Hunger, disease, the waste of lives that is extreme poverty are an affront to all of us. To Jeff [economist Jeffrey Sachs] it’s a difficult but solvable equation. An equation that crosses human with financial capital, the strategic goals of the rich world with a new kind of planning in the poor world. –Bono, Foreward to The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs, italics mine. I am informed by philologists that the “rise to power” of these two words, “problem”...

“All forms of gambling are predatory and immoral in their very essence,” says Rev. Albert Mohler. I don’t agree, at least insofar as his identification of what makes gambling essentially immoral is not necessarily unique to games of chance: the enticement for people to “risk their money for the vain hope of financial gain.” Stock e to mind. Indeed, as I’ve pointed out before, there is no single coherent Christian position regarding gambling per se. For example, the Catechism of...

Ohio Court Limits Eminent Domain ...

“‘Disproportionate’ in What Moral Universe?” asks Charles Krauthammer in today’s Washington Post. He continues: When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel “proportionate” attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned the Japanese home islands into rubble and ruin. Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right — legal...

I’ve got an idea for a new . Titled, Hugo and Vladi, it details the zany adventures of two world leaders, one of whom (played by David Hyde Pierce) struggles to upkeep his image of a friendly, modern European diplomat while his goofball brother-in-law (played by George Lopez) keeps screwing it up for him by spouting off vitriolic Soviet rhetoric and threatening all of Western civilization with his agressive (but loveable) arms sales and seizures of private panies. It is...

It’s a deceptively simple idea. Everyone would be allocated an identical annual carbon allowance, stored as points on an electronic swipe-card. Points would be deducted for every purchase of non-renewable energy. People who did not use their full allocation, such as people who do not own a car, would be able to sell their surplus carbon points into a central bank. High energy users could then buy them – motorists who used their allocation would still be able to buy...

In Parts 5 and 6 we addressed the two mon Protestant objections to natural law. And now, as promised, we will see what limitations the Reformers perceived in natural law, even as they affirmed its value. (Incidentally, the treatment of the natural knowledge of God that Peter Martyr Vermigli, Jerome Zanchi, and Francis Turretin provide, to mention only a few, pletely in step with that of the early church. For more on that topic, click here.) The widespread assumption that...

Today in Washington: Christian Newswire — Amid mounting controversy among evangelical Christians over global warming and climate policy, the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance presented “A Call to Truth, Prudence and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming” at the National Press Club Tuesday morning. The paper is a refutation of the Evangelical Climate Initiative’s “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action,” released last February, and a call to climate policies that will “better protect the world’s poor and...

The latest issue of the Scottish Journal of Theology is out, and includes my article, “The Aryan clause, the Confessing Church, and the ecumenical movement: Barth and Bonhoeffer on natural theology, 1933–1935.” Here’s the abstract: In this article I argue that the essential relationship between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth stands in need of reassessment. This argument is based on a survey of literature dealing with Bonhoeffer and Barth in three basic areas between the critically important years of 1933...

How can government best uphold Christian values? The right’s traditional answer is through legislating morality issues that are central to family values or the sanctity of life. It looks like the left will counter this with an expanded version of government. Andrew Lynn looks at the petition for the religious vote in the context of Sen. Barack Obama’s recent speech to Call to Renewal. Read the mentary here. ...