The Acton Institute has just launched Oikonomia, a new blog at Patheos’ Faith and Work Channel, which will provide resources specific to the intersection of faith, work, and economics. Other partners at the channel include The High Calling, Steve Garber’s Visions of Vocation, and Theology of Work Project, among others. The blog will include a variety of content from across the Acton ecosystem, including mentaries, video clips, and book excerpts, providing a centralized source of information on whole-life discipleship, stewardship,...

Over at the Federalist, Gracy Olmstead wonders “what happens when people bring the country to the city?” She goes on to argue that “urban farming could have conservative implications and outworkings—and we should encourage these endeavors as much as possible, in our efforts to bring traditional principles back to urban environments.” Is there a way to bring the city mouse and the country mousetogether? I’ve argued for the need for urban farming initiatives in the context of renewal movements in...

Maybe you’ve heard of the “Dark Web,” but aren’t sure exactly what it is. Maybe you don’t know anything about the Dark Web. Let’s begin by saying it’s aptly named. And as dark as it is, we need to know about it. The term “Dark Web” (or Dark Internet) refers to areas of the Internet that are no longer accessible, or that have “gone dark” – i.e. dead ends. This happens when Internet routers stop referencing parts of the Internet,...

Today the Department of Health and Human Services issued yet another revision regarding its contraception mandate. Details on the new regulations should be announced within a month. According to the Wall Street Journal: Justice Department lawyers said in a brief filed Tuesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit that the federal government would issue new regulations in the next month that will apply to all nonprofit institutions that say the faith with which they are affiliated...

A new report by the Pew Research Center finds that about one-in-ten Americans describe themselves as libertarian — and yet hold views that do not differ much from those of the overall public. As Pew’s Jocelyn Kiley says, “Self-described libertarians tend to be modestly more supportive of some libertarian positions, but few of them hold consistent libertarian opinions on the role of government, foreign policy and social issues.” Overall, 11 percent of Americans describe themselves as libertarian and have a...

This summer I made a visit to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, and on a tour of churches, I heard a fascinating explanation of how society functioned when the church was the place where the poor had their material needs met, not the government. The Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg is one example. According to church records, Burton Parish formed in 1674 following the merger of several colonial parishes originating as far back as 1633. As a Church of England congregation,...

At the height of power, circa 1922, the British Empire was the largest empire in history, covering one-fifth of the world’s population and almost a quarter of the earth’s total land area. Yet almost one hundred years later, Great Britain is not so great, having lost much of its previous economic and political dominance. In fact, if Great Britain were to join the United States, it’d be poorer than any of the other 50 states — including our poorest state,...

“The Church fathers, East and West, have a long tradition that affirms the value of human labor,” writes Acton’s Dylan Pahman at Humane Pursuits. “And their reflections on the subject contain depths of insight still relevant for those of us who live in “the world” today, such as how to find meaning in whatever work one may do.” On the one hand, plenty of people may not see even a little lasting good in their job. The average factory worker,...

I’m about to make a prediction that is incontrovertible — a claim that cannot be controverted because (a) I am absolutely right in my prediction, and (b) because I will be long dead before my rightness can be proven. Here’s what I predict: By the year 2114 social scientists will have established with 90 percent confidence that the “root cause” of the majority of the social maladies we experienced in the early twenty-firstcentury (i.e., right now) were attributable to family...

Jeff Mirus, president of CatholicCulture.org, recently wrote about some problems with Catholic social menting on Samuel Gregg’s piece, ‘Correcting Catholic Blindness.’ Mirus argues that “Catholic social teaching goes beyond strict principles to assess specific social, economic and political policies, it has too often tended to see the possibilities with a kind of tunnel vision. It sees (or rather its writers tend to see) through the lens of ‘what might be loosely labeled a mildly center-left Western European consensus.'” …when es...