Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Virtue

September 12, 2012

Leaves and Fruit: The Spiritual Value of Manual Labor

In his Acton Commentary today, Jordan Ballor writes, All work has a spiritual dimension because the human person who works in whatever capacity does so as an image-bearer of God. “While the classic Greek mind tended to scorn work with the hands,” write Berghoef and DeKoster, “the Bible suggests that something about it structures the soul.” Continue Reading...
August 20, 2012

Catholics and Orthodox Seek Reconciliation in Poland

On Friday, representatives from the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, including His Holiness Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus and Metropolitan Josef Michalik, President of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, signed a joint message committing to further work toward reconciliation between the Russian and Polish peoples and between the two churches. Continue Reading...
July 17, 2012

Os Guinness on Solzhenitsyn and Truth

Os Guinness makes the concise yet brilliant defense of the centrality of truth in the introduction to One Word of Truth: A portrait of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn by David Aikman. This short introduction not only offers keen insight into Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but directly speaks to the ills of our society. Continue Reading...
June 21, 2012

Care Bears are Cheaper

I have recently written on the moral implications of growing tuition costs and the resulting student loan debt (here). One factor I did not explore in depth was the reason for rising tuition costs, which, adjusted for inflation, have more than doubled since the 1980s. Continue Reading...
May 25, 2012

A Liberal Wolf in Communitarian Clothing

The problem with communitarianism, claims Bradley C. S. Watson, is that it views religion as an instrumental good and individual virtue as destructive: Communitarianism comes to sight as a movement that sees, far more clearly than liberalism, that the private sphere and private goods are rooted in, and in turn have an effect on, public goods. Continue Reading...
May 14, 2012

Are Islam and Liberal Democracy Compatible?

This was the topic of our latest Campus Martius discussion group at the Istituto Acton office in Rome. Our guest speaker was law professor David Forte, who presented some of the challenges in furthering liberal democracy in Muslim-majority countries. Continue Reading...
May 09, 2012

The Impious Legacy of US Education

“Even the conventional everyday morality,” writes Vladimir Solovyov, demands that a man should hand down to his children not only the goods he has acquired, but also the capacity to work for the further maintenance of their lives. Continue Reading...
May 01, 2012

The Perils of Pedocracy

“Anyone concerned with the future,” wrote Sergius Bulgakov, is most anxious about the younger generation. But to be spiritually dependent on it, to truckle to its opinions and take it as a standard, testifies to a society’s spiritual weakness. Continue Reading...