Religious Liberty and the American Founding
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History
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Time Machines from the Past: Old Books are Still Cool
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Janus v. AFSCME: A Conversation with Mark Janus
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“John Foster Dulles: “‘Faith, Freedom, and the Cold War Architect’”
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Lessons Learned from the Kavanaugh Confirmation
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The Sexual Revolution in America & Poverty
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Crime increase as poverty increases. Recidivism, men and women returning to prison and jail after release, is higher where employment rates are lower. Without economic justice and the decrease of poverty, we will not have restorative justice and human flourishing. Breaking the cycle of incarceration is indelibly tied to breaking the cycle of poverty
Great Society: Poverty Solution?
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The Great Society programs of the 1960s were perhaps the most systematic attempt to use the state to address poverty in the United States. Prize-winning author, economic historian and journalist Amity Shlaes joins us to discuss the Great Society’s origins, why it failed, and what we can learn from the experience today.
Taking Advantage of Freedom: Solzhenitsyn on What to Do with Liberty When You Have It – Engage the Speaker
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While political, economic, and intellectual freedom is a precious gift to humans, our long history shows that we are ready to give it away. Why is that? One answer might be given from the Nobel-Prize-winning Russian writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008): when people don’t understand and use the freedom they have, they will throw it away …
Taking Advantage of Freedom: Solzhenitsyn on What to Do w/Liberty When You Have It
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While political, economic, and intellectual freedom is a precious gift to humans, our long history shows that we are ready to give it away. Why is that? One answer might be given from the Nobel-Prize-winning Russian writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008): when people don’t understand and use the freedom they have, they will throw it away …
Christian Roots of Innovation in Science and Technology – Engage the Speaker
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Engage the Speaker session for “Christian Roots of Innovation in Science and Technology” The science-technology sector is often seen as a very secular sector of human work, in part because the “warfare thesis” of longstanding and essential enmity between Christian faith and the scientific enterprise is still widely assumed today (e.g. in the popular 2014 …
Christian Roots of Innovation in Science and Technology
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The science-technology sector is often seen as a very secular sector of human work, in part because the “warfare thesis” of longstanding and essential enmity between Christian faith and the scientific enterprise is still widely assumed today (e.g. in the popular 2014 Neil Degrasse Tyson–hosted updating of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos TV series). But the real …
Mari-Ann Kelam Plenary Address
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Mari-Ann Kelam was raised in the United States by Estonian parents who had survived World War II only to find their homeland occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of the war. She grew up with an acute appreciation for the Estonian language, culture, and people and served as Vice President of the Estonian …
William Penn and the Experiment of American Liberty
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There are competing creation “myths” about the origins of American liberty. The Jamestown, Virginia settlers of 1607 have vied with the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony in New England for dominance in America’s self-understanding of its origins. In this lecture Alan Crippen argues that these narratives have obscured the role of William Penn and his …
Moral Legacy of John Maynard Keynes
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The Keynesian Revolution forever changed the way we think about, teach, and learn economics. But the Keynesian approach to the world changed the broader culture as well, leaving us bereft of a clear vision of human flourishing in our economic life.
