Earlier this year, the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life released the first installment of a truly impressive study based upon a massive survey of more than 35,000 Americans. Its portrait of "the American religious landscape" attracted a great deal of media attention, typically focusing on three or four principal themes. If you were to read only the press accounts, here's what you would know:

• While Americans are still overwhelmingly -- at least nominally -- Christian (78.4 percent of the respondents identified themselves that way), only a bare majority (51.3 percent) call themselves Protestant. Our once dominant majority religion is headed toward being a minority religion -- still the largest single bloc of adherents, to be sure, but home only to a plurality of our country, rather than to a majority.
• The most rapidly growing precinct in our religious...

This issue of Religion & Liberty in many ways personifies Christ in culture. The lead interview is an analysis of the faith at work movement from one of its leaders, David W. Miller. Miller reminds us of how the Church has lagged behind in integrating faith with work, and quite often many pastoral and church leaders have failed in articulating a strong theology of work. As you will see, some of these reasons are ideological, while some may simply arise from practical reasons. At the same time, faith at work has a significant grassroots following that has decisively shaped various sectors of the business and corporate arena.

Joseph M. Knippenberg offers a different analysis of the much discussed findings by the Pew Forum on Religion and & Public Life Òon the American religious landscape.Ó Knippenberg's analysis is far less dour than what has been reported in...

One of the most eminent moral and dogmatic theologians of his time, Cardinal Juan de Lugo, S.J., was the last representative of the famous group of early-modern Catholic thinkers associated with Spain’s University of Salamanca. Sent by his father to study law at Salamanca, de Lugo entered the Jesuits in 1603 and turned his attention to theology. His theological reputation was such that he was eventually summoned to Rome by the Jesuit General Mutius Vitelleschi in 1621.

Despite his brilliance, de Lugo remained a humble man. He only allowed publication of his writings following a direct order from his...

Despite its triumphant defeat over totalitarianism and socialism, democratic capitalism still faces angry and aggressive opposition from inside the West. In his new book, Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents, Brian Anderson carefully examines this opposition and investigates the erosion of liberal democracy by contrasting the thought of classical liberal philosophers, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, with the thought of the heroes of the contemporary academy, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Antonio Negri.

Explaining what he calls the “suicide of culture,” Anderson appeals to Rocco Buttiglione’s view that libertinism is more dangerous to democratic capitalism than Marxism. Anderson explains, “Instead of crushing man’s reason and passions, as did communism, moral libertinism turns man’s passion against the truth.”

However,...

Among secular scholars, there is some debate as to whether consumerism is a real problem. James Twitchell, in his book Lead Us into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism, argues that consumerism is a beneficial phenomenon because it provides a meaning for people to replace the meaning formerly provided them by religion.

The empirical evidence, however, indicates that consumerist attitudes are associated with reduced consumer well-being. People who are more consumeristic tend to have lower satisfaction with their lives, a greater tendency to compulsive spending, higher incidences of depression, and also lower ethical standards. Tim Kasser, in his recent book summarizing his own extensive work and that of other researchers in this area,...

The Black Hills of Dakota in the 1870s may seem like an unlikely place for a dramatic narrative pursuing themes of justice, service, and community, but that’s exactly what the audience gets in compelling fashion in HBO’s recently concluded series Deadwood. When creator and executive producer David Milch first pitched the idea to HBO executives, the setting was in fact ancient Rome.

Speaking of Deadwood’s setting, a mining camp, Milch says, “This was an environment, as was Rome in the time of Nero, where there was order but no law whatsoever.” The character Merrick, who runs the camp’s newspaper, the Deadwood Pioneer, observes in the first episode that the camp is officially and formally “...

When the Acton Institute was first established, part of our mission was to influence future leaders. We have done that in countless way through our array of programs, but this issue of R&L highlights one particularly important example. The Reverend John A. Nunes, a Lutheran minister, is our feature interview this month. Nunes was recently appointed to head up Lutheran World Relief. Aside from the genuine pride we have that one of our colleagues has been entrusted with such an important mission, we are also excited to see how the principles that Pastor Nunes wrote about for Acton will now animate LWR’s service to those in material need, and in need of the Gospel.

In our interview, Pastor Nunes speaks about his experience doing community work in Detroit, and what he learned about “accompaniment”—meaning not doing something for or ...