Stephen Grabill delivers his address at today’s Lord Acton Lecture Series Event Stephen J. Grabill, Acton’s Research Scholar in Theology, delivered an address today based upon his new book which explores plex and often-overlooked relationship between Protestantism and natural law. In Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics, Grabill calls upon Christian ethicists, theologians, and laypersons to take another look at this vital element in the history of Christian ethical thought. He appeals to Reformation and post-Reformation era theologians...

Seth Godin wants to know. ...

I recently received a letter from a reader of my Acton Commentary column, "Marriage as a Social Justice Issue," which she had seen reprinted in modified form at Town Hall. My correspondent was concerned that I had overlooked a key fact: the lack of marriageable black men. She said, in part: Education and the lower number of available black men are 2 major things you left out of your article. I know that marriage is important in the munity, but...

…check out the helpful website by the Seymour Institute. Founded by the Rev. Gene Rivers in Boston, the Institute brings together information and tools to advocate for marriage in the munity. ...

Rick Ritchie responds to this New Atlantis article by Peter Lawler, “Is the Body Property?” in a recent post on Daylight. Lawler discusses the increasingly broad push modify the human body, especially in the context of organ sales. Lawler writes of “the creeping libertarianism that characterizes our society as a whole. As we understand ourselves with ever greater consistency as free individuals and nothing more, it es less clear why an individual’s kidneys aren’t his property to dispose of as...

The children of the Chinese One-child policy are finding new obstacles in their paths: no one wants to hire them. Incredible, but true. It seems that many of the only children have been so pampered by their parents, that employers do not find them suitable workers. Some have called these children, "Little Emperors," because their parents dote on them so thoroughly. Evidently, this is not good preparation for working in the global economy! Recently, China Daily reports, the Sinohydro Engineering...

In this week’s Acton Commentary, Anthony Bradley takes a look at the Spanish economy as it faces a “dilemma,” as he puts it, “simultaneously needing immigrants and seeking to curb them.” Bradley also notes that “institutions like marriage and family seem silly to many Spaniards.” As APM’s Marketplace reports, shifting trends in Spain might claim another Spanish institution, the siesta. A variety of factors, including petition with labor forces in other nations, are leading some to question the viability of...

The January 2007 issue of First Things features a lengthy review of Stephen Grabill’s new book on Protestant natural law thinking (no link to the review, unfortunately). J. Daryl Charles, an assistant professor at Union University, has this to say about Grabill’s Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (Eerdmans, 2006): Grabill’s examination of theological ethics in the Protestant Reformed mainstream is pelling, and it represents a shot across the bow of theological ethics, as it were. Protestants for...

In a much discussed op-ed for CNN last week, hipster church leaders Marc Brown and Jay Bakker (the latter’s profile, incidentally, immediately precedes that of yours truly in The Relevant Nation…a serendipitous product of alphabetical order) lodge plaint against Christianity that doesn’t respect the call “love others just as they are, without an agenda.” Speaking of Jesus, Brown and Bakker write, “The bulk of his time was spent preaching about helping the poor and those who are unable to help...

From the new Solzhenitsyn Reader, which I highly mend (especially if you are behind on your Christmas shopping): Human society cannot be exempted from the laws and demands which constitute the aim and meaning of individual human lives. But even without a religious foundation, this sort of transference is readily and naturally made. It is very human to apply even to the biggest social events or human organizations, including whole states and the United Nations, our spiritual values: noble, base,...