The Libertarian Christian Podcast

State religious liberty laws are the part of this fight almost nobody watches. Supreme Court cases get the headlines. The statutes that decide whether a baker, a nurse, a foster parent, or a congregation ever ends up in court at all sit quietly in fifty state codes, and most Christians have no idea what their own state has on the books.Paul Mueller, senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, co-authors Religious Liberty in the States, an annual index now in its fifth year. It scores every state on roughly fifty discrete protections grouped into twenty weighted safeguard categories. Not aspirational protections. Not vibes about whether a state feels Christian. What is actually enacted.The rankings scramble most assumptions people bring to the map, and they make three things clear: legislation beats litigation, the red and blue shorthand fails here, and the libertarian objection to religious exemptions deserves an answer.Chapters:0:22 Guest Intro and Background5:48 How the Index Works13:33 Libertarian Tensions in Law23:19 Why State Protections Matter28:16 Reading the State Rankings37:12 Why Most States Lag40:06 Measuring Real-World Impact44:52 Getting the Report Heard47:53 Closing Thoughts and Podcast PlugAudio Production by Podsworth Media - https://podsworth.com ★ Support this podcast ★

Alex Bernardo stops by the LCI Greenroom to talk about his new book Politics, Economics, and New Testament Interpretation--which is available September 15th! Alex's book introduces New Testament studies while also clarifying what it means to read the New Testament with clear eyes rather than modern, leftist assumptions.Chapters:0:00:22 Book Launch and Methodology0:01:54 Why the Book Matters0:03:38 Libertarian Ethics and Christianity0:06:14 Three-Part Framework0:06:51 Why Background Matters0:10:02 Scholarship and Community0:12:47 History as Guardrails0:15:13 When History Becomes Necessary0:20:09 Marxist Misreadings0:24:25 Misusing Political Categories0:28:14 Conference and New Project0:29:55 Romans 13 Revisited0:34:44 Reading Paul in Context0:36:49 The Empire Question0:38:22 Paul and Anti-Imperialism0:43:20 Jesus as King0:47:15 Witness Over Revolution0:53:11 Losing for Christ0:58:02 Rights and Pacifism1:01:54 New Insights from the Text1:04:57 Default Nonviolence1:11:25 Closing Plugs and Release Info Audio Production by Podsworth Media - https://podsworth.com ★ Support this podcast ★

Ask why the free market works and most popular economics hands you a clever story about how it doesn't. Insurance companies are greedy. Real estate agents run a racket. Used car buyers are being fleeced. The stories sell books, and they rarely survive a phone call to the people being accused.John Lott has spent a career making those phone calls. Economist, former chief economist at the U.S. Sentencing Commission, author of More Guns, Less Crime, he wrote Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories That Don't as a direct answer to the Freakonomics school of counterintuitive economics. The claim is not that markets are magic. It is that when a pattern holds for decades among people with their own money on the line, the odds favor a reason over a mistake. What follows is the method and the evidence: how to tell a finding that holds from one that merely sounds good, why the most famous claim in Freakonomics runs backward, and what actually explains the growth of government.Chapters:0:22 Intro and Freedomnomics Overview3:35 Guns Research by Accident8:40 Debating the Gun Evidence17:30 Carry Laws and Crime Patterns23:04 Freakonomics and Hidden Assumptions31:51 Abortion, Family Change, and Crime35:57 Challenging LoJack and Incentives41:55 Real Estate, Cars, and Markets49:13 Why Government Grew53:30 Divorce, Voting, and Liberalism57:41 Where to Find More ResearchAudio Production by Podsworth Media - https://podsworth.com ★ Support this podcast ★

Libertarians agree that freedom is worth defending, but not all libertarians believe that liberty needs virtue in order to survive. In this episode, Stephane Slade, senior editor at Reason and author of the new book Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right, argues that a free society cannot endure unless its people possess the moral habits that make freedom workable — honesty, trustworthiness, responsibility, and respect for the rights of others. Without virtue, citizens eventually demand coercion to protect themselves from one another, and liberty collapses under the weight of fear. The notion that freedom and virtue are not rivals but partners goes by the name of fusionism, and Slade provides a history of this idea, its advocates, and its enemies.Audio Production by Podsworth Media - https://podsworth.com ★ Support this podcast ★

