Frank Schaeffer: Bachmann, Palin, Perry Use Religion Like Snake Oil Salesmen (2011) Remaining Orthodox in a Secular World : A Sermon by Frank Schaeffer (2002) Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), has a story on about Frank Schaeffer’s call for the Occupy Wall Street protesters to go after evangelical Christians. Schaeffer is the son of evangelical theologian Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). Tooley: A blogger for The Huffington Post, young Schaeffer is now faulting religious conservatives for...

Amid the hustle and bustle of preparing for tonight’s Acton Institute annual dinner, I’m trying to carve out some time to make final preparations for my participation in the 9th Annual Christian Scholars’ Symposium hosted by the Christian Legal Society. Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be debating with Gideon Strauss of the Center for Public Justice on the question, “Justice, Poverty, Politics & the State: Is There a Christian Perspective?” One of the pressing issues related to the size and scope of...

Kishore Jayabalan, director of Istituto Acton in Rome, is quoted extensively in a story about the Vatican’s note on economic centralization written by Edward Pentin, a reporter for the National Catholic Register. If you wonder why the Acton Institute is around — why we feel the need to connect your good intentions with sound economics — well, Kishore explains: Kishore Jayabalan… ed the Vatican’s attempt to deal with the economic crisis, but he said their conclusions were based on “political...

Jim Wallis, the author, public theologian, speaker, and mentator behind the Christian Left’s Circle of Protection, was in Grand Rapids last night, and I went to hear him speak. Wallis was presented as the latest in a long line of progressive luminaries to speak (or play their guitars) at the Fountain Street Chruch: Eleanor Roosevelt, Clarence Darrow, Margaret Sanger, Malcolm X, Gloria Steinem, U2, and the Ramones have all appeared on the same dais. He was introduced to speak about...

Last summer, Acton’s PovertyCure team traveled to Ghana to meet with its economists and entrepreneurs — the men and women who are helping the country develop. It just so happens that they also met briefly with Peter Cardinal Turkson, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice and co-author of the note released yesterday that has stirred up a global controversy. Cardinal Turkson, a native of Ghana, calls for the establishment of a central world bank in his...

Acton’s director of research Samuel Gregg has provided his reasoned take on the new document from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace — it’s up at The Corner. While its diagnosis of the world economy is fairly accurate, the council’s treatment plan is lacking in prudential analysis. Gregg’s disappointment is expressed at the end: “For a church with a long tradition of thinking seriously about finance centuries before anyone had ever heard of John Maynard Keynes or Friedrich Hayek,...

Samuel Gregg is quoted in today’s New York Times story about the Vatican note calling for a central world bank — he gives the final word on the document. The “politically liberal Catholics” quoted before him reveal that they have missed a crucial distinction in the document produced by the Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice. Gregg, of course has picked up on that distinction; he wrote yesterday: Putting aside doctrinal questions, this text also makes claims of a more...

The aggrandizement of the European Union’s powers, particularly of its regulation, has had a steadygrowth within Europe, and is now looking to move outside European borders. Namely in one American industry, the airline industry, passengers may soon be paying higher air fares, not because of factors within the American financial market, but because of a carbon emissions tax that the EU will be imposing on American airlines which service flights to EU member countries. For example, if an American carrier...

In mentary this week, I used Louisiana as one of the backdrops to shine the light on government greed. I first became fascinated with the political scene in the Pelican State when I moved down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I stayed up late one night in 1996 watching C-Span2 while Woody Jenkins, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, appeared to have his election stolen. I was hooked from that point on. Former Louisiana governor Earl Long once remarked, “When...

This morning the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace issued a bold statement advising how to bring order to the global financial crisis. I was in attendance at the much anticipated press conference that was organized to debrief reporters on the statement’s content. The statement came in the form of a “Nota” (“Note” in Vatican terms): Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority. The President and Secretary of the Council, together with...