You may have heard this line before, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” The quote was attributed to Johann Tetzel, a German Dominican Friar, in charge of collecting indulgences in 16th Century Germany. However, it’s not Roman Catholics who have embraced a re-run of indulgences, but the new gurus of carbon-offsetting at the Evangelical Climate Initiative. Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, takes issue with ECI’s latest venture into indulgence –...

Roman news agency Zenit reports the ing beatification of Antonio Rosmini. Rosmini was a notable Italian intellectual and priest who has long been among the figures highlighted by the Acton Institute’s survey of the history of liberty. An additional point making this particular road to sainthood interesting is that some of Rosmini’s thought had been called into question by the Vatican in the nineteenth century. That his theology was sound was confirmed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the...

"Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?" [John 6:9] Among all the many good things going on last weekend in Boise, I (and a few others) noticed something a bit disconcerting. The way many of the topics were covered shows how prone Christians are to being consumed by doom and gloom messages of scarcity and lack and overpopulation and an "ever smaller earth." While it’s...

These two brief essays provide a good juxtaposition of two perspectives that view immediate and mandated action to reduce carbon emissions as either morally obligatory or imprudent. For the former, see Vaclav Havel’s, “Our Moral Footprint,” which states rhetorically, “It is also obvious from published research that human activity is a cause of change; we just don’t know how big its contribution is. Is it necessary to know that to the last percentage point, though? By waiting for incontrovertible precision,...

Andrew Roth of the Club for Growth provided a short assessment On The Call of the Entrepreneur. The Call will be the opening film at the American Film Renaissance Festival in Washington D.C. on September 26th. Roth declared: I was given a sneak peek of “The Call…” earlier this month. It’s a fun, feel-good movie that provides real life examples of how entrepreneurs have succeeded personally, and how they’ve made the world a better place. The show also cuts mentary...

Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute, has a piece in today’s Detroit News titled, “Will Quran limit growth of Muslim nations?” mentary addresses the economic outlook of Muslims, and Islamic nations, considering their religious position against the charging of interest. Gregg notes: Given the Arab world’s increasing religiosity, however, one potential obstacle could significantly handicap these nations’ financial creativity and economic diversification policies: Islam’s prohibition of interest-charging. Gregg also briefly examines how Christians settled the moral dilemma...

Orlando Patterson, professor of sociology at Harvard University, penned a challenging piece on Jena 6 and our current racial tensions. I have learned much from Patterson over the years. For example, he was the first person to help me realize that we often confuse issues of race and class in America by assuming the race as the single variable accounting for the cyclical plight of poor blacks. In a September 30th New York Times op-ed piece Patterson rightly says that...

The Acton Institute is a sponsor of this year’s Godblogcon, a conference that “will equip you with a working knowledge of new media technologies and its impact on society, empowering your ministry to employ quickly and easily new media technologies to engage culture for the cause of Christ.” GodblogCon 2007 will be in Las Vegas on November 8-9. Blogging luminaries like Joe Carter, La Shawn Barber, and Al Mohler will be speaking, and the conference will also be a part...

Jay W. Richards of the Acton Institute, has mentary today in the National Review Online titled, What Would Jesus Drive?: Electrified Evangelical theological confusion. Richards notes in his article, “With respect to the environment, the theological principles are uncontroversial: human beings, as image bearers of God, are placed as stewards over the created order.” He asks four separate questions, which he calls “tough.” (1) Is the planet warming? (2) If the planet is warming, is human activity (like CO2 emissions)...

Perhaps not from its inception, but certainly in the post-WWII era, the global Christian ecumenical movement, as represented by groups like the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, has been increasingly dominated by Marxist economics, liberation theology, and transformationalist ethics. Much of this was mediated through the influence and work of Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr in part observed the reality that since there was no single government above nation-states which could restrict...