We might need an update to the children’s rhyme: “Here is the church, / here is the steeple, / open the doors, / and see all the people.” Before I got wrapped up in ongoing conversations here, there, and seemingly everywhere about the nation’s budget, I noted that the ripple effects from the economic downturn were beginning to hit churches in a serious way. Christianity Today passes along a piece that speaks to a much more particular phenomenon: the decline...

In a special report, the American Spectator has published Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg’s new article on the “civilizational agenda” of Pope Benedict XVI. Special thanks also to RealClearReligion for linking the Gregg article. Benedict XVI: In No One’s Shadow By Samuel Gregg It was inevitable. In the lead-up to John Paul II’s beatification, a number of publications decided it was time to opine about the direction of Benedict XVI’s pontificate. The Economist, for example, portrayed a pontificate adrift, “accident-prone,”...

A mere mention of North Korea brings to mind the repressive regime of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il. Although Kim has been satirized in the West as an impish consumer of cognac and NBA paraphernalia, his grip on society is both chilling and inescapable. The country frequently receives news coverage for its nuclear aspirations, unjust penal system, and horrendous human rights record. However, a recent academic study by Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland uncovers yet another facet of the North Korean...

There’s a free screening of a documentary critiquing the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child this Friday evening at 7 p.m. at Grandville Church of Christ–3725 44th St. SW. The film makes the case that parental rights have already been dangerously eroded in the United States and would be further eroded if Congress ratified the U.N. treaty. The screening is sponsored by the area chapter of Generation Joshua and is open to the public. More against the treaty...

Much of the discussions I’ve been involved in over recent months that have focused on the federal budget have involved some basic assumptions about what the Christian view of government is. Sometimes these assumptions have been explicitly conflicting. Other times the assumptions have been shown as the result of mitments about what Scripture says. This is, for instance, one of the points that came up right at the conclusion of the panel discussion about intergenerational justice at AEI a few...

Everywhere we look we are facing rising prices. We find them at the gas pumps and now we see them at our supermarkets. Food prices are climbing, and just like gas prices, they are having broadly felt adverse effects on Americans. The Wall Street Journal sat down with C. Larry Pope, the CEO of Smithfield Foods Inc., the world’s largest pork processor and hog producer by volume, to discuss the rising food prices and how they are affecting his business....

David Lohmeyer turned up this excellent clip from the original Star Trek series: Kirk opens the clip by referencing the Nazi “leader principle” (das Führerprinzip). Soon after Hitler’s election as chancellor in 1933, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave a (partial) radio address and later lectured publicly on the topic of the “leader principle” and its meaning for the younger generation. These texts are important for a number of reasons, not least of which is that pares the office of...

Writing in the Sacramento Bee, Margaret A. Bengs cites Rev. Robert A. Sirico’s Heritage Foundation essay “The Moral Basis for Economic Liberty” in her column on munities and government budget battles. As a priest, Sirico has met many entrepreneurs “who are disenfranchised and alienated from their churches,” with often little understanding by church leaders of the “vocation called entrepreneurship, of what it requires in the way of personal sacrifice, and of what it contributes to society.” This lack of understanding,...

In an article appearing on EWTN News, Acton Director of Research, Samuel Gregg, is interviewed on rising food prices and the effect on the developing world. In this article, Dr. Gregg contributed to a broad discussion on the many factors contributing to the rising food prices. He advocates for a free market economy in agriculture by discussing the effects agricultural subsides in Europe and the United State, and how these market distortions contribute to stifling the growth of agriculture in...

The miraculous post-Soviet revival of the Russian Orthodox Church, all but destroyed by the end of the Stalinist purges in the 1930s, is one of the great stories of 21st Century Christianity. This revival is now focused on the restoration of church life that saw its great institutions and spiritual treasures — churches, monasteries, seminaries, libraries — more or less obliterated by an aggressively atheist regime. Many of the Church’s best and brightest monks, clergy and theologians were martyred, imprisoned...