Libertarian political strategy has always been shaped by a difficult question: should libertarians invest their energy in the Libertarian Party, or work inside one of the major parties (usually the Republican Party) to influence policy from within the duopoly? This double-header episode brings that tension into sharp relief through two contrasting voices — Mike ter Maat, who argues that the GOP is where the decisive battles for liberty can be fought and perhaps won, and James Mills, who believes the LP remains the most principled and viable home for advancing freedom.Chapters:0:00 Intro0:22 Welcome & Guest Intros1:56 Why Leave the LP?9:17 GOP Over LP Strategy13:37 Using the Republican Liberty Caucus17:17 Why the GOP Can Move24:39 Coalition Lessons29:39 Delegates Empowered Plan36:19 Ohio Libertarian Bid47:58 Ballot Access Hurdles54:20 Reaching Libertarian Neighbors59:15 Vote for Principle1:03:27 Trojan Horse or Outsider?Audio Production by Podsworth Media - https://podsworth.com ★ Support this podcast ★

The ideas of the American Revolution did not appear in the summer of 1776. They had been building in colonial hearts and minds for decades, and by the time the Declaration was signed, Americans had thought harder about liberty, consent, and the limits of power than any people before them. That is the argument historian and economist Larry Reed brings to his new book Born of Ideas: How Principles, Faith, and Courage Forged America, and to this conversation with Doug Stuart.Reed, President Emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education, treats the American founding as an intellectual and moral achievement rather than an accident of geography or grievance. He answers the fashionable claim that America was defined by an "original sin," and he does it not by ignoring the country's failures but by putting them in the context of the world as the founders actually inherited it. What follows is the case the episode makes.Chapters:0:22 Welcome & Guest Introduction1:02 A Book of Revolutionary Ideas2:47 Founders and Liberty6:01 America’s Flawed Origins12:06 The Mayflower Compact15:07 Anne Hutchinson’s Exile16:41 Native Nations and the Revolution20:31 Black Patriots and Poets22:42 Common Sense Ignites26:43 Hidden Economics of War30:03 Slavery and the Founding35:50 Reconstruction What-Ifs37:46 Republic, Not Democracy41:14 Heroes and Foreign AlliesAudio Production by Podsworth Media - https://podsworth.com ★ Support this podcast ★

Does democracy need Christianity to survive? Jonathan Rauch — a gay, atheist, Jewish journalist at Brookings and The Atlantic — has concluded that it does. His 2025 book, Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy, argues that Christianity is a load-bearing wall in the American experiment, and that two decades of de-churching have left the whole structure sagging.As an outsider who once celebrated secularization as progress and watched what filled the vacuum, Rauch now claims that democracy needs Christianity. What he found is that when the church stopped carrying its load, toxic partisanship, tribal politics, and substitute religions rushed in to take its place.Host Doug Stuart talks with Rauch to work through why the founders counted on Christian virtue, which three teachings of Jesus underwrite liberal democracy, why compromise is a Christian act rather than a betrayal, and what the church has to recover to be worth listening to again.Chapters:0:00 Intro0:22 Guest Intro and Book Origins4:03 Christianity’s Civic Role7:28 Churches, Decline, and Politics12:23 Liberalism and Democracy Defined13:56 Founders on Virtue18:52 Jesus and Liberal Democracy25:10 Compromise as a Creative Process29:53 Congress and Political Cynicism32:50 Reforming a Broken System33:45 Christians and Culture War35:38 Freedom, Fear, and Public Faith38:10 Pseudo-Religions Fill the Void41:25 Libertarianism and Christianity45:39 Altruism, Virtue, and Freedom51:15 Latter-Day Saints and Agency59:18 Make Christianity Peculiar AgainAudio Production by Podsworth Media - https://podsworth.com ★ Support this podcast ★

