Andy Crouch, Christian author, musician and former Acton University plenary speaker, reviews For the Life of the World, a new curriculum series produced by the Acton Institute. In the newest edition of Christianity Today, Crouch discusses how this series takes the Dutch Reformed theology of Abraham Kuyper and “pops” it in a whole new direction. The result, Crouch says, is inventive, profound and rewarding. With the intention of attempting to “articulate core concepts of oikonomia (stewardship), anamnesis (remembering), and prolepsis...

Employer/employee relationships, in themselves, are not morally neutral, says Wayne Grudem, but are fundamentally good and pleasing to God because they provide many opportunities to imitate God’s character and so glorify him. Employer/employee relationships provide many opportunities for glorifying God. On both sides of the transaction, we can imitate God, and he will take pleasure in us when he sees us showing honesty, fairness, trustworthiness, kindness, wisdom, and skill, and keeping our word regarding how much we promised to pay...

This past Sunday, for the first time in 2,000 years, no Christians received Holy Communion in Nineveh. The Islamic militants have eradicated the Christian population in the northern Iraqi city. The few Christians that remain are either too old or sick to escape. Canon Andrew White, Anglican vicar of Baghdad, told The Telegraph that churches have been turned into offices for the Islamic militants, crosses removed. No Christians, he says, want to be there. Last week there was munion in...

Sam Gregg, Acton’s Director of Research, bemoans the state of Europe in The American Spectator today. In a piece entitled, “Something is Rotten in the State of Europe,” Gregg begins by noting that Germany seems to have lost mon sense. William Shakespeare knew a thing or two about human psychology. But he also understood a great deal about the body-politic and how small signs can be indicative of deeper traumas. So when Marcellus tells Horatio at the beginning of Hamlet...

The theme for this week’s Acton Commentary, “The Image of God and You,” struck me while I was rocking my baby son in the early morning hours. In the dim light he reached up and gently touched my face, and it occurred to me how parents are so prone to see the image of God in their children. And yet I wondered what it might be like for a child to look into the face of a parent. What would...

On Tuesday Istituto Acton, the Acton Institute’s Rome pleted its two-day PovertyCure conference for seminarians and faculty of the Pontifical Urban College in Rome. The conference served as part of the students’ pastoral formation before the academic year begins next week. The event also marked the first full and official screening of the PovertyCure DVD Series in the Italian language. Episodes 1-4 of the DVD Series were shown on day one of the conference, Sept. 29, and Episodes 5-6 were...

Imagine you have a family member who has been in prison for a month. You decide to send them some money to buy a tube of toothpaste from the prison store. How much would you need to send them? At some prisons you’d need to send $130. Jails often deduct intake fees, medical co-pays, and the cost of basic toiletries first, leaving the prisoner’s account with a negative balance. To provide enough money for them to buy that initial tube...

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, unemployment across the country is at about 6.1 percent (here in Michigan, it’s at 7.4 percent, which puts us in the bottom 10 states.) That means a lot of folks are still struggling to find a job, or a job where they are not underemployed. Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland give 5 reasons for this. Have all the “good” jobs moved overseas? Do we need to raise the minimum...

The Faith Movement, based in the United Kingdom, seeks to bring clergy, religious and lay faithful together to advance the Catholic faith, educating both believers and non-believers regarding the Church. Their website includes book reviews, and Eric Hester currently has a review of the Acton Institute’s Catholic Education in the West: Roots, Reality and Revival. Hester writes: At the heart of this most important little book is what The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “the right and duty of...

I listen to National Public Radio nearly on a daily basis even though I know there are far-more productive ways to spend one’s time. On today’s “Diane Rehm Show,” the discussion was on the American Legislative Exchange Council, how much cash it received from bogeymen-of-the-left Charles and David Koch, and climate change. ALEC Chief Executive Officer Lisa B. Nelson appeared on the program and predictably endured rude interruptions from her host, ical charges from fellow guests, Tom Hamburger, Washington Post...