Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Business and Society

March 05, 2008

The call of workplace chaplaincy

Richard Baxter, the seventeenth-century Puritan identified by Max Weber as embodying the Protestant ethic of “worldly asceticism,” once called for chaplains to be sent into places of work for the conversion of sinners. Continue Reading...
February 29, 2008

Imprisonment and government expenditures

There’s a lot of consternation, much of it justified, about the news that now 1% of the population of the United States is incarcerated. Especially noteworthy is a comparison of the rate of imprisonment with institutionalization in mental health facilities over the last century. Continue Reading...
February 29, 2008

Buckley on law and Christian morality

From a CT interview in 1995 by Michael Cromartie: Certain things which the market authorizes simply in terms of law are unchristian and ought not to be done. The big issue today has to do with the fidelity of marriages. Continue Reading...
February 27, 2008

Business fighting poverty

Peter Heslam, a friend of the Acton Institute and sometime contributor to our journal, is the founder of a promising initiative at Cambridge University. Begun a couple years ago, the “Transforming Business” program has recently been revamped, with a new and improved website, including a blog. Continue Reading...
February 12, 2008

More freedom = Less corruption in Italy

Last week, Istituto Acton’s close Italian ally in defense of liberty, Istituto Bruno Leoni (IBL), presented the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom in Rome. The IBL invited speakers to discuss the decline of economic freedom in Italy over the last 12 months. Continue Reading...
February 07, 2008

Enterprise and the end of poverty

William Easterly, author of The White Man’s Burden has an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal today where he responds to Bill Gates’ call for “creative capitalism” Gates argues that the way capitalism is practiced it doesn’t help the poor and argues for increased philanthropy on the part of businesses. Continue Reading...
February 05, 2008

‘Casino capitalism’ or personal failure?

Two weeks ago, French bank Société Générale announced that off-balance sheet speculation by a single “rogue trader” had cost the company 4.9 billion Euros ($7.2 billion). The scandal had enormous repercussions in international markets leading some commentators to decry the rotten nature of global “casino” capitalism and to call for the reversal of financial liberalization. Continue Reading...
January 31, 2008

Ethical employment

What do you look for when you are searching for a job? A growth industry? A healthy bottom-line? A positive corporate culture? Some combination of the above? Fortune magazine recently rated the “Top 100 Places to Work.” Continue Reading...
January 31, 2008

Acton on religious liberty and Huckabee’s economics

Two new Acton commentaries this week: In “Religious Liberty and Anti-Discrimination Laws,” Joseph Kosten looks at recent controversies in Colorado and Missouri involving Roman Catholic institutions. Without the liberty to decide who represents its views and who disperses its message to the public, a religious institution or organization lays bare its most vulnerable aspect and welcomes destruction from within. Continue Reading...