I don’t believe there is anything worse than the trafficking of children for sex. Children are often sold by parents because of poverty, are “traded” by adults in their life for drugs or cash, or are lured by traffickers who promise money, affection and support from an adult or children can simply be kidnapped. Is there any hope for recovering a child lost in this hell? There is. A unique, successful organization called Operation Underground Railroad is showing the world...

Today there are216 million fewer undernourished people than there was in 1990-92. To put that number in perspective, consider that across the globe there are currently 247 countries and dependent territories. If you ranked them by the number of people in each, the last 144 countries—Serbia to Pitcairn Islands—would have bined population of 216 million. According to the United Nations’ annual hunger report, since 1990-92 the number of undernourished people has decreased from nearly a billion to about 795 million....

In the Old Testament there are mandments. Of those 248 are mandments,” to perform an act, and 365 are mandments,” to abstain from certain acts. Some of those mandments that are deemed to be self-evident (“laws”), such as not to murder and not to steal. memorate important events in Jewish history (“testimonies”) while the rest are simply decrees of God (“decrees”). God deemed those mandments to be enough to regulate almost every aspect of the lives of his people for...

Pentecost Sunday:The Holy es with tongues of fire and an munity” is empowered for mission. Pentecost is not the birth of the church.The church is conceived in the words and works of Jesus as he gathers followers and promises, “If any one is thirsty, let e to me and drink. Whoever believers in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” (John 7:37-39) The church is born when our Resurrected Lord appears to...

President Obama remarked that he would like faith organizations and churches to speak to poverty solutions “in a more forceful fashion” at a Georgetown University summit in mid-May. The meeting included faith leaders from Catholic and evangelical denominations, and included political thinkers Robert Putnam of Harvard, and the American Enterprise Institute’s Arthur Brooks. Putnam said the voice of the faithful in the U.S. is critical to alleviating poverty. Without the voice of faith, it’s going to be very hard to...

Earlier this month I argued that the moral center and chief objective of American diplomacy should be the promotion of religious freedom. When a country protects religious liberty it must also, whether it intended to or not, recognize a host of other freedoms, such as the freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience, and freedom of speech. Once these liberties are in place, it es more difficult for a country’s government to maintain a single, totalizing ideology. President Reagan seemed to...

We’ve had an amazing collection of speakers participating in the 2015 Acton Lecture Series, and today we’re pleased to be able to share the video of one of the highlights of the series: George Weigel’s discussion of ten essential things to know about Pope Francis, which he delivered on May 6th. Weigel isDistinguished Senior Fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D. C. An eminent Catholic theologian, he’s the...

Patriarch Bartholomew “Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in his statement for the 2015 World Water Day makes a number of assertions that, while inspired by morally good ideals, are morally and practically problematic,” says Rev. Gregory Jensen in this week’s Acton Commentary. “Chief among them is his assertion ‘that environmental resources are God’s gift to the world’ and so ‘cannot be either considered or exploited as private property.’” While certainly not absolute, the Orthodox Christian moral tradition doesn’t reject the notion of...

Is it time to write off the college experience? John Stossel thinks so. Half today’s recent grads work in jobs that don’t require degrees. Eighty thousand of America’s bartenders have bachelor’s degrees. Politicians such as Hillary Clinton promote college by claiming that over a lifetime, college graduates “earn $1 million more.” That statistic is true but utterly misleading. People who go to college are different. They’re more likely to have been raised by two parents. They did better in high...

In Leonard Reed’s famous essay, “I, Pencil,” he highlights the extensive cooperation and collaboration involved in the assemblyof a simple pencil plex coordination that is quite miraculously uncoordinated. Reed’s main takeaway is that, rather than try to stifle or control these creative energies, we ought to “organize society to act in harmony with this lesson,” permitting “these creative know-hows to freely flow.” In doing so, heconcludes, we will continue to see such testimonies manifest — evidence fora faith “as practical...