ActonInstitute

09/03/2026

We are pleased to announce our Annual Dinner speaker this year is Dr. Brad Birzer from Hillsdale College, who will be speaking on “Declarations and Dragons: 1776, the Inklings, and the West."📜⚔️

Dr. Birzer will draw from his forthcoming book “Tolkien and the Inklings: Men of the West” and break down how pipe-smoking Oxford friends and Revolutionary-era colonists lived centuries apart, but defended the same ideas and values in the face of tyranny.

📅 November 10, 2026
📍 Amway Grand Plaza | Grand Rapids, MI
🎟️ RSVP at acton.org/dinner

09/03/2026

Were the early Christians socialists? Is the charity of Christian believers inherently socialist?

Father Robert Sirico joined The Curious Middle podcast discussing these questions and makes the moral case against socialism without abandoning genuine compassion for the poor.

09/02/2026

What if we stopped viewing successful people as people who took something from us and started seeing them as people who built something?

Benedek Dózsa explores how our assumptions about entrepreneurship shape our willingness to take risks, build businesses, and create.

Read more on “Learning to Value Success” in Acton’s Religion & Liberty Daily.

09/01/2026

“Slade grapples with the problem that now faces the American conservative tradition: We should want to live both free and flourishing lives, but freedom and virtue can conflict, and we can misuse our freedom in ways that undermine our flourishing.”

Read Kevin Vallier’s review of “Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right” by Stephanie Slade.

08/31/2026

As some argue for Christian nationalism, Darryl Hart's “Protestants and Patriots” traces four centuries of church-state entanglement across Britain and America, and finds that a voluntary church, free from state establishment, was the healthier outcome all along.

Read Michael Lynch’s review on Presbyterianism's long, messy road to religious liberty.

08/28/2026

Is work just designed to pay the bills or a holy calling to serve our neighbors? Is business purely about profit or can it be a tool to lift people out of poverty and create value for our communities?

Acton scholar Dylan Pahman joins the Anchoring Hope podcast with David Mansilla to discuss how faith can extend outside of church walls, the teachings of early Church Fathers, and what servant leadership can look like in our world today.

Watch:

How does your Sunday faith relate to the other six days of your wee...

08/28/2026

“Her legacy is not that of a fleeting mood or a long-forgotten cause but a deep love for the nation.”

As we honor the life of Dolly Parton, we reflect on her example of patriotism, faith, and community.

Read more from Katya Sedgwick: https://blog.acton.org/archives/128741-dolly-parton-was-america.html

08/28/2026

A will is one of the simplest yet most overlooked tools for protecting what you've built, whether that's a business, investments, property, or savings. Without one, decisions about your estate are left to the state, not your judgment.

This National Make-a-Will Month, the Acton Institute is partnering with MyLegacyWill.com to help you secure your assets and ensure your resources continue to support the values and causes you believe in.

In just 15 minutes, you can create a free, legally valid will that reflects your priorities and safeguards your legacy for the next generation.

Get started today:
🔗 www.mylegacywill.com/acton
🔗 For Catholics: www.mycatholicwill.com/acton

08/28/2026

TUNE IN this morning at 8:30AM ET for our first event as part of Acton Conversations, a four-part virtual series on topics at the intersection of theology, economics, and liberty.

Economist Stephen Barrows will join us this morning to discuss “Population & Migration in the Modern World.”

RSVP: https://acton.swoogo.com/acton-conversations-2026

08/27/2026

Meme stocks. Robin Hood confetti. Crypto trading.

Investor David Bahnsen calls it the "gamification of markets," and says it's teaching people the wrong lessons about how wealth is actually built.

Listen to our latest episode of Acton Line as Dan Hugger sits down with Bahnsen on his new book, “Profit from the Profit: The Past, Present & Future of Dividend Growth Investing.”