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'We Hold These Truths'
Lord Acton, the great historian of freedom, understood that “liberty is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization.” The liberty of which he spoke embraced a broad scope of human freedom, including dimensions political, intellectual, economic, and, especially, religious. The civilization of which he spoke was the West, whose heritage of Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian faith indelibly marked it and inexorably pushed it toward the full panoply of liberties we enjoy today and to which the rest of the world looks.Capitalism Must Seize the High Ground
If economic liberty is valued today, it is rarely because it is considered more just or more proper than any alternative. It is valued primarily on managerial and technical grounds.Letting the World Pass Us By
Resting is no small matter. It is not simply collapsing when everything else is done. In fact, it is at the heart of our relationship with God, and is a fundamental reflection of our faith. Rest is close to the heart of faith. Under God, we find our ultimate fullfilment not in what we achieve but in freely receiving what God has given.Vindicating Their Ancient Rights and Liberties
Lord Acton, the great historian of freedom, understood that “liberty is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization.” The liberty of which he spoke embraced a broad scope of human freedom, including dimensions political, intellectual, economic, and, especially, religious. The civilization of which he spoke was the West, whose heritage of Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian faith indelibly marked it and inexorably pushed it toward the full panoply of liberties we enjoy today and to which the rest of the world looks.Do unto Cuba as We Do unto China
Earlier this summer the White House and Congress agreed on legislation that would permit sales of American food and medicine to Cuba for the first time in twenty-eight years. Some conservatives have opposed this deal because they think it will prop up one of the last remaining communist regimes. In reality, however, this legislation is a moral victory that should help achieve Pope John Paul II’s desire for Cuba to “open itself up to the world, and … the world to open itself up to Cuba.”Christian Leadership Books' Great Cloud of Unknowing
The church has always been susceptible to having the waves of secular enthusiasm wash over it. In the 1920s and 1930s we saw the emergence of the Social Gospel; in the 1970s and 1980s we saw the rise of liberation theology, which is essentially Marxism with salsa. On a less political plane, we have seen Christian aerobics programs at the height of the fitness craze and Christian punk-rock bands during the new wave era.The Liberty to Know, to Utter, and to Argue
Lord Acton, the great historian of freedom, understood that “liberty is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization.” The liberty of which he spoke embraced a broad scope of human freedom, including dimensions political, intellectual, economic, and, especially, religious. The civilization of which he spoke was the West, whose heritage of Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian faith indelibly marked it and inexorably pushed it toward the full panoply of liberties we enjoy today and to which the rest of the world looks.The Bedrock of Business Ethics
I studied ethics for years in seminary and represent a tradition that has done some serious thinking on the subject. Even so, what is called “ethics” in many business schools cannot be found in Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica. “Business ethics” as it is usually taught is not ethics in any traditional sense but an ideology committed to “social justice” and other fuzzy abstractions that, to my way of thinking, conflict with the Ten Commandments.The Earth Charter and the United Nations
One of the more vigorously contested conflicts between private environmentalism and governmental policy has been occurring for a decade at the international level, where the Earth Charter movement is knocking at the door of the United Nations, begging for admission. It is a project of serious, determined, and sometimes zealous environmentalists.Receiving the Gift of Stewardship
The starting point for any authentic discussion of environmental stewardship must begin with the witness of the Book of Genesis: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’” (Gen. 1:27–28).Centesimus Annus in Retrospective
The first issue of Religion & Liberty appeared in January 1991–auspiciously, the same year in which Pope John Paul II promulgated his encyclical letter Centesimus Annus, a meditation of the nature of freedom in its many forms and its role in the modern world. That encyclical prompted a wide-scale debate on the moral foundations of the free society. Since its founding, the Acton Institute has been a part of this vigorous debate, often conducted in the pages of Religion & Liberty .A Different Kind of Enlightenment
It is now common to argue that the roots of many of the features of modern culture—secularism, utilitarianism, and materialism, to name a few—are found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, a European-wide, eighteenth-century movement described by Immanuel Kant as “man's release from his self-incurred tutelage.”