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Why we need a better way to measure poverty

Note:This article is part of the ‘Principles Project,’ a list of principles, axioms, and beliefs that undergirda Christian view of economics, liberty, and virtue. Clickhereto read the introduction and other posts in this series. The Principle:#14G — To alleviate and eliminate poverty, we need to identify and measure it correctly. The Definitions: Consumption — The use of goods and services by households. Poverty — The condition of not having sufficient resources to meet basic needs including food, clothing, and shelter....

Radio Free Acton: Defining a human right; Understanding Brexit

On this episode of Radio Free Acton, Trey Dimsdale, director of Program Outreach at Acton, speaks with Adam MacLeod, professor of law at Faulkner University, on the definition of a basic human right and how the concept is understood today. Then, Senior Editor at Acton, Rev. Ben Johnson, talks about Brexit with Rev. Richard Turnbull from the Center for Enterprise, Markets, and Ethics. They analyze the aftermath of Brexit and the events that led up to the split between Britain...

The sharing economy: How do we maintain a culture of ownership?

As we survey the modern economy, individual ownership appears to be on the demise. We see an increasing preference for access over ownership and collaborative consumption,from the streaming- and cloud-centric features of the latest technology to the increasingly “share-happy” habits of American consumers amid a burgeoning “gig economy.” On the surface, such a shift would seem to bring endless benefits: more options, more flexibility, better quality, cheaper prices, fewer risks, and (presumably) more freedom. Yet despite such benefits, a void...

Amazon’s HQ2: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right, and wrong

After much anticipation, Amazon announced yesterday that it will open its new headquarters, HQ2, in two locations: Queens, New York, and Crystal City, Virginia. It will also open a third “Operations Center of Excellence” in Nashville. Controversy attended the announcement, as all three cities promised pany subsidies and tax incentives topping $2.2 billion. New York pledged $1.525 billion between tax incentives and grants. Virginia and Arlington agreed to an $800 million package, more than half-a-billion of it in cash grants....

How gratitude transforms our perspective on global trade

The Thanksgiving holiday gives us a unique opportunity to reflect on God’s overwhelming grace, abundance, and provision—spiritually, materially, and otherwise. But amid and throughout those reflections, how often do we pause and consider the relationships, channels, and institutions that God uses in the process? Do we acknowledge that the very foods on our Thanksgiving e from an in-depth exchange of human creativity, investment, and daily sacrifice? Are we thankful for the labor it took to grow and harvest, package and...

The intellectual maverick behind Brazil’s conservative wave

The recent victory of the conservative populist Jair Bolsonaro in the Brazilian presidential elections brought the name of the philosopher Olavo de Carvalho to the center of Brazilian political debate. Many have since stated that Carvalho is an intellectual precursor to the populist candidate – as someone who was able to reshape the Brazilian political discussion in ways that cleared an intellectual path for Bolsonaro’s electoral victory. It is not a coincidence that when Bolsonaro gave his victory speech, Carvalho’s...

Russell Kirk: Where does virtue come from?

“How can human society form and raise up virtuous people?” asks Barton Gingerich in this week’s Acton Commentary. As Gingerich notes, Russell Kirk explored this perennial question in a 1982 essay titled, “Virtue: Can It Be Taught?” Kirk defined virtues as “the qualities of full humanity: strength, courage, capacity, worth, manliness, moral excellence,” particularly qualities of “moral goodness: the practice of moral duties and the conformity of life to the moral law; uprightness; rectitude.” Despite modern attempts to supplant vigorous,...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

C.S. Lewis and the Apocalypse of Gender

From very nearly the beginning, Christianity has wrestled with the question of the body. Heretics from gnostics to docetists devalued physical reality and the body, while orthodox Christianity insisted that the physical world offers us true signs pointing to God. This quarrel persists today, and one form it takes is the general confusion among Christians and non-Christians alike about gender. Is gender an abstracted idea? Is it reducible to biological characteristics? Is it a set of behaviors determined by...

