The Acton Institute lost a dear friend with the passing last week of Sr. Connie Driscoll, president of the Chicago-based St. Martin de Porres House of Hope, and a frequent lecturer at the Towards a Free and Virtuous Society conferences. Columnist Carol Marin of the Chicago Sun-Times described Sr. Connie as “the most unlikely nun I have ever seen: a black eye-patch-wearing, cigarillo smoking, Scotch-drinking sister. Though she had lost her left eye to a stroke, her good eye was...

An excerpt: The history of forming associations dedicated to serving others is as old as America, itself. From abolition societies and suffrage movements to immigrant aid groups and prison reform ministries, America’s social entrepreneurs have often been far ahead of our government in identifying and meeting the needs of our fellow countrymen. Because they are closer to the people they serve, our faith-based munity organizations deliver better results than government. And they have a human touch: When a person in...

I have only yet read an excerpt of Ron Sider’s new book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World? (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005), but much of what he says concerning the church in America strikes me as true. This interview in the Dallas Morning News (free subscription required) gives some insights into Sider’s views. Whereas Jim Wallis gets most of the religious progressive press, Ron Sider strikes me as...

Antimatter warp drives: “A long way off.” LiveScience brings us their top 10 “ways to run the 21st century,” a review of possibilities for energy sources in the new millennium. Of the top 3, only nuclear power is currently feasible as a large-scale source of energy. Fuel cells are of huge interest right now, of course. But LiveScience’s love for sci-fi is evident in their #1 choice: antimatter. “The problem with antimatter is that there is very little of it...

Japan’s wartime atrocities have long been a source of tension and anger among various east Asian nations. Failure to admit guilt and continued veneration of wartime “heroes,” many of whom are convicted war-criminals, cause diplomatic stress between nations even today. In fact there is speculation that Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi abruptly left Japan before meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi yesterday because of Koizumi’s stated intent to visit Yasukuni Shrine again this year. An article in The Japan...

Emerging signs of renewed democratic action in Cuba prompted this Wall Street Journal editorial today (subscription required), which calls for the Organization of American States to “do far more to support Cuban democrats.” Bringing external political pressure to bear on Cuba only represents part of the solution to human rights violations in Cuba. As Rev. Robert Sirico wrote previously, “Everyone, except perhaps the National Council of Churches, knows it is true that Cuba has a terrible human-rights record.” We might...

This Tech Central Station article, “Saving Africa,” puts some figures in perspective, citing the reason for the poverty of African nations: “Africa is poor because most countries in the region lack the fundamental elements of a capitalist system: property rights, free markets, free trade and the rule of law.” The TCS piece quotes a 1998 Religion & Liberty article by Gary Becker, “Human Capital and Poverty,” It is not the culture that has prevented Africa from growing but the policies...

Jordan Ballor writes about the ethical and moral implications of creating genetic chimeras. ments on a recent New York Times editorial promoting chimera research, calling their thinking “scientific pragmatism” and criticizing the general lack of understanding of both human nature and anthropology. “The creation of new kinds of chimeras, using manipulation at the cellular and sub-cellular level, raises the stakes considerably,” writes Ballor about the level of public controversy involved with chimera research thus far. Pursuing further research without adhering...

Following up on my post yesterday about the controversial Japanese history textbook that glosses over Japan’s past wartime aggressions, a new textbook is plete which will act as a supplement to current Japanese history textbooks with a much plete picture of what happened around the time of World War II. The new textbook is a joint project by scholars and historians from Japan, China, and Korea. While the first controversial textbook was published by a nationalistic organization and tended to...

Here’s a different, deeply flawed, and downright chilling take on the creation of genetic chimeras: David P. Barash, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, es them as a sign of the “continuity” between humans and other creatures. Barash attacks “religious fundamentalists” who draw “the line at the emergence of human beings from other ‘lower’ life forms. It is a line that exists only in the minds of those who proclaim that the human species, unlike all others, possesses...

Very often in political discourse, the labels liberal/progressive are juxtaposed with conservative/traditional (or variants thereof). But there are numerous instances where these terms e misleading, not only due to various connotations associated with them, but because the denotation of each word may not adequately describe the position on either side. Take the educational choice movement, for example. To the extent that this multifaceted phenomenon can be called a unified “movement,” its defining characteristic might well be identified as the upsetting...

The approaching G8 summit in Scotland has led the World Council of Churches to renew its call for a debt-free world. That is, debt-free if you are one of those developing nations that have been victimized by “increasingly unconscionable levels of inequity,” according to Rev. Dr. Samuel Kobia, general secretary. There is nothing in Rev. Kobia’s letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that is new — the WCC has been lobbying for debt cancellation for years. And it is...