Kevin J. Jones of the Catholic News Agency interviewed Acton’s Rev. Robert A. Sirico and Dr. Steven Schneck, Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America, to find out how the Tea Party lines up with Catholic Social Teaching. Here’s a snip: Fr. Sirico described the Tea Party as “an amorphous thing” with a lot of variety and as a “populist, spontaneous movement.” He thought mon themes include a desire for less...

Today is my last day at the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) meeting in Atlanta. I plan to make my purchases from the various book sellers this morning, having already reconnoitered the exhibits and mapped out my plan of attack. One thing that has struck me is that there are a number of new books discussing ecumenism and Christian unity from host of different perspectives. On the one hand this shouldn’t be surprising. The unity of the church is a constant...

In today’s Acton Commentary I explore “The Legalism of Political Christianity.” This quote from Ernest Lefever (not included in the piece but which does appear in my book) represents the basic position well: It is dangerous for any Christian body to identify itself fully with any specific political cause or order, whether the prevailing one or a challenge to it. In identifying with a secular power or agency, the church runs the risk of losing its critical distance and of...

A number of Acton staffers, including myself, had the pleasure of attending the 2010 meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society held in Atlanta, Georgia. There will be more on some of the goings-on at this event e, but to get a sense of what our presence was like in the exhibition space, check out the pictures below. Kudos especially to Kara Eagle who did a great job with design (assisted by Melissa Burkholder) and execution of our exhibit space. We...

There’s a story that I heard, of a miner, a family down in– it was in the Appalachia area and the church there really thought that they were doing a great deal because they would go in, they said they would pick the poorest families and they would take them Christmas gifts and turkeys and that sort of thing. So they did. They went to this family and they presented them with all the gifts and gave them to them...

I just sent off a draft of a brief review of Carl Trueman‘s new book Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative to appear in the next issue of Religion & Liberty. (You can get plimentary subscription here). I mend the book as a very incisive and insightful challenge to any facile and uncritical identification of the Christian faith with particular political and economic ideologies. Here’s a snippet of the review: [Trueman’s] project is not about demonizing capitalism, wealth, or profits...

The University of Maryland — Baltimore County Orthodox Christian Fellowship and the school’s Secular Student Alliance sponsored a Nov. 16 debate on the subject of “The Source of Human Morality” with about 450 people in attendance. Fr. Hans Jacobse, an Orthodox Christian priest and president of the American Orthodox Institute (he blogs here), squared off with Matt Dillahunty, the president of the Atheist Community of Austin, and host of the public access television and Internet show The Atheist Experience. The...

An exciting new book for anyone interested in the intersection of morality/theology and economics is John Mueller’s Redeeming Economics. I haven’t yet seen the book myself, but Acton Senior Fellow Jennifer Morse reviews it here. Drawing on Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, Mueller argues for recovering a fourth element of economics (besides consumption, production, and exchange): gift. He calls his approach neo-scholastic economics. Here’s Morse: The enemies of the state who ought to resist state encroachment of the family’s domain have...

I’ve just returned to Rome following our Lisbon conference on Catholic Social Teaching, Free Enterprise and Poverty. Judging from the crowded auditorium and the ments from the audience, it was a very successful event. Here I’ll mention a few of my personal highlights from the event: — Bishop Filippo Santoro gave an excellent presentation on the errors of using e transfers to achieve a more equal society, and especially the dependency the poor develop on the state. — Professor Raúl...

Joseph Epstein’s essay, “T.S. Eliot and the Demise of the Literary Culture,” in the November issue of Commentary, strengthens the case for The Waste Land author’s enduring legacy. Epstein captures the high points of Eliot’s biographical and literary plishments in only eight pages – an admirable feat given the extent of Eliot’s influence on the past century. After filling out the checklist of Eliot’s early poetry, friendships, jobs, marriages, alleged anti-Semitism, and criticism by rote, Epstein concludes Eliot was a...