brutal winters. She ended up starting a business that has taken dozens of homeless people from desperation to independence.
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November 12, 2019
In the early church, new converts would often raze pagan temples and build Christian churches on the ruins. A secular version of this triumphant gesture took place this weekend as the unveiling of a statue of President Ronald Reagan, and an invocation of God, took place on the toppled remains of the Berlin Wall.
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November 08, 2019
This weekend, the world celebrates the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On November 9, 1989, East Germans began picking at the wall with hammers, picks – even their bare hands – until the mammoth structure that had divided the city for the past 28 years lay in ruins.
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November 07, 2019
Albert Einstein became the most celebrated scientist in history 100 years ago today. “Revolution in Science, New Theory of the Universe, Newtonian Ideas Overthrown,” read a headline in
The Times of London published on November 7, 1919, making the introverted scientist a global figure.
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November 06, 2019
As observers in the United States digest the results of the November 2019 election, UK voters begin their own election season. Prime Minister Boris Johnson left Buckingham Palace on Wednesday morning, saying that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has agreed to a general election on December 12.
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November 04, 2019
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rarely expresses thanks to the divine, much less for the system of global capitalism. When the democratic socialist combines both sentiments, as he did this weekend, it is worth reporting.
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November 01, 2019
The Acton Institute continues our outreach to the 275 million people who speak French as a first language with a new translation of an article on a vital topic. In this case, we share the news of a UN official who countered the all-pervasive pessimism over climate change, telling young people: Live your lives without fear.
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October 31, 2019
Their last remaining dispute in the Chicago schools strike could be resolved if both sides understood a basic economic concept taught by one of the nation’s Founding Fathers. Although the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union announced a tentative agreement Wednesday evening, the Second City’s 300,000-plus students still began their eleventh day outside the classroom Thursday, because the CTU added a new demand Wednesday night.
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