Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Virtue

August 28, 2013

A Dream Celebrated and Sabotaged

As we mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream Speech,” we find reason for pause, for praise, and for lament. There is much to celebrate because MLK’s dream has been experienced for many blacks, albeit imperfectly, especially for the black middle-class. Continue Reading...
August 27, 2013

The Blessed Business of Beer

A recent story from Catholic News Service highlights an interesting encounter between markets and monasticism, a subject that I have commented on before, this time centered around the Monastery of St. Continue Reading...
August 22, 2013

Prudent Stewardship and the Cappadocian Fathers

Today at Ethika Politika, I examine a few rules of prudent stewardship that follow from the teachings of the Cappadocian fathers on poverty, almsgiving, and fasting. One of the great challenges in this area today is how best to live out in our present context the statement of St. Continue Reading...
August 16, 2013

Virtuous Bribery? Care for Prisoners in the Early Church

In her historical study of wealth and poverty in the early Church, Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich, Helen Rhee offers the following interesting historical tidbit with regards to how early Christians were able to minister to their imprisoned brothers and sisters who awaited martyrdom: Bribing the prison guards, which must have cost a certain amount, features frequently enough in the Christian texts. Continue Reading...
August 16, 2013

Private Virtue and Public Speech

Sometimes we are not aware of the foolishness of our private speech until our words go public. This is one of the morals of the story of Philadelphia Eagle’s receiver Riley Cooper’s n-word slip. Continue Reading...
August 07, 2013

Dispersing Poor People And Crime

Emily Badger at The Atlantic Wire posts a common sense story regarding the debate about whether or not the dispersing of poor people out of inner-city housing projects into suburban neighborhoods, through government housing voucher programs, increases crime rates. Continue Reading...
July 16, 2013

Smart Drugs: When Performance Rules

When a culture values individualism as a virtue, it sends a message to young people that what really matters in life is your performance. To make matters worse, this performance pressure is coupled with the idea that unless you are on top, you just don’t matter. Continue Reading...