Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'community'

December 22, 2023

Going My Way: An Enduring True Fairy Tale

Every Christmas, I try to write about Christmas movies, especially about old Hollywood, because the best directors at the time considered it worthwhile to make movies that would chastise and cheer up the nation, indeed remind people of the spirit of Christmas and thus try to fit Christianity into the new entertainment that dominated the American imagination. Continue Reading...
December 09, 2021

When bookshops were miraculous, romantic places

I began a series of essays on Christmas movies last week with The Bishop’s Wife (1947), a story about church, the community of the faithful, and spiritual responsibility. This week, I’m writing about a less lofty subject, the community of the workplace and the life of commerce, but a much better movie, The Shop Around the Corner (1940), one of the classics of old Hollywood, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as shopkeepers who fall in love over Christmas. Continue Reading...
September 04, 2020

How to beat the ‘social recession’ of COVID-19

Before the COVID-19 crisis began, America was already facing a severe loneliness epidemic – marked by decades-long increases in suicide and chronic loneliness and declines in marriage and community attachment. Now, amid flurries of sweeping lockdowns, the struggle has become harder still, pushing any remnants of embodied community deeper into the confines of social media. Continue Reading...
April 15, 2020

Civil society in a time of pandemic

As the coronavirus spreads, federal, state, and local governments are wrestling with how to handle the crisis. So are civil associations, churches, businesses, and families. The role of civil society is often neglected, but it could be the most important. Continue Reading...