One of the primary assumptions of the modern age is that all choices are multiple choice. Whether we are choosing the color of the car we drive, the occupation that we will work, or the lifestyle we will live, choice is the dominate paradigm. While the expansion of choices has, in many ways, expanded human flourishing, it has also led, in some areas, to a false belief that merely wanting something to be multiple choice will make it so. But...

Thousands of girls and women in Iraq and Syria have been captured by the Islamic State and sold into sex slavery. But one Iraqi man is trying to save them by buying sex slaves in order to free and reunite them with their families. As the Christian Post reports, “an Iraqi man, who remains nameless, disguises himself as a human trafficking dealer in order to ‘infiltrate’ the Islamic State and get the militants to sell him sex slaves. But in...

Detroit home owners are being put out of their homes, but it’s not because of bankers. Then by who? It’s the Detroit city government seeking to collect back real estate taxes. There are always tax foreclosures, but foreclosures are growing from 20,000 in 2012 to an expected 62,000 in 2015. Who is putting poor people on the streets in Detroit? The government. There is a twist here based on the fact that Detroit homes have an old (and therefore way...

Contrary to the trite assertion made every year by people who don’t know how to appreciate football, it is not really true that mercials the best thing about the Super Bowl (at least not always). Sure, it seems that way because the television viewer is mercials than actual game play (in an average game, theratio mercials to playing time is seven to one). The reality, however, is that most of mercials aren’t all that memorable. Only a few stand out...

In the latest Journal of Markets and Morality, Joseph Gorra reviews Dr. Charlie Self’s new book,Flourishing Churches and Communities, calling it a “joyous, practical, and insightful primer to the integration of ‘faith, work, and economics” that will inspire “a pathway for leaders of Pentecostal thought to reflect on public life in a renewed way.” The book is one of four tradition-specific primers from the Acton Institute, and although it focuses specifically on a Pentecostal perspective, Gorra rightly observes that Self...

After what seemed to be an interminably long wait, Downton Abbey, a British period drama on PBS, recently returned to America. Many of us who have been hooked on the show for four seasons tune in each Sunday night to watch the new twists in the saga of the Earl and Countess of Grantham, their household, and their servants. But as with most pop culture artifacts, this series about Victorian England is having a subversive effect on the views of...

When is a ban not a ban? One answer might be when it is based on moral suasion rather than legal coercion. (I would also accept: When it’s a Target.) In this piece over at the Federalist, Georgi Boorman takes up the prudence of a petition to get Target to remove smutty material and paraphernalia related to Fifty Shades from its shelves. Boorman rightly points to the limitations of this kind of cultural posturing. Perhaps this petition illustrates more of...

“Consumption serves, sustains and munity—above all the munity,” says Rev. Gregory Jensen in this week’s Acton Commentary. Consumption is not an end in itself but has a purpose. We are, Schmemann says, called by God “to propagate and have dominion over the earth”; that is to say, consumption serves human flourishing. The first chapters of Genesis portray creation as “one all-embracing banquet table,” foreshadowing a central theme in the New Testament. In the Kingdom of God we will “eat and...

Dorothy Sayers, playwright, novelist and Christian scholar, wrote an important work in the 1930s entitled,Are Women Human?In her essay,shepresents the biblical case for gender equality in a humorous and insightful way, grounding mutuality in theological anthropology. From the Genesis narratives to the new earth of Revelation, she affirms this thesis: We are all human beings, made in the image of God with a job to do. And we do our jobs as a man or a woman. This theological vision...

The 2015 Acton Lecture Series got off to a rousing start last week with the arrival of Jeffrey Tucker, Chief Liberty Officer of Liberty.me, to deliver the first lecture of this year’s series, entitled “Capitalism Is About Love.” If you go by the conventional wisdom, that seems to be a counterintuitive statement.Jeffrey Tucker explains how the two are actually bound up together. You can watch the lecture via the video player below, and if you haven’t had a chance to...