About Mere Liberty
vision
challenge & rethink paradigms
To reignite Christian curiosity and thoughtful reflection by challenging prevailing paradigms in politics, religion, and culture; passionately promoting human freedom and flourishing.
What is Mere Liberty? It’s an independent research and education platform devoted to liberty at its most fundamental. Not as a political preference, but as the irreducible condition of what it means to be human. Most people have been handed conclusions about freedom. Here, we think them through.
theologically reformed
On theological matters, you’ll notice that I take a historic reformed Christian (Calvinist) perspective. Because I take a Reformational approach to philosophy, my work is not inherently Scholastic.
philosophically libertarian
Mere Liberty is not exclusive neutral in its philosophy; genuine neutrality is impossible. Though there is opportunity to discuss the merits and demerits of any given philosophy, I take a distinctly libertarian approach to political philosophy. Reformational philosophy is the broader school of thought that I use as well.
mission
teaches and reflects
Mere Liberty is about liberty at its most fundamental core—truth woven into the fabric of reality, revealed in Scripture and God’s created order. We publish content that reflects this truth, honors its complex and irreducible nature, and reorients human action toward genuine freedom and flourishing.
We strip away familiar rhetoric and challenge today’s polarizing paradigms. Mere Liberty is not politics per se, but the philosophy and theology beneath political and cultural problems. By rethinking how we see these issues, we move beyond shallow political fixes that erode personal responsibility—and with it, our freedoms.
Join us through our critical thinking courses and exclusive membership to go deeper: sharpen your reasoning with structured, Socratic training, engage in live discussions, and collaborate with a community committed to applying truth in real life. Together, we don’t just think—we act with clarity and conviction.
values
appreciating the complexity of the created order
orthodoxy
What is regarded as true or correct Christian thinking.
non-reductive
Ontology is irreducible; necessarily complex.
socratic
Inquiry-based discovery aimed at orthodoxy.
orthopraxy
Converting orthodoxy into correct practice, action
“Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of a slave but of the free woman. For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm then and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
FAQs
More of what is mere liberty
Mere Liberty is an independent research and education platform devoted to liberty at its most fundamental — not as a political preference, but as the irreducible condition of what it means to be human. Founded by Kerry Baldwin, it publishes essays, hosts the Dare to Think podcast, and offers the Liberty Seminar, a Socratic critical thinking course for high school students and adults. Most people have been handed conclusions about freedom. Mere Liberty thinks them through.
The name is a deliberate echo of C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity — Lewis meant “nothing less than Christian,” stripped of partisan accretion down to its irreducible core. Mere Liberty means nothing less than being free: not a political slogan, not a party platform, but liberty as a truth about reality that cuts beneath the familiar rhetoric. The full definition comes from the platform’s founding conviction: “Mere liberty is nothing less than the state of being free — the positive enjoyment of social, political, and economic rights and privileges; freedom from physical restraint; and the power of choice.”
Dare to Think is the official podcast of Mere Liberty, hosted by Kerry Baldwin. It is a multi-format show — solo episodes and interviews — that challenges prevailing paradigms in politics, religion, and culture. The title captures the platform’s core conviction: that honest, rigorous thinking is not a threat to faith or conviction but the most faithful thing you can do. Episodes range from libertarian political theory and Reformed theology to applied ethics, womanhood, and public intellectual inquiry.
Most libertarian platforms treat liberty as a political conclusion. Mere Liberty treats it as a question worth thinking through — philosophically, theologically, and practically. The work is grounded in Reformational philosophy, Austrian economics, and a commitment to the principle of self-ownership that runs through Kerry Baldwin’s research on abortion, womanhood, and political theory alike. Kerry is equally willing to challenge secular libertarian assumptions and conventional Reformed evangelical ones. The goal is not to win an argument but to think honestly — and to teach others to do the same. Kerry also co-hosts the Reformed Libertarians Podcast at reformedlibertarians.com, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute.
Kerry Baldwin is a confessionally Reformed Christian, and that theological commitment shapes the philosophical framework underlying Mere Liberty’s work. But Mere Liberty is not a Reformed ministry, and its public arguments are constructed to stand on natural law and the non-aggression principle without requiring theological premises. Reformed readers will find the deeper framework; readers who are not Reformed will find rigorous, honest reasoning that doesn’t depend on shared confession. The platform is for anyone willing to think carefully about liberty, regardless of where they start.
The Liberty Seminar is Mere Liberty’s online critical thinking course for high school students and adults, built on a distinctive approach to the Socratic method. Kerry Baldwin teaches Socratic inquiry as a means of discovery, not debate — you cannot argue well about what you do not yet understand. The method also incorporates what Kerry calls critical feeling, or reflective thinking: the disciplined awareness of how emotion and intuition interact with reason. The result is a course that cultivates genuine intellectual confidence — the ability to think through hard questions carefully, hold convictions honestly, and engage disagreement without being threatened by it. Experience the freedom of thinking well.
Kerry Baldwin’s research sits at the intersection of Reformed Christian theology, libertarian political philosophy, and Austrian economics. The principle of self-ownership is central to her work across multiple domains — grounding her novel pro-life libertarian theory of fetal self-ownership (contra Walter Block’s evictionism), her Reformational account of womanhood that refuses the complementarian/egalitarian false paradigm, and her broader libertarian Christian apologetics. She is a published co-author of Faith Seeking Freedom (Libertarian Christian Institute Press) and a regular contributor to the Libertarian Christian Institute. She also co-hosts the Reformed Libertarians Podcast at reformedlibertarians.com.