reviews
Out of Africa – Religion & Liberty Online
Quite a number of years ago, it was estimated that every year there are some 500 articles and monographs, both popular and scholarly, written throughout the world on the North African pastor-theologian-saint Augustine (354‒430). At the time when…
Is America Simply Jefferson vs. Hamilton? – Religion & Liberty Online
Herbert Butterfield in his The Whig Interpretation of History argued that assessing the past in light of the present, what we call “presentism,” is the source of all historical errors. Our tendency to do so results from a very real problem: How…
A Book That Will Shock You – Religion & Liberty Online
Dr. Michael Pakaluk, a philosopher and professor at the Catholic University of America, has written 11 books, but somehow this was the first to make it into my hands. Pakaluk is a bit of a legend in certain circles. He maintains a scholarly…
The Case for Civil Religion – Religion & Liberty Online
In the tensions between calls for a for of Christian nationalism and an even stricter separation of church and state, it is easy to forget that another civil arrangement is possible, one that worked well for most of the Republic’s history. Read…
There Is No Freedom Without Religious Freedom – Religion & Liberty Online
Publishers often promote books as being “timely,” even when the book in question just seems like the latest on a picked-over topic. Eerdmans, the publisher of John D. Wilsey’s excellent Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer, uses the word…
Ordering Our Loves for the Good of All – Religion & Liberty Online
Earlier this year, Vice President J.D. Vance triggered quite a firestorm when he mentioned the Christian concept of ordo amoris, also known as the order of charity. “There’s this old-school—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the…
Avalon Is Thanksgiving for America – Religion & Liberty Online
Barry Levinson was one of the most successful directors in America around 1990, when he made Avalon, an immigrant Thanksgiving movie trying to sum up the transformation of the American family in the 20th century. He won the Academy Award for…
Rage Against the Machine. Or Don’t. – Religion & Liberty Online
It’s unusual to be in the situation of reviewing a book no one will like. I don’t mean that literally; a handful of people will appreciate Paul Kingsnorth’s new book, Against the Machine, probably the same people who have followed his work for…
COVID and the Craving for Certainty – Religion & Liberty Online
In March of 2020, I published an essay warning both the public and our policymakers against overreacting to the COVID threat. We overreact, I argued, in times of “epistemic uncertainty,” when we do not know enough about a threat we face and are…
Liberalism Revisited – Religion & Liberty Online
For the past decade or so, we have become more accustomed to speak of a “crisis” of liberalism. No doubt that is one reason why Notre Dame Press has chosen to re-release David Walsh’s The Growth of the Liberal Soul. Originally published in 1997,…