Acton University is one of the most respected gatherings in the faith-and-markets world. This year four hosts from the Christians for Liberty Network were able to find out what it was like to attend. Through a scholarship from the Foundation for Harmony and Prosperity, they spent four days at Acton University among Catholics, Calvinists, Eastern Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and free-market thinkers from more than sixty countries, and came away deeply impressed.Doug Stuart is joined by Alex Bernardo, Cody Cook, and Kerry Baldwin to recap the experience: the core sessions, the standout speakers, the dinner-table conversations, and what it felt like to show up openly as Christian libertarians in a room that leads with virtue, stewardship, and dignity before it ever reaches policy. The short version is that it felt like being among kin.This recap walks through what Acton University gets right, where Christian libertarians found common ground, and the friendly, sharpening conversations that made the week worth every minute.Chapters:0:00 Intro0:22 Acton University Overview2:36 First Impressions of Acton5:08 Ecumenical and Marketed Faith9:16 Libertarianism Versus Libertinism15:24 Moral Language and Shared Values23:58 The Four Core Sessions30:59 Questions That Challenged43:03 Best Sessions and Standouts48:37 Receptivity to Libertarians52:51 Closing Reflections and ThanksAudio Production by Podsworth Media - https://podsworth.com ★ Support this podcast ★

Black empowerment is often framed as a debate between pro-black, welfare state progressivism and anti-black, law-and-order conservatism. But what if free markets, not big government, is the key to black empowerment? In this episode of the Libertarian Christian Podcast, Cody Cook talks to Dr. Rachel Ferguson about the dominant narrative that racial justice requires state intervention. Ferguson demonstrates that classical liberalism offers a more historically grounded, morally coherent, and economically effective path forward.Ferguson argues that the worst racial injustices in American history were not failures of markets but failures of the state — from slavery to Jim Crow to redlining to welfare policies that fractured families and communities. She also highlights the long, overlooked tradition of Black classical liberals who championed individual rights, entrepreneurship, and civil society as the real engines of flourishing.Chapters:0:00 Intro0:24 Welcome and Black Liberation Through Markets2:53 Challenging White Privilege Claims7:04 Douglass and Classical Liberalism9:00 Why Freedom Needs a Voice13:19 Slavery’s Economic Costs19:57 Defining Real Free Markets22:57 Welfare’s Perverse Incentives27:18 Beyond Bootstraps and Blame31:11 Sharecropping After Emancipation34:05 Lynching and Public Memory37:59 Racism Beyond the Law40:48 Populism and Immigration Fears44:39 Churches and Civil SocietyAudio Production by Podsworth Media - https://podsworth.com ★ Support this podcast ★

Most people who want to know how to study the Bible are looking for a system. A plan to finish in a year, the "right" translation, a highlighting method that finally sticks. Alex Bernardo, host of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast and a trained biblical studies student, spent this episode dismantling that instinct. There is no single correct method. There is only the daily habit of putting yourself in front of the text and refusing to leave until it has done something to you.Doug Stuart noticed Alex's heavily marked-up Bible over breakfast at Acton University and wanted to know the man behind the exegesis. What came out is a working philosophy of Bible study that treats intellectual growth and discipleship as the same project, not competing ones. You cannot grow as a disciple without growing in understanding, and understanding that never touches your life is just trivia.This is a practical guide to how to study the Bible over a lifetime: how to build the habit, which translations reward close reading, when to bring in commentaries, what to mark, and which popular practices are worth abandoning.Chapters:0:22 Welcome and Bible Reading Habits2:53 Early Bible Memories4:39 Faith Through the Gospels6:06 Daily Reading Routine8:36 Reading Without a Plan10:26 Lectionary Life12:05 Choosing the NASB16:00 Paragraphs and Verse Marks18:09 Reading as Narrative22:22 Finding the Right Translation28:30 Using Study Tools33:07 Memory and Bible Flow35:23 Marking Key Passages41:30 What Didn’t WorkAudio Production by Podsworth Media - https://podsworth.com ★ Support this podcast ★