reviews
Have We Been Spiritual but Not Religious Forever? – Religion & Liberty Online
Michael Horton’s Shaman & Sage: The Roots of “Spiritual but Not Religious” is not a quick read, which means that for the past few months, I’ve been carrying the book around and taking it out to read in spare moments: at coffee shops, sandlot…
Updating Orwell and Downgrading Art – Religion & Liberty Online
Recent years have witnessed a worrisome trend in Hollywood and the movie industry in general: Filmmakers producing new versions of classic works of literature by modernizing the story with an eye toward contemporary relevance at the cost of…
What Do Conservatives Believe? – Religion & Liberty Online
Former Vice President Mike Pence is back and wants to conservatives to stop and consider what the label means in 2026—and what it will mean in 2028. Read More… I’m not sure where I first encountered conservatism as a political philosophy. Was it…
The Many Faces of Anti-Semitism – Religion & Liberty Online
In July 2025, I visited Stanford University. Tacked up all over the campus were leaflets identifying Israel as a leading—possibly, the leading—cause of climate change. The notion that a country of 10 million people could be a principal agent…
Three Lessons from Young Washington as America Turns 250 – Religion & Liberty Online
At an advance screening on June 9 at the Kennedy Center, a fortunate audience saw Angel Studios and Wonder Project’s Young Washington, which opens in theaters July 3, on the eve of America’s 250th birthday. The movie feels refreshing because it…
Tolkien and Tech – Religion & Liberty Online
If you want to know when everything in society went to pot, it was with the invention of the automobile. Or so the author of Lord of the Rings would have you believe. Read More… Given J.R.R. Tolkien’s self-evident greatness (and the millions of…
Murder Most Profound – Religion & Liberty Online
Anthony Malcolm Daniels, who writes under the pen name Theodore Dalrymple, is the most irritating kind of cultural critic; he stubbornly refuses to accommodate himself to the ever-shifting categorical boundaries of the times. Dalrymple is…
Remembering We Were Soldiers and Another America – Religion & Liberty Online
The Vietnam War has been depicted onscreen repeatedly, usually as a cautionary tale of American hubris and young male naïveté. But a 2002 film directed by Randall Wallace (Braveheart) and starring Mel Gibson sees the war, and the men who died…
Our Glorious Founding Document – Religion & Liberty Online
Bad history books litter the shelves of classrooms, bookstores, and libraries everywhere. Beyond mere factual inaccuracies, bad works of history also pretend to neutrality, prefer a Marxist materialism to messy human motivations, and misalign…
Evolution and Our Dependence on a Creator – Religion & Liberty Online
“All these things around us have been seminally and primordially created in the very fabric, as it were, or texture of the elements; but they require the right occasion actually to emerge into being.”—Augustine This line from the great…