The Acton Institute has recently crossed the quarter-century threshold, and I’m very encouraged that we’re even more invigorated now by our combined missions and the programs and publications initiated to support them. Much of this invigoration derives from the many wonderful people who have shared their wisdom and experiences with us, while other inspiration has come from the worlds of religion, culture, politics, business and academia. With such a panoply of intellectual, experiential and spiritual ideas constantly spinning and cohering in the Acton Institute arsenal of ideas, the future of our shared enterprise promises to be as exciting as our past.
A temptation we’ve avoided is to let ourselves comfortably succumb to becoming an ivory tower of insular research divorced from the activities and ideas of the world at large. The rubric of “the study of religion and liberty” is broad enough to encompass all the topics Acton has addressed thus far in its first 25 years, as well as many topics yet uncovered or events yet to transpire.
This is why I’m particularly excited by this issue of Religion & Liberty. The diverse content featured represents what Acton is about, connecting different faith and professional backgrounds.
Regarding the past, we learned about the significant work of Hannah More. She was an 18th-century English poet, playwright, abolitionist, philanthropist and religious polemicist. More rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest minds of her time, including William Wilberforce, Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, Horace Walpole and David Garrick, and she was no shrinking violet. Often ignored by modern anthologists, More crafted Christian apologetics in brilliant prose, drama and verse.
The present is represented by a focus on contemporary business, including an interview with Rev. Bruce Baker, an extremely successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Microsoft executive who answered God’s call to the ministry. The sum of Rev. Baker’s experience uniquely positions him to speak on business ethics and what it means for humanity in an increasingly technologically dependent world.
Acton has championed many of the same free-market principles associated with billionaire businessman Charles Koch. His brilliant new book Good Profit offers many insights and sound advice. Among these principles is recognizing customer choices and market competition as beneficial to customers and crucial to technological innovations that fundamentally spur economic growth, employment opportunities and development of wealth as remedies for disease, poverty and cultural squalor. Further, Koch advocates against corporate welfare and for an end to government subsidies, free-market principles we at Acton have supported since our beginning.
Three realms exist where we can and should serve God outside the family: church, business and the academy. As Richard J. Mouw points out, however, a prevalent academic climate currently holds much of the business world in suspicion and vice versa. Employing the Calvinist doctrine of common grace and the theological writings of Abraham Kuyper, Mouw provides us with analysis and anecdotes of why this need not be the case.
After covering the past and present, we look in this issue toward the future. In this instance, the future is represented by Acton’s upcoming Religious and Economic Freedom Conference on April 20 in Rome, Italy, titled “One and Indivisible? The Relationship Between Religious and Economic Freedom.” For the most part this relationship either has been discussed in vague terms between those who intuitively understood it or ignored completely. This is highly unfortunate as the Catholic faith has been at the forefront of defending religious and economic freedom since Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum.
Additionally, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, provides strong moral and legal arguments for religious liberty. Because the future can only be viewed through the prism of the past, it should be noted that 19th-century Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville observed that free religion is the friend of liberty. Liberty is also the friend of religion.
Rev. Robert A. Sirico is president and cofounder of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.
