In last week’s Republican primary debate, a Jacksonville, Florida, resident asked the candidates what role their religious beliefs would play in their decision-making as President. The issue of religious faith continues to be important for many voters. As I suggest in a recent WebMemo, questions about religion that relate to a candidate’s potential conduct in office—questions like the one asked by the audience member in Jacksonville—may be useful. Questions about personal religious piety may be less so. Questions about a candidate’s personal practices when it comes to prayer, church attendance, …
“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote. “The hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” Among the American Founders, there was a profound sense that faith and freedom were deeply intertwined. Nowadays, we are often told that religion is divisive and ought to kept away from politics for the sake of liberty. Religion somehow is opposed to liberty, and so liberty requires a diminution of religion in the public square. The view long consistent with our historical practice, …
In an article for a Catholic Web site, Representative Paul Ryan (R–WI) has again clarified the role he thinks faith and social doctrine should play in creating public policies. Ryan states that, in his role as a policymaker, he takes seriously the teachings of his church, especially the call to care for the poor. But he doesn’t equate this moral norm with increasing the size of the welfare state. Social teaching is not the monopoly of one political party, nor is it a moral command that confuses the preferential option …
The year 2011 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. Leland Ryken, a scholar of Christian literature and the Puritans, describes this as one of the most important cultural developments in the history of the English-speaking world. In his new book The Legacy of the King James Bible, Ryken records its sweeping influence on our language, education, religion, and culture. The King James Bible has been “the greatest vehicle of literacy in the English-speaking world,” by one account. Statesman Daniel Webster credited his famous oratory …
In 1966, God was pronounced dead. More recently, it was determined that God is back. But now a team of researchers has put him on the endangered species list. “Religion may become extinct in nine nations,” says a BBC headline today reporting on a presentation made at the American Physical Society meeting. Based on census data showing increased religious non-affiliation, the study “indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.” “The idea is pretty simple,” says one of the researchers. “It posits that social groups that …
As millions of Americans spend today fervently practicing commerce, we bring you these thoughts faith, property and prosperity which first ran last year on Thanksgiving. There is much talk these days of how conservatives need “new ideas” in these troubled economic times. And as we look at our nation’s troubled landscape, there is much work that needs to be done if we are going to return economic prosperity to the country. But as we sit down to celebrate Thanksgiving with our friends and family, recalling the true story of the …
Is the US merely tagging behind its European neighbors on a road to a thoroughly secular, social democracy? As the Obama Administration stretches its fingers into education, health care and failing companies, the question lingers ominously. But columnist Cheryl Wetzstein notes that, when it comes to faith and family, we’re not quite there yet. She supports her point with research highlighted at our Oct. 29th conference, Religious Practice and the Family. Wetzstein’s column in today’s Washington Times reads: Earlier this year, American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray wrote a warning …
Sometimes the best-known lines of famous speeches are only indicators of the rest of their content. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” may be the best known excerpt from President Reagan’s speech in Berlin, but the whole is well worth a read. Several paragraphs near the end especially highlight the significance of faith, love, and virtue to free society, and the totalitarian world’s self-destructive antipathy for these. Like that most famous quotation, these prophetic lines show too that successful statesmen must be sober realists about men’s ideals: In a word, …
Generation Y is widely defined as the 77 million Americans born between 1977 and 1997 — and as any good demographic sample would, it’s being analyzed. A Denver Post blogger opines on why Gen Y’ers are moving back in with their parents. JD Power and Associates dissects Gen Y’s buying patterns and suggests that the recession is making them grapple with a “Quarter-Life Crisis.” Today’s “emerging adults” enjoy more options for work, marriage and location than perhaps any previous generation. But with that freedom come anxiety and confusion. And sociologists …
You should talk about money before jumping into it, a story in The New York Times says. You can spice it up by doing more housework, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. And this just in: Your strong commitment to it is a sign you’re trying to practice what you regularly hear preached. “It,” of course, is marriage. Marriage and its connection to religious involvement will be one of the themes highlighted Thursday during “Religious Practice and the Family,” a conference sponsored by The Heritage Foundation at the Ronald Reagan Building and …
