Tom Oden In the ing Winter 2011 issue of Religion & Liberty, we are featuring an interview with Thomas C. Oden. The interview mainly focuses on the importance and wisdom of the Church Fathers and their deep relevancy for today’s Church and culture. The content below however delves into Marxist liberation theology and the direction of Oden’s own denomination, The United Methodist Church. Some of the below portion will be available only for readers of the PowerBlog. I’d like to...

We have tried to raise awareness of the persecution and violence Coptic Christians face in Egypt and around the world at the Acton Institute and in the pages of Religion & Liberty. On New Year’s Day, a suicide-bomber killed 21 Coptic Christians as they left al-Qiddisin Church in the port city of Alexandria, Egypt. On the heels of the attack, news reports have surfaced that al-Qaeda lists Coptic Churches in the Netherlands as targets for their terror. CNN also reports...

Patriarch Kirill gives an emphatic “no” in a TV interview. He points to the catastrophe of the Bolshevik Revolution and what followed. Here’s a snip from Interfax: “And then everything was broken. Eventually with great efforts, including terror, high economic indicators were reached,” the Patriarch said explaining further collapse of the USSR with the fact that the “backbone of national life was destroyed” in years of revolution. “Today our life is worse not because we are Orthodox, but because we...

I took some issue with a quote from an otherwise fine piece about food banks in the December issue of Christianity Today. So let me follow-up with a mendation without reservation for this profile of the work of the Big Reach Center of Hope in the current issue of CT by Nicole Russell, “A God-Sized Food Bank.” Big Reach is “a food pantry and distribution center situated in a town so small it’s an unincorporated dot on the Ohio map....

Did you know that the NIV Stewardship Study Bible is available for Kindle, iPad and everywhere your smart phone goes? It’s true. Download this Bible for your Kindle emulator on your Mac, PC, smart phone, or directly to your eBook reader, and thousands of stewardship resources will be available at your fingertips. Or you can go to Apple’s bookstore and download the NIV Stewardship Study Bible for your viewing on your iDevice. Want to start your year out on the...

Catching up on some recent mentaries. We e a new writer, John Addison Teevan, who is director of the Prison Extension Program at Grace College. He also teaches economics and Bible courses at the Winona Lake, Ind., school. This column was published Dec. 29. Sign up for the free, weekly email newsletter Acton News & Commentary here. A Tithe for Uncle Sam By John Addision Teevan Political leaders talk as if the money Americans keep (not paid in taxes) belongs...

It is sometimes remarked in response to my treatment of the Accra Confession of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and now World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) in my book Ecumenical Babel that the Accra document is not really a confession at all. It says itself, after all, that it is a confession, but “not meaning a classical doctrinal confession, because the World Alliance of Reformed Churches cannot make such a confession, but to show the necessity and...

Mark Hanlon of Compassion International writes about his experience related to the place of local churches in relief work. Contrary to the belief of some that relief and development groups “couldn’t rely on churches to do the work they needed to do in the third world. They claimed that the needed expertise and skill sets simply weren’t there,” Hanlon writes, In my three decades of experience in developing nations with Compassion International, I have witnessed the opposite. In the midst...

From the Jan. 5 Acton News & Commentary. This is an edited excerpt of “Health-Care Counter-Reform,” a longer piece Dr. Condit wrote for the November 2010 issue of the Linacre Quarterly, published by the Catholic Medical Association. For more on this important issue, see the Acton special report on Christians and Health Care. Dr. Condit is also the author of the 2009 Acton monograph, A Prescription for Health Care Reform, available in the Book Shoppe. Obamacare and the Threat to...

Dr. Donald Condit joined host Drew Mariani on the Relevant Radio Network to discuss the positives aspects of end-of-life planning as well as the troubling issues surrounding end-of-life care under government health care systems. Dr. Condit is an orthopedic surgeon and the author of Acton’s monograph on health care reform, entitled A Prescription for Health Care Reform and available in the Acton Bookshoppe; he has also authored a number mentaries on health care for Acton and other organizations; his most...