Today at The Imaginative Conservative, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, in an excerpt from his recent book, bemoans what he sees as “The Spoiling of America.” While sympathetic to his support for self-discipline, I find his analysis of our consumer culture to be myopic. He writes, Without even thinking about it we have gotten used to having it our way. Because excellent customer service is ubiquitous we believe it must be part of the natural order. The service in the restaurant is...

The New York Times has a new articled titled “Religious Conservatives Embrace Proposed E.P.A. Rules” that raises the question: are the Times’ editors irredeemably biased or are they just not all that bright? Presumably, you have to be smart to work for the Times, right? So it must be another example of what my friend and former Get Religion boss Terry Mattingly calls “Kellerism.” Mattingly coined the term Kellerism in homage to former Times editor Bill Keller, who said that...

Stuart Ray, Donn Weinberg, and Anielka Munkel discuss solutions to poverty – July 17, 2014 On July 17th, the Acton Institute hosted a panel discussion titled “The Crucible of Poverty: Perspectives from the Trenches.” The discussion examined the issue of poverty, with a focus on what strategies for poverty alleviation have worked, what strategies have failed, and how we can better help the most vulnerable among us. The panelists for the discussion were Mr. Stuart Ray, Executive Director of Guiding...

“To achieve a moral ecology under which the dignity and solidarity of all peoples can thrive,” says Michal Novak, “we must take small steps, little by little—yet not lose sight of the goal.” Caritapolis, the City ofCaritas. That is, in effect, how St. Augustine definedThe City of God.Obviously, most of the world is not Christian, nor even Western, so a term likeCaritapolisis not native to much of humankind. Pope Paul VI and later popes preferred the expression “civilization of love.”...

Today is the first World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, as declared by the United Nations. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement: To stop the traffickers, we must sever funding pipelines and seize assets. I urge all countries to ratify and fully implement the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime and its Protocol on Trafficking in Persons.” International Justice Mission is one of many organizations that fight human trafficking on a daily basis. They track down both...

No one wants to be poor. No one enjoys figuring out how to stretch meals to last just three more days. No parent wants to tell their child they can’t play a sport or get a new backpack because there is simply no money. No one wants to be evicted. Poverty in America is a reality; so what are we going to do about it? The American Enterprise Institute has a few ideas. They’ve taken a look at where we...

Christian churches in the West have been focused on redistribution of e rather than the creation of wealth, says Brian Griffiths in this week’s Acton Commentary. Through much of the post-war period in the West, the formation of economic policy was dominated by Keynesian activism on the part of governments seeking an increasing role in providing public services, reducing material poverty, and reshaping e redistribution. In the United States, President John F. Kennedy launched the New Frontier program and his...

Yesterday the State Department released its International Religious Freedom Report for 2013. A wide range of U.S. government agencies and offices use the reports for such efforts as shaping policy and conducting diplomacy. The Secretary of State also uses the reports to help determine which countries have engaged in or tolerated “particularly severe violations” of religious freedom in order to designate “countries of particular concern.” “In 2013, the world witnessed the largest displacement of munities in recent memory,” is the...

We’ve just posted the final bundle of 107 audio files from Acton University 2014 available for $14.95 at our digital download store. Our lunch and evening lectures are also free, including talks from: Rev. Robert Sirico, co-founder of the Acton Institute and author of Defending the Free Market Makoto Fujimura, Artist and Public Intellectual Andy Crouch, Executive Editor, Christianity Today Ross Douthat, Op-Ed Columnist, New York Times Here’s the full list of lectures: Opening Lecture – Rev. Robert A. SiricoCulture...

There’s a famous essay by Leonard Read titled “I, Pencil” in which an eloquent pencil (yes, pencil) writes in the first person about plexity and collaboration involved in its own production. “Here is an astounding fact,” the pencil proclaims. “Neither the worker in the oil field nor the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does the knurling on...