Throughout the world today, freedom is often taken for granted. Yet freedom is the exception rather than the norm in human history. It is also the case that the institutions of freedom, and particular liberties such as religious liberty, civil freedoms, and economic liberty, were consolidated and further developed by Christianity. Knowledge of this past, however, is dangerously absent from many public discussions of freedom, and its relationship to other important values, such as dignity and solidarity. How do we bring knowledge of these truths back into public discussion? What are the new threats to these forms of liberty in modern societies?
On March 18, 2015, the Acton Institute and Instituto Acton Argentina will hold a day-long conference – Christianity and the Foundations of a Free Society: Religious, Political, and Economic Freedom – bringing together leading scholars from around the world to discuss the ways in which Christianity has contributed to building the foundations of freedom and how Christians today can contribute to the protection of freedom, reconcile it with legitimate concerns for dignity and solidarity, and assist in building it institutional safeguards against populism and arbitrary government.
This conference is the third in the five-part series One and Indivisible? The Relationship Between Religious and Economic Freedom.
