Over at Crisis Magazine, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg has an analysis of a recent, and little noticed, article that Pope Benedict XVI published on, among other things, “the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.” Gregg writes: This message isn’t likely to be well-received among those who think religious pluralism is somehow an end in itself. Their fort, however, doesn’t lessen the force of Benedict’s point. The context of Benedict’s remarks was the 50th anniversary of Vatican II’s opening....

As a part of our evangelical outreach at Acton, we missioned four primers from different evangelical traditions on the intersection of faith, work, and economics. The books will be written from the Baptist, Wesleyan, Pentecostal, and Reformed traditions and will be released throughout ing year. The first book released is the Baptist primer written by Chad Brand. Chad is professor of Christian theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY as well as the associate dean of Boyce...

Christian’s Library Press and Acton Institute announce the release of the first English translation of The Christian Family by Herman Bavinck. When this book was first published in Dutch, marriage and the family were already weathering enormous changes, and that trend has not abated. Yet by God’s power the unchanging essence of marriage and the family remains proof, as Bavinck notes, that God’s “purpose with the human race has not yet been achieved.” Accessible, thoroughly biblical, and astonishingly relevant, The...

Rev. Robert Sirico has been invited to participate in The Life and Legacy of Charles W. Colson,a luncheon event at the Evangelical Theological Society’s annual meeting next week. The panel discussion will be held on Thursday, November 15th from 11:45am – 1:15pmin Room 101B in the Frontier Airlines Center in Milwaukee. Dr. John Woodbridge of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School will present “Chuck Colson and Recent Evangelical History.” Dr. Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., President Emeritus of Calvin Theological Society, will speak on...

In an essay for Big Questions Online, a site that examines questions of human purpose and ultimate reality, Rev. Robert Sirico considers whether morality is intrinsic to the free market: Is a hammer intrinsically moral? Your reply would most immediately be: “It depends on what it was used for. If employed to bash in the heads of people you do not like, the answer is no. If employed to help build a house for a homeless people, your answer might...

I have been duped. I thought, along with my husband, that we were doing a good thing by raising our children in a household that valued traditional marriage and saw our children as gifts from God. I chose, for more than a decade, to work at home raising our children because I could not imagine a more important job during their formative years. According to Laurie Shrage, I’m quite mistaken. Wives who perform unpaid caregiving and place their economic security...

Writing for National Review Online, Rev. Robert A. Sirico offers three salient points about last night’s election: 1. Americans give signs of moving in a morally and politically more progressive direction, by which I mean that the appeal to the wisdom of past ages and tradition is simply not pelling as it once was. People today, not all, but many, seem to want the trappings of the tradition (the white gown at the wedding), but not its obligations (chastity before...

It is clear that what President Barack Obama has achieved is historic: Being re-elected when not a single one of his major initiatives has enjoyed broad popular support. What is also clear is that the moral and spiritual demographics of the United States have changed considerably. If Gov. Mitt Romney, an honorable man of moderate political preferences and conservative personal convictions, cannot attract a winning coalition we are in deep trouble. His loss illustrates the change that has occurred in...

Whether the Republicans cry “fraud” or the Democrats scream “disenfranchised” we can be certain of one thing after the polls close: the President of the United States won’t be elected today. Even if there are no hanging chads or last minute court appeals, the election of the President won’t be made until December 13. That is, after all, the way the Founding Fathers designed the system to work. Confused? Then it’s probably time for a brief refresher on the Electoral...

Now that the presidential race of 2012 has ended it is time—whether we are ready for it or not—for the presidential race of 2016 to begin. Since the next election will not include any incumbents, the question of who has the relevant “experience” to be the chief executive will once again e an issue of primary concern. What has been missing from previous discussions, however, is a plan for helping future presidential candidates acquire the skill-set needed to be the...