Join us as we e Mr. Jeffrey Tucker for the AU Online presentation of his popular lecture, The Nature and Function of Money. The online session is scheduled for Monday April 16 at 6:30pm ET. In this lecture, Mr. Tucker explores the centrality of money to market economics, its origins, the history of its development, and its functions in modern economic life. Visit auonline.acton.org for more information or to register. Mr. Tucker is a speaker, writer, organizer, and technology/cultural pundit...

A marvellous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonour and disgrace has e the glorious monument to death’s defeat. ~ Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word. Job in the Old Testament called out to God begging for a mediator or advocate, begging for somebody who could understand the depth of his affliction and agony (Job 9). Such is the beauty of Christ that he came not to teach...

On Sunday Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren appeared on ABC’s This Week and was asked if he agreed with President Obama’s economic gospel. As Kathryn Jean Lopez says, “I’m thinking the president probably wishes he picked a different pastor for the inaugural prayer.” Warren’s answered the question by saying: Well certainly the Bible says we are to care about the poor. There’s over 2,000 verses in the Bible about the poor. And God says that those who care about the...

This country suffers no shortage of heroic tales. For the Union soldier who served under Ulysses S. Grant, there certainly was no greater leader. Often referred to by detractors as “a butcher” for the wake of Union dead left after his victories, he took the fight to the Confederacy. After the Wilderness campaign in 1864, where 17,000 Union soldiers died in just a few days, Grant unlike all the Union generals before him refused to lick the Federal wounds and...

We are continuing to interview people in different areas of work to showcase what being On Call in Culture looks like on a daily basis. Today we introduce Rachel Bastarache Bogan, video editor for SIM. Learn more about Rachel at As a child, Rachel was surrounded by creativity including music and painting. Her favorite gift was a “box full of opportunity” that someone had filled with random knick knacks from a craft store. When she was five years old, she...

Despite the rise of globalization and democracy, violent persecution of Christians, Jews, and other religious minorities is still mon in many parts of the world. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has released its latest survey of religious freedom and as Doug Bandow reports, it makes for grim reading: Dictators have been falling in the Middle East, but that doesn’t mean freedom is inevitably expanding. Unfortunately, the Arab Spring has turned into something far different than hoped. Especially for...

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Be incarnationally present with a man who can’t fish and you’ll teach him how to be “missional” while on an empty stomach. This update on the ancient Chinese proverb isn’t entirely fair to my fellow Christians (mainly my fellow evangelicals) who believe that one of the most important ways we can help those in need is...

Back in 2011, then-Bishop Timothy Dolan pointed out that our nation’s budget is not simply a matter of numbers and balanced books. “It reflects the very values of our nation. As many religious leaders mented, budgets are moral statements.” In a reiteration of this, House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) says local control and concern for the poor must inform national budget issues. Ryan said that the principle of subsidiarity — a notion, rooted in Catholic social teaching, that...

Whether a problem is a matter of “public policy” or “private-policy” often depends on how we think about property rights, says economist David R. Henderson. Take, for example, the debate about whether evolution or Intelligent Design theory should be taught in schools: Should schools teach evolution or intelligent design or both? Many people might be tempted to say that the answer depends on which is true: evolution or intelligent design. But what if what one person thinks is true another...

Cardinal Peter K. Turkson, in a recent address to French businesspeople, spoke about integrating faith and work. In its exercise of business, therefore, humanity would e a ‘rock’ that sustains creation through the practice of love and justice. And this appears to be really the vocation of the Christian business leader: to practice love and justice and to teach the business household for which he or she is responsible to do likewise, for the sustenance of all creation, beginning with...