God and Liberty is a project by Justin Haskins and The Henry Dearborn Institute for Liberty (HDI), an association of pro-liberty, free-market professionals, writers, and academics. HDI does not have a strict set of ideological dogmas that all members of the association must believe, but its members do hold fast to a set of important principles they believe to be essential for the advancement of freedom. You can read more about those principles by clicking here.
God and Liberty aims to provide readers with thoughtful articles about God, individual freedom, democracy, natural law, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One of the primary purposes of the publication is to highlight how closely linked these ideas are, and why it’s so dangerous for a democracy to be grounded in subjective standards of morality created by fallible human beings, rather than an all-powerful, supernatural God.
Democracy without faith in God often leads to tyranny, because if rights don’t come from a Creator, then they must come from government. And if government reflects the will of the people, then whenever a majority of the people desire to enslave or terrorize the minority, it can and will do so. In fact, it can even be argued that without God, the entire notion of individual “rights” is nothing more than a fiction.
When a majority of people have the authority to determine the extent to which human “rights” exist, it’s impossible for freedom of speech, religion, and other liberties to survive over the long run, because these rights will inevitably get in the way of the goals of the majority. History has proven this to be the case repeatedly. When people reject the existence of God, they become gods unto themselves, imposing their “rights” and beliefs—which even they acknowledge to be fallible and subjective—on dissenting minorities. Whatever is deemed to be best for the “collective” becomes the most important factor in every cultural, political, and economic decision.
We’re particularly concerned about these issues because socialism and other collective political and economic theories are once again gaining in popularity, posing a significant danger to the future of freedom and religious liberty. We must stand together against these forces and work tirelessly to defend the importance of the belief in an inalienable natural law that comes directly from God. Without such a belief, humans cannot be truly free.
Although most of the articles, audio, and video here are published and written by Haskins, God and Liberty will, on occasion, publish works authored by other writers. If you’re interested in submitting an article, contact Justin Haskins at [email protected].
PHOTOS on front page and social media posts: Washington Crossing the Delaware River. Painting by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. Provided by Metropolitan Museum of Art and The first prayer in Congress, Sept. 1774. Engraver of image: Henry S. Sadd. Artist is Tompkins Harrison Matteson. From the Emmet Collection of Manuscripts at the New York Public Library. This image is in the public domain because it is a mere mechanical scan or photocopy of a public domain original, or – from the available evidence – is so similar to such a scan or photocopy that no copyright protection can be expected to arise. Made available via Wikimedia and the New York Public Library.
