“If we put our neighbor first, we are putting man above God, and that is what we have been doing ever since we began to worship humanity and make man the measure of all things. Whenever man is made the center of things, he es the storm center of trouble – and that is precisely the catch about serving munity.” –Dorothy Sayers In orienting our perspective on work and stewardship, one of the best starting points is Lester DeKoster’s view...

Today is tax day, the day when individual e tax returns are due to the federal government. Here are seven figures you should know about tax day: 1. The average federal tax rate for all households (tax liabilities divided by e, including government transfer payments) before taxes is 18.1 percent. 2. Households in the top quintile (including the top percentile) paid 68.8 percent of all federal taxes, households in the middle quintile paid 9.1 percent, and those in the bottom...

International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC), the humanitarian relief agency for Orthodox Churches in the United States, is working with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East to provide emergency medical assistance, hygiene kits, and personal care items to displaced Idlib families who have fled to the Syrian port city of Lattakia. Idlib, in northwestern Syria, was captured by Al-Qaida’s local branch of Islamist fighters in late March. Now there are reports of the Syrian government using chemical...

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide – a systematic, murderous campaign carried out by the Ottoman Empire against its Armenian population, killing 1.5 million and leaving millions more displaced. Though these atrocities have been verified through survivor accounts and historical records, to this day, not all countries have recognized the atrocities as “genocide” – the foremost being Turkey, along with others, including the United States. In a Huffington Post article, “The United States Should Remember Raphael...

When the city of Seattle recently voted to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, some critics (like me) snarked that if $15 would help workers why not raise it to $20, $25, or even $30 an hour. Apparently, one CEO in Seattle didn’t realize we were joking. Dan Price of Gravity Payments recently announced that every one of his 120 employees would soon be making a minimum of $70,000 a year—a minimum wage of $33.65 an hour. The...

“I’m tired all the time.” That’s the lament of one of the working mothers in the video below (from The Guardian), as she describes her life working minimum wage jobs. She and the other women featured are all fighting for an increase in pay to $15 per hour (like Seattle’s recent mandate.) I feel for them. I can’t imagine trying to raise a family on minimum wage salaries. But I have several issues with what I see in this video....

Social justice is a term and concept frequently associated with the political Left, and too often used to champion views that are destructive for society and antithetical to justice. Yet for Christians the term is too valuable to be abandoned. Conservatives need to rescue it from the Left and restore it’s true meaning. True social justice is obtained, as my colleague Dylan Pahman has helpfully explained, “when each member, group, and sphere of society gives to every other what is...

The Pontifical Science Academies has created a website to both educate and fight human trafficking. (Pontifical Academies are academic honor societies that work under the direction of the Holy See and the bishop of Rome, the Pope.) The new website, www.endslavery.va, is one e of Pope Francis’ ecumenical Global Freedom Network held last year. This meeting included a joint declaration against trafficking, signed by Pope Francis and leaders of different munities. The website, #EndSlavery, will include Catholic and Anglican resources,...

Millennials are obsessed with entrepreneurship, says Elise Amyx. Some are attracted to entrepreneurship out of necessity, while others want the freedom es with building their own business. And some Christian Millennials want to redeem free enterprise: In part, redeeming capitalism means doing more than just making a profit. Consider Chick-fil-A’s decision to bring chicken sandwiches and waffle fries to people stranded in their cars during a snow storm. Or Whole Foods’ decision to donate 5 percent of its profits to...

I grew up in a very small town. Our fashion purchases were limited to the dry goods store (yes, it still went by that name) which carried things like Buster Brown shoes and sensible sweaters, or the grain elevator, where you could buy durable overalls for farm work. As someone who eagerly awaited Seventeen magazine every month and witnessed the birth of MTV, you can imagine my fashion dilemma. The closest mall was 70 miles away. I needed Calvin Klein...