About Barbara J. Elliott

Barbara J. Elliott is Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. She is Scholar-in-Residence and Assistant Professor in the Honors College of Houston Christian University and a Fellow of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology. Professor Elliott is the President of the Center for Cultural Renewal, and the founder of the WorkFaith Connection. She is the author of five books, including Street Saints: Renewing America’s Cities. She received the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights from the President of the United States in 2001. As an American journalist based in Germany during the Cold War, she interviewed those who risked their freedom and their lives to resist Communism resulting in her book Candles Behind the Wall: Heroes of the Peaceful Revolution that Shattered Communism.

Conservative Credo

By |2024-02-04T14:27:33-06:00February 3rd, 2024|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Conservatism, Essential, Senior Contributors, Support The Imaginative Conservative, Timeless Essays|

The conservative believes that the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are interrelated, and that all things are measured against these three transcendentals. Conservatism seeks the Truth that has emerged over time, drawing from the deep wellsprings of human experience, and builds anew on foundations that have withstood the tests of time. It fosters order [...]

This Mortal Coil: Poems of DNA

By |2023-11-12T15:52:09-06:00November 12th, 2023|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Books, Love, Poetry, Science|

Eric Forsbergh writes with insight, compassion, and humor, as he describes in well-honed vignettes the human condition, anchored in our DNA: love, identity, sex, families, babies, war, and death, as we go about our multifaceted lives, making music, solving crimes, surfing the internet, and coping with aging parents as we face our own mortality. This [...]

Why Did the Berlin Wall Fall?

By |2023-11-09T19:19:47-06:00November 8th, 2023|Categories: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Barbara J. Elliott, Communism, Europe, Poland, Russia, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

The Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain seemed to be permanent fixtures of the political landscape of Europe after 1961. But to everyone’s surprise, the Berlin Wall opened on November 9, 1989. This stunning event triggered a chain reaction throughout Eastern Europe, accelerating a process that had begun a decade earlier. Using a little poetic [...]

When Mother Teresa Came to Washington

By |2023-09-04T19:41:25-05:00September 4th, 2023|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Catholicism, Featured, Politics, Ronald Reagan, Sainthood, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

As I looked around that room in Washington, filled with so many powerful people, I realized that one day in Mother Teresa’s life brought more good to the face of the earth than all our efforts combined for a lifetime. It was utterly ludicrous, stepping out of a chauffeured White House limousine to go hear [...]

The Divine Conspiracy of Dallas Willard

By |2023-10-08T19:27:03-05:00May 8th, 2023|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Bible, Books, Christendom, Christianity, Dallas Willard, Senior Contributors|

Authentic discipleship transforms all aspects of life, every day, at work, at home, in all relationships. My discipleship to Jesus is, within clearly definable limits, not a matter of what I do, but of how I do it. Dallas Willard One of the great oaks among us is fallen. Dallas Willard, who died [...]

John With Jesus: From Passover to the Garden of Gethsemane

By |2023-04-05T20:35:39-05:00April 5th, 2023|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Catholicism, Christianity, Easter, Gospel Reflection, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

I went with Peter to make the arrangements for the Passover supper. When we arrived in Jerusalem, Jesus had told us to look for a man carrying a pitcher of water. We were to follow him into the house he entered, ask to speak to the owner, and say: “The master asks you where is [...]

Remembering Ronald Reagan’s Compassion

By |2023-02-05T19:54:32-06:00February 5th, 2023|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Charity, Politics, Ronald Reagan, Timeless Essays|

Ronald Reagan had a deep and abiding faith in the prudence and wisdom of people at the grass roots level to manage their own lives well, if left free from government intrusion. Is the government an appropriate venue for compassion and charity? Reagan’s answer was no. He believed the private sector does a better job. [...]

Russell Kirk: Planting Seeds for Generations to Come

By |2022-10-18T16:50:34-05:00October 18th, 2022|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Conservatism, Moral Imagination, Russell Kirk, Timeless Essays|

Russell and Annette Kirk with the author Driving across the snowy landscape of Michigan the day after Christmas in 1973, I was somewhat apprehensive. I had been invited to take part in the first seminar of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in the ancestral home of Dr. Russell Kirk at Piety Hill. We were [...]

When Mother Teresa Came to Washington

By |2022-06-17T22:30:40-05:00June 17th, 2022|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Catholicism, Culture, Politics, Ronald Reagan, Sainthood, Senior Contributors, Virtue|

As I looked around that room in Washington, filled with so many powerful people, I realized that one day in Mother Teresa’s life brought more good to the face of the earth than all our efforts combined for a lifetime. It was utterly ludicrous, stepping out of a chauffeured White House limousine to go hear [...]

D-Day and a Decadent French Wedding

By |2022-06-05T15:20:22-05:00June 5th, 2022|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Culture, Timeless Essays, World War II|

Brave young men, overcoming terror with their willingness to fight, came from the corn-fed plains of America to do battle with tyranny. Many of them gave the ultimate sacrifice, as they bled out into the sand below me. Was the blood-spattered sacrifice of lives on D-Day commensurate with the soft, effete, and self-indulgent lives of [...]

Ronald Reagan: Confronting an Evil Empire

By |2022-03-11T11:41:52-06:00March 7th, 2022|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Communism, Leadership, Ronald Reagan, Timeless Essays|

When Ronald Reagan referred to the Soviet regime as the “evil empire,” he was echoing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who said the USSR was “the concentration of world evil.” From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitols of the ancient states [...]

John Paul II & the Spiritual Victory Over Communism

By |2020-06-04T17:17:17-05:00June 3rd, 2020|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Christianity, Communism, Poland, Politics, Senior Contributors, St. John Paul II|

It might be tempting to characterize Pope John Paul II as the political foe who vanquished communism. But that would be untrue. His position challenged communism in the metaphysical realm, not in the political arena. He understood that the error of communism lay in its fundamental understanding of man, who is not merely a unit [...]

Candles Behind the Wall

By |2019-11-09T17:02:21-06:00November 8th, 2019|Categories: Audio/Video, Barbara J. Elliott, Christianity, Communism, Freedom, History, Politics, Senior Contributors|

Barbara J. Elliott remembers the fall of the Berlin Wall, and draws attention to the individuals who, through faith and love, made this momentous event possible. Having interviewed many of those who were imprisoned, beaten, ostracized, and forced underground during the rule of the communist regime, Professor Elliott tells with passion the stories of the [...]

The Divine Conspiracy of Dallas Willard

By |2021-10-30T09:29:59-05:00September 30th, 2018|Categories: Barbara J. Elliott, Books, Christianity, Faith, Philosophy, Timeless Essays|

Authentic discipleship transforms all aspects of life, every day, at work, at home, in all relationships. My discipleship to Jesus is, within clearly definable limits, not a matter of what I do, but of how I do it. One of the great oaks among us is fallen. Dallas Willard, who died May 8 (2013), was [...]

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