As a mother of five, there have been times when I was pretty sure “civilized” meant a dinner where no one called a sibling a name, everyone ate with utensils, and whoever got assigned dish duty did it without grumbling. Maybe I was setting my sights a tad low. Joseph Pearce thoughtfully and concisely tackles the rather large question, “What is civilization?” While Pearce does the obvious (heads to Wikipedia for an answer), it’s clear that “civilization” is more than...

With the mountain of books and articles that have been written about business ethics, one wonders why nothing much has been written on what we might call shareholder ethics. I’m thinking of religious shareholder activists such as As You Sow and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. As it turns out, these groups trade on the moral status of their respective members to further agendas seldom related to matters of religious faith. Instead, the clergy and religious in shareholder activist...

When Fidel Castro took over the island nation of Cuba, it officially e a nation of atheists. However, the munity in Cuba continued to worship – privately, where necessary – and attempted to maintain existing churches. Castro’s regime would not allow the building of any new churches. Now, there are plans to build a new church for the first time in fifty wars in Santiago, a city that suffered great damage from Hurricane Sandy two years ago. Santiago is home...

For decades conservatives and libertarians have pondered ways to replace the defective American welfare state. One of the boldest and most controversial ideas is to simply give everyone a basic guaranteed e. Instead a variety of ad hoc welfare programs, people would simply be given cash. Matt Zwolinski outlines an example proposal that includes an unconditional cash grant — no strings attached. Just give people cash and leave them “free to spend it, or save it, in whatever way they...

The centuries-long debate between conservatives and progressives about governance, argues Michael Munger, is essentially a disagreement about a simple concept: whether the State is a unicorn. Unicorns, of course, are fabulous horse-like creatures with a large spiraling horn on their forehead. They eat rainbows, but can go without eating for years if necessary. They can carry enormous amounts of cargo without tiring. And their flatulence smells like pure, fresh strawberries, which makes riding behind them in a wagon a pleasure....

In a lengthy World Affairs piece, journalist Roland Flamini takes the position that Pope Francis is a “major player” on the stage of global foreign policy. Flamini examines the pope’s travels in the Holy Land and the Ukraine, noting “that the non-European pope is shaping his own foreign policy course.” The article also discusses the pope’s meeting with President Obama, noting that while the pope is firmly “anti-consumerist,” Obama is the political leader of a country where shopping is a...

While Jezebel tells women to get fighting mad about having to pay more for deodorant than men, and HuffPo is worried about why women “really” shave their legs, real feminists (you know, those who care about all women [and men], from conception until natural death) are noting that girls in China are in no better shape than they were under the most draconian years of Communism. Girls are being abandoned: at train stations, at “baby hatches,” at orphanages, or simply...

The church has found a renewed interest in matters of “faith-work integration,” but while we hear plenty about following the voice of God in business and entrepreneurship, we hear very little about the world of academia.What does it mean, as a Christian, to be called to the work of scholarship? In Scholarship, a newly released collection of convocation addresses by Abraham Kuyper, we find a strong example of the type of reflection we ought to promote and embrace. For Kuyper,...

In the world of human trafficking, there are pockets of hope across the U.S. In Cook County, Ill., Sheriff Tom Dart works relentlessly to improve not only the prosecution of human traffickers, but also the aid that law enforcement brings to victims. Dart began to realize several years ago that prostitutes were cycling through the justice system over and over, receiving no help to stay out of jail. Knowing that the women are, as he put it, “victims of crimes...

The Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena have served the munity in Mosul since 1877. In recent days, they have been keeping their order and the world informed of the horrifying situation there. On August 4, they wrote: As you perhaps know, concerning the situation in Mosul, the Islamic State has a policy in governing the city. After displacing the Christians, they started their policy concerning the holy places that angered people. So far, the churches are under their...