John Foster Dulles: Faith, Freedom, and the Cold War Architect
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In this lecture, John D. Wilsey, Ph.D. (Associate Professor of Church History at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) explores the legacy of John Foster Dulles. John Foster Dulles was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959. He served in the early years of the Cold War and pursued a vigorous foreign policy …
Modern Parallels to the Fall of Rome
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The greatest civilization of ancient times expired more than 1,500 years ago but the lessons to be learned from its experience are eternal. In this lecture, Mr. Reed focuses on the Roman Republic—the key features, personalities and events that defined its rise as well as those that caused its decay in the First Century B.C. …
How Ice Got to India
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The year is 1837. Imagine that you live in Calcutta and a man with a thick Boston accent offers you some ice cream. There is no such device as a refrigerator, much less a freezer, and yet here is a man offering you a cold (and delicious) treat. How did it get there? In this …
Communism in Cuba
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Communism took power in Cuba through deceit and intrigue in 1959. While Fidel Castro denied he was a communist, promising to restore democracy in the island, he began consolidating totalitarian rule and exporting revolution in Latin America and Africa. As the totalitarian dictatorship became evident, Cuba’s democratic resistance defied the Castro regime in two phases: …
Natural Law and the Protestant Reformation
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While the formal significance of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation might be celebrated by Protestants and lamented by Catholics, reflecting back on sixteenth-century reform 500 years removed affords valuable lessons. The occasion also allows us to highlight the theological and legal thinking of a most remarkable though much forgotten figure of the Protestant …
Judicial Abdication and the Growth of Government
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The fight for the Supreme Court during the presidential campaign has crystalized the importance of judges’ both having the right constitutional theories and being willing to enforce them. Too much “restraint” – like Chief Justice Roberts in the Obamacare cases – has led to the unchecked growth of government, toxic judicial confirmation battles, and even …
Just Right: A Life in Pursuit of Liberty
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In this fascinating memoir, historian Lee Edwards who knew and worked with Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, and William F. Buckley, Jr. for nearly five decades reveals what motivated these giants of the modern conservative movement—a staunch belief in free enterprise and a love of God. Called “The Voice of the Silent Majority” by the New …
Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times
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We live in dark times. Christians wonder: Are the best days of the Christian faith behind us? Has modernity made Christian thought irrelevant and impotent? Is society beyond all hope of redemption and renewal? In Renaissance, Os Guinness declares no. Throughout history, the Christian faith has transformed entire cultures and civilizations, building cathedrals and universities, …
The Birth of Freedom Curriculum: Session 7 – Relativism vs. Religion
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Imagine if we had captured Adolf Hitler at the end of World War II, a man responsible for spearheading a global war of aggression bent on domination, the slaughter of millions of Jews, with a total death toll nearing 50 million lives. Now imagine he sits in the witness chair at Nuremberg, and says, “Don’t …
The Birth of Freedom Curriculum: Session 6 – A Tale of Two Revolutions
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You know, we can learn a lot about how important Christian principles are for a culture simply by comparing the French Revolution to another revolution that happened a few years earlier, across the Atlantic—the American Revolution. “Freedom from God.” For many people that sounds pretty good— Freedom from that grumpy old rule maker in the …
The Birth of Freedom Curriculum: Session 5 – The Abolitionists
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Medieval Europe got rid of slavery, but it came back with a vengeance during the age of exploration. Before long, Christians from every sailing nation were rationalizing the practice of seizing non-Europeans, putting them in chains, and placing them on the auction block. Fortunately, though, that’s not the end of the story. The story of …
The Birth of Freedom Curriculum: Session 4 – Pilgrims’ Progress
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When Americans think of the Pilgrims, a few things spring to mind: Thanksgiving; the Mayflower; Plymouth Rock. But if you go any deeper than that, things get blurry in a hurry. Were the Pilgrims peace loving Puritans who simply sat down at the table of brotherhood with the pagan Indians? Or, were they fiendish, opportunistic, …
The Birth of Freedom Curriculum: Session 3 – The Myth of the Dark Ages
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Faith or reason. Religion or science. Tradition or progress. This is how many people in our culture, today, think. They see these things in opposition. But the history of the West is one of faith completing reason. The scientific revolution was ignited not in ancient Greece and Rome, but in Christian Europe. Europe took off …
The Birth of Freedom Curriculum: Session 2 – The Quest for Political Freedom
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You may have heard it said that Western democracy is based on ancient Greek democracy. The democracy of ancient Athens did serve as an inspiration for modern democracy. But there’s one important element missing from the Greek model: they had no firm foundation for higher law. Because of this, ancient Greek democracy became mob democracy. …
The Birth of Freedom Curriculum: Session 1 – A Civilization without Slaves
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Did you know that the opponents of Christianity have—for centuries—controlled the very terms by which we understand the history of Christianity, arguing that Christianity hobbled the Roman Empire, snuffed out scientific progress, and threw the world into the Dark Ages? Many people don’t even give Christianity a hearing because they think, “Why would I want …