In conjunction with Arbor Day — a day dedicated annually to public tree-planting in the U.S. and other countries — Ashley Evaro offers a brief theological reflection on the role of trees in the story of our salvation: Christians should care about National Arbor Day (to those who don’t know, that is today). Even if you are not a devoted celebrator of trees, it is worth your time to stop and consider what wonderful things trees are. Not only are...

Is there any societal reason to protect religion? That is, do we get anything out of religion, as a society, even if we’re not religious, and is that “anything” worth protecting? Mark Movsesian thinks so. In First Things, Movsesian says religion does do good for a society – a good that is worthy of protection. Religion, munal religion, provides important benefits for everyone in the liberal state—even the non-religious. Religion encourages people to associate with and feel responsible for others,...

Religious shareholder activism continues its war on affordable, domestically produced energy in a campaign that can only be described as unholy. The first casualties of this war are the nation’s 10.5 million job seekers, the millions more who have quit looking for work, and the poor. The 2014 proxy resolution season finds the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia joining other shareholders to force a May 2014 vote at Chevron Corp., which would require pany to report hydraulic fracturing (aka...

I recently read Yuval Levin’s new book, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left, and found it remarkably rich and rewarding. Though the entire book is worthy of discussion, his chapter on choice vs. obligation is particularly helpful in illuminating one of the more elusive tensions in our social thought and action. In the chapter, Levin provides a helpful summary of how the two men differed in their beliefs about social obligation and...

Yesterday, I had the honor of contributing to a panel discussion on the art of Margaret Vega here at the Acton Institute. Her exhibition is titled, “Angels, Dinergy, and Our Relationship with Perpetual Order.” Some fuller coverage may be ing on the PowerBlog, but in the meantime I have posted the text of my presentation, “Death and the Struggle for Permanence” at Everyday Asceticism. Excerpt: Angels … represent hope amid the human struggle for permanence in a life so characterized...

255 Triathlons (6 Ironman distances, 7 Half Ironman), 22 Duathlons, 72 Marathons (32 Boston Marathons), 8 18.6 Milers, 97 Half Marathons, 1 20K, 37 10 Milers: That’s a lot of miles. A lot of training. A lot of numbers. It’s an economy of sorts for athletic achievement. These are some of the stats for Team Hoyt, the father-son team of Dick and Rick Hoyt who have raced together for 37 years. Rick was born with cerebral palsy in 1962, and...

With its decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ended systemic racial segregation in public education. Now, sixty years later, courts have released hundreds of school districts from enforced integration—with the result being an increase in “resegregation” of public schools. Numerous media outlets have recently picked up on a story by the investigative journalism nonprofit ProPublica about schools in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. According to the report: In recent years, a new term, apartheid schools—meaning schools whose white population...

Watch our new conference series live from Rome on April 29 at 10:00 a.m. EST. The embedded player below will display our conference stream when it es available. You can also visit the event on our Livestream page in order to see more information and to ask questions during the event. ...

We Americans are rather ignorant about religion. We claim to be a religious folk, but when es to hard-core knowledge, we don’t do well. The Pew Forum put together a baseline quiz of religious knowledge – a mere 32 multiple choice questions – and on average, Americans only got about half of them right. A few sample questions (without the multiple choice answers): Which Bible figure is most closely associated with leading the exodus from Egypt?What is Ramadan?In which religion...

“The goal of all good laws is first and foremost the glory of God, then the good of one’s neighbor, privately and, most important, publicly.” –Girolamo Zanchi The following es from Thesis 3 (above) of Girolamo Zanchi’s newly translated On the Law in General.Though the work passes a range of topics, from natural law to human laws to divine laws, this particular es in his first foundational chapter on what the law actually is—its goals, classifications, and functions. If the...