Aug 5, 2026

Up from the Liberal Founding

During the 20th century, scholars of the American founding generally believed that it was liberal. Specifically, they saw the founding as rooted in the political thought of 17th-century English philosopher John Locke. In addition, they saw Locke as a primarily secular thinker, one who sought to isolate the role of religion from political considerations except when necessary to prop up the various assumptions he made for natural rights. These included a divine creator responsible for a rational world for...

Aug 5, 2026

How Dispensationalism Got Left Behind

Whether we like it or not, Americans, in one way or another, have all been indelibly shaped by dispensationalism. Such is the subtext of Daniel Hummel’s provocative telling of the rise and fall of dispensationalism in America. In a little less than 350 pages, Hummel traces how a relatively insignificant Irishman from the Plymouth Brethren, John Nelson Darby, prompted the proliferation of dispensational theology, especially its eschatology, or theology of the end times, among our ecclesiastical, cultural, and political...

Aug 5, 2026

Spurgeon and the Poverty-Fighting Church

Religion & Liberty: Volume 33, Number 4 Spurgeon and the Poverty-Fighting Church by Christopher Parr • October 30, 2023 Portrait of Charles Spurgeon by Alexander Melville (1885) Charles Spurgeon was a young, zealous 15-year-old boy when he came to faith in Christ. A letter to his mother at the time captures the enthusiasm of his newfound Christian faith: “Oh, how I wish that I could do something for Christ.” God granted that wish, as Spurgeon would e “the prince of...

Aug 5, 2026

Creating an Economy of Inclusion

The poor have been the main subject of concern in the whole tradition of Catholic Social Teaching. The Catholic Church talks often about a “preferential option for the poor.” In recent years, many of the Church’s social teaching documents have been particularly focused on the needs of the poorest people in the world’s poorest countries. The first major analysis of this topic could be said to have been in the papal encyclical Populorum Progressio, published in 1967 by Pope...

Aug 5, 2026

Adam Smith and the Poor

Adam Smith did not seem to think that riches were requisite to happiness: “the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for” (The Theory of Moral Sentiments). But he did not mend beggary. The beggar here is not any beggar, but Diogenes the Cynic, who asked of Alexander the Great only to step back so as not to cast a shadow upon Diogenes as he reclined alongside the highway....

Aug 5, 2026

Conversation Starters with … Anne Bradley

Anne Bradley is an Acton affiliate scholar, the vice president of academic affairs at The Fund for American Studies, and professor of economics at The Institute of World Politics. There’s much talk about mon good capitalism” these days, especially from the New Right. Is this long overdue, that a hyper-individualism be beaten back, or is it merely cover for increasing state control of the economy? Let me begin by saying that I hate “capitalism with adjectives” in general. This...

Aug 5, 2026

Mistaken About Poverty

Perhaps it is because America is the land of liberty and opportunity that debates about poverty are especially intense in the United States. Americans and would-be Americans have long been told that if they work hard enough and persevere they can achieve their dreams. For many people, the mere existence of poverty—absolute or relative—raises doubts about that promise and the American experiment more generally. Is it true that America suffers more poverty than any other advanced democracy in the...

Aug 5, 2026

Jesus and Class Warfare

Plenty of Marxists have turned to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity. Memorable examples include the works of F.D. Maurice and Zhu Weizhi’s Jesus the Proletarian. After criticizing how so many translations of the New Testament soften Jesus’ teachings regarding material possessions, greed, and wealth, Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has gone so far to ask, “Are Christians supposed to be Communists?” In the Huffington Post, Dan Arel has even claimed that “Jesus was clearly a Marxist,...

Aug 5, 2026

Lord Jonathan Sacks: The West’s Rabbi

In October 1798, the president of the United States wrote to officers of the Massachusetts militia, acknowledging a limitation of federal rule. “We have no government,” John Adams wrote, “armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, and revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.” The nation that Adams had helped to found would require the parts of the body...

Aug 5, 2026