Dolphus Weary has a remarkable story to tell and certainly very few can add as much insight on the issue of poverty as he does. When you read the interview, now available online in the Fall 2011 R&L, or especially his book I Ain’t Comin’ Back, you realize leaving Mississippi was his one ambition, but God called him back in order to give his life and training for the “least of these.” One of the things Weary likes to ask...

Mats Tunehag has written a blog highlighting the increased popularity and momentum of business as mission throughout the world. He cites an example that probably would not be the first e to your mind, but is someone we are very familiar with here at Acton. Lady Margaret Thatcher was the recipient of this year’s Faith and Freedom Award. Mr. John O’Sullivan, who accepted the award on her behalf, described it as one that befits Lady Thatcher’s plishments in office and...

Customers standing beside the food truck operated by Fojol Brothers of Merlindia, a theatrical, mobile Indian restaurant, serving food at various locations throughout Washington, D.CIn this week’s Acton Commentary, “Food Fights and Free Enterprise,” I take a look at the increasing popularity of food trucks in urban settings within the context of Milton Friedman’s observation that “it’s always been true that business is not a friend of a free market.” As you might imagine, the food truck phenomenon has found...

Václav Havel, playwright, anti-Communist dissident and former president of the Czech Republic, died yesterday at the age of 75. There has been an outpouring of tributes to the great man today. In light of that, I’d like to point PowerBlog readers to the September-October 1998 issue of Religion & Liberty and the article “Living Responsibly: Václav Havel’s View” by Edward E. Ericson. Ericson says that Havel offers a particularly penetrating analysis of our times based on the understanding that, in...

With its subject, use of Scripture, and majestic soaring choruses, George Ferederic Handel’s Messiah is easily the most recognizable musical piece in Western Civilization. It is also perhaps the most widely performed piece of classical or choral music in the West. After hearing a performance of the Messiah, poser Franz Joseph Haydn simply said of Handel, “This man is the master of us all.” Not to be outdone, Beethoven declared, “Handel is the poser who ever lived. I would bare...

Painting by Ivan Kramskoi Reflecting on the state of Russian philosophy among the intelligentsia of his day (the sectarian, Russian intellectuals “artificially isolated from national life”), Nikolai Berdiaev wrote in 1909, There seemed every reason to acknowledge Vladimir Solov’ev as our national philosopher and to create a national philosophical tradition around him…. The philosophy of any European country could take pride in a Solov’ev. That, however, was not the case. Why not? Berdiaev continues, But the Russian intelligentsia neither read...

Earlier this year Michael Kruse put out a request for suggestions for inclusion in a Commissioning Service for Human Vocation. This Advent season it struck me that the Christmas song, “The Little Drummer Boy,” or, “The Carol of the Drum,” is rich in vocational theology. The little drummer boy has no gold, frankincense, or myrrh, no gift “fit to give a King,” so instead he plays his “best for him” on his drum. The little drummer boy drumming his best...

Acton President and Co-Founder Rev. Robert A. Sirico asks us to take a breather from the frenzied preparations that lead up to Christmas and reflect on the true meaning of the Feast of the Incarnation. Thanks. to ThePulp.it for linking. Contemplating Christmas By Rev. Robert A. Sirico In a Christmas season filled with noble sentiments such as “peace on earth and goodwill to men,” the remembrance of the joys and sanctity of the family, and the deep human desire for...

My recent piece in The American Spectator took the left to task for its misuse of the terms justice and social justice. The piece was more than a debate over semantics. In it I noted that Sojourners and its CEO, Jim Wallis, continue to promote well-intended but failed strategies that actually hurt the social and economic well-being of munities. I also called on everyone with a heart for the poor to set aside a top-down model of charity that “has...

The Detroit News ran my piece on Christians, churches, and the Occupy movement today, “Protests, pews not always linked.” One of the reactions to the piece rightly noted that I did not fill out in detail what “the moral and spiritual formation necessary to be faithful followers of Christ every day in their productive service to others” looks like. ment at Patheos worries that my advice might leave Christians plicit with structural injustice.” One of the important implications of the...