Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).

Posts by Joe Carter

Whom Would Jesus Indebt?

Putting ourselves and our children further in debt, notes Timothy Dalrymple, is not the way to help the poor: One of the great difficulties of this issue, for Christians, is that the morality of spending and debt has been so thoroughly demagogued that it’s impossible to advocate cuts in government spending without being accused of hatred for the poor and needy. Continue Reading...

Is the $17 Trillion Federal Debt Immoral?

Even when we agree on what Biblical principles should guide our political choices, evangelicals from the left and right rarely agree on policy solutions. But there is one area where there appears to be an increasingly significant level of agreement: the immorality of our national debt. Continue Reading...

By the Numbers: The War on Poverty

Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon B. Johnson gave his 1964 State of the Union Speech, in which he launched the ‘war on poverty.’ Within four years of that speech, the Johnson administration enacted a broad ran of programs, including the the Job Corps, Upward Bound, Head Start, the Neighborhood Youth Corps, the Social Security amendments creating Medicare/Medicaid, the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and over a dozen others. Continue Reading...

Explainer: What is Common Core?

What is Common Core? The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort that established a single set of educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts and mathematics. Continue Reading...

What is the Most Important Factor in Improving Education?

What is the key to improving education in America? Stuart Buck says that Barker Bausell’s book, Too Simple to Fail: A Case for Educational Change, provides the answer: His main thesis: that the only thing that improves education is spending more time on instruction at a given child’s level. Continue Reading...

Why are Working-Class Men Falling Behind?

Why are working-class men falling behind? Economic, familial, and lifestyle factors all play a role. One of the main reasons less-educated men are losing economic opportunities, explains anthropologist Michael Jindra, is that they are gaining more ways to indulge in entertainment and leisure: Dr. Continue Reading...

Strong Marriages Make Strong Economies

The decline of marriage and fertility is one factor in the global economic crisis, says sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox: The long-term fortunes of the modern economy depend in part on the strength and sustainability of the family, both in relation to fertility trends and to marriage trends. Continue Reading...

Federal Courts Block Contraception Mandate

As 2013 was coming to a close, federal courts issued rulings on three injunctions sought by religious non-profits challenging the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage mandate rules: • Preliminary injunctions had been awarded in 18 of the 20 similar cases, but the 10th Circuit denied relief to the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of Catholic nuns from Colorado. Continue Reading...