Giving foreign aid directly to poor countries may end up keeping those countries poor. For most readers of this blog and others associated with the Acton Institute this claim will be neither surprising nor controversial. Indeed, it’s been a core assumption behind our work on PovertyCure. But until recently, many Americans would have found the idea to be counter-intuitive, if not obviously wrong. But thanks to the work of the Angus Deaton, the recent winner of the Nobel prize in...

Religious liberty and economic freedom in the heart of … Israel? In September, the foundational message of the Acton Institute was featured at “Judaism, Christianity, and the West: Building and Preserving the Institutions of Freedom,” a conference that brought together Jewish and Christian scholars in Jerusalem. One featured speaker was Professor Daniel Mark, an Orthodox Jew and an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, Pennsylvania’s oldest Catholic university. Mark is also a visiting fellow in the Department of...

I sawThe Martian this week and was struck by the number of resonant themes on a variety of is issues, including creation, creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, exploration, work, suffering, risk, and civilization. I won’t be exploring all of these in the brief reflections below, but will simply be highlighting some salient features. The municates something seriously important about the threefold relations of human beings: to God, to one another, and to the creation. There will be some potential spoilers in the...

Ahhhh, the Left! So often passionate, so obstinately assured of the rightness of their secular crusades mounted under the variety of flags and anthems espousing “social justice” and “environmental sustainability.” And, unfortunately, so often just plain wrong. Such is the case with As You Sow, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and other shareholder activist groups that each year apply their supposed religious authority to the proxy resolutions they submit to panies. Certainly, AYS and ICCR investors believe from the...

Since its inception in the 1990s, the payday lending industry has grown at an astonishing pace. Currently, there are about 22,000 payday lending locations—more than two for every Starbucks—that originate an estimated $27 billion in annual loan volume. Christians and others worriedabout the poor tend to be very fortable with this industry. While there may be forms of payday lending that are ethical, the concern is that most such lending is predatory, and that the industry takes advantage of the...

In today’s American Spectator, Acton’s Director of Research Samuel Gregg notes that left-wing politicians, supporters of socialism, and social engineers seem to have taken over – not just in American politics, but globally. Why? Gregg suggests three reasons: One abiding cause of the left’s on-going ascendency, I’d suggest, is that the visible weakening of orthodox religion throughout the West. As the 20th century Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac observed, liberalized forms of Judaism and Christianity don’t involve abandonment of a...

The Acton Institute’s latest film series is having a profound influence on churches munities of all kinds. Hearts are being stirred and inspired, mindsare connecting mission withculture, and as a result, the church is unlocking a bigger-picture vision of God’s plan for creation. Over at the Letters to the Exiles blog, Evan Koons piling letters and testimonials from viewers of the series, sharing how For the Life of the World is transforming their lives munities. In the latest letter, we...

As Christianity loses influence in the West, and as culture corresponds by taking itscues from the idols of hedonism, it can be easy to forget that most of these challenges are not new. In an article for Leadership Journal, Ryan Hoselton highlights theserecurring “crises,” pondering whatlessons we might learn from Christian responses of ages past. On the topic of family, and more specifically, family in decline, Hoselton points to Herman Bavinck’s The Christian Family,whichtakes aim attherange of threats tothe family...

Inlast Tuesday’sDemocratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders stayed true to his famed aversion to capitalism, proclaiming the fanciful virtues of “democratic socialism.” Yet when prodded by Anderson Cooper — who asked, “you don’t consider yourself a capitalist?” — Sanders responded not by attacking free markets, but by targeting a more popular target of discontent: Wall Street and the banks. “Do I consider myself part of the casino capitalist process by which so few have so much and so many have so...

“The rules don’t apply to me,” is a favorite maxim of toddlers, narcissists, and government officials. This is especially true of the legislative branch, which frequently exempts itself—and its 30,000 employees—from federal laws that apply to the rest of us. But just as often government at all levels simply ignores laws it finds too burdensome ply with. A recent study published last month in the American Journal of Political Science titled “When Governments Regulate Governments” found that pared with private...