Derick Scudder, senior pastor at Bethel Chapel Church, an evangelical congregation in the northern part of Philadelphia, pleted a 4-part series explaining why he is “done with urban ministry.” Bethel Chapel is a “Bible-teaching church focused on the Good News that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. We are a racially diverse, multi-generational group of people who want to know Jesus better.” As a pastor of a church deeply embedded in a challenging section of Philadelphia, Scudder has...

In this week’s Acton Commentary, “Tyranny Is the True Enemy,” I explore the latest film installment of the Hunger Games trilogy, “Catching Fire.” I pick up on the theme that animates Alissa Wilkinson’s review at Christianity Today, but diverge a bit from her reading. As she writes, a major aspect of this second part of the series has to do with fake appearances and real substance, and the need to “remember who the real enemy is.” Wilkinson is upset with...

Earlier this month, the Fairfield Mirror reported on a speech given at Fairfield University in Connecticut: Many consumers are content in turning a blind eye to the injustices that save them cents on their dollars. While it may be challenging to understand the social responsibilities that affect the world’s most powerful corporations, one group of investors is constantly directing these corporations to increase their social responsibility: the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. Senior economics major Arturo Jaras Watts and Fairfield...

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a pair of cases that challenge the HHS mandate requiring many panies to insure contraceptive and abortifacients. The Obama administration asked the high court to review the issue after a federal appeals court in Colorado found in favor of Hobby Lobby, an Oklahoma-based crafts franchise. The court bine the Hobby Lobby case with lesser-known case involving Conestoga, a pany that lost earlier bids for relief from the mandate. If you haven’t been following...

Picking up where we left offlast time(in verse 9 of I Samuel 8), the prophet Samuel’s sons have given God’s system of judges a black eye with their corrupt behavior. Not wishing to be upstaged in the “Let’s Disappoint God” department, the people of Israel decide they want to up-the-sin-ante by rejecting God’s order and demanding a monarchy. It’s now time for Samuel to share with the people what is in store for them should they refuse to course-correct. In...

My pastor made a good point in his sermon Sunday that the more secular we e as a nation the less we talk about “abundance.” Instead, the national dialogue of our politics shift to discussions about scarcity. Many politicians are stuck in the mindset of talking about things like wealth distribution and rationing. The more materialist and less spiritual we e as a nation, the more inclined we are to fight over the table scraps. If we don’t look to...

CBS This Morning’s Charlie Rose and Sharyl Attkinsson report that a woman who once touted the Affordable Care Act as “NancyCare” is now forced to drop insurance for her eight employees, and let them fend for themselves on HealthCare.gov. It isn’t going well. In the report, White House spokesman Jay Carney tells reporters that, “This conversation doesn’t apply to you” when asked how the Affordable Care Act will affect small business owners like Nancy Clark. As Charlie Rose says, “Another...

Tomorrow I’ll be offering up a more mentary on the second movie of the Hunger Games trilogy, “Catching Fire.” Until then, you can read Dylan Pahman’s engagement on the theme of tyranny, as well as that of Alissa Wilkinson over at CT. I’ll be critiquing Wilkinson’s perspective in my own review tomorrow. I think her analysis starts off strong, but she ends up getting distracted by, well, the distractions. But mend her piece to your review, and in the meantime...

Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows, Why this same strict and most observant watch So nightly toils the subject of the land, And why such daily cast of brazen cannon, And foreign mart for implements of war; Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task Does not divide the Sunday from the week; What might be toward, that this sweaty haste Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day: Who is’t that can inform me? –Marcellus,...

Over the past year, public discussion about the Affordable Care Act has led many Christians to question the proper roles of government and business in providing healthcare. Too often, though, the question left unexamined is what role the church should have in responding to the medical needs of munity. Throughout the history of the church, Christians have been actively involved in the provision and funding of health and medical resources. But for the past 50 years, these functions have been...