Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Religion/Belief'

July 10, 2014

The Last Article on the Hobby Lobby Case You’ll Ever Need to Read

Are you sick to death of hearing about the recent Hobby Lobby contraceptive mandate kerfuffle? Me too. Yes, it’s one of the most important religious liberty cases in decades. But the constant debates about the case on blogs, newspapers, TV, radio, and social media, has left even those of us concerned about freedom beaten and exhausted. Continue Reading...
July 08, 2014

David Brat’s Religious Virtues

In a piece today for the NYT Magazine, economics reporter Binyamin Appelbaum examines David Brat’s fusion of faith and free-market economics. Appelbaum finds that mixture problematic, to say the least, but it’s hard to sort out whether it is the religious faith or the free-market sympathies that Appelbaum finds more troubling. Continue Reading...
July 08, 2014

Exile and Shalom

Christians are called to be in the world but not of it (John 17:14-15). But what does that mean for how we should live? At TGC Stephen J. Grabill, the director of programs and international at the Acton Institute, explains why living faithfully in exile and seeking the shalom of our cities are two big ideas that the church needs to embrace in order to recover a robust “in-but-not-of” theology of culture: God’s people have always been—and are now—living in a permanent state of “in between.” Continue Reading...
July 07, 2014

Reclaiming the Honor of Craftsmanship

As economic prosperity has increased, and as the American economy has transitioned from agrarian to industrial to information-driven, manual labor has been increasingly cast down in the popular imagination. When our youth navigate and graduate from high school, they receive pressure from all directions to excel in particular areas and attend a four-year college, typically in pursuit of “white-collar” work. Continue Reading...
July 07, 2014

Why Bootleggers and Baptists Align on Regulation

“Politics makes strange bedfellows,” said Charles Dudley Warner. And nowhere is that more true than in the political alliances that form around regulation. In a 1983 paper, regulatory economist Bruce Yandle coined the catch-phrase “Bootleggers and Baptists” for the observation that regulations are often supported by peculiar alliances who have very different end-goals in mind. Continue Reading...
July 03, 2014

Beware of Self-Willed Religion

Last week, I wrote about the danger of self-chosen sacrifice, channeling evangelist Oswald Chambers, who warns us to “never decide the place of your own martyrdom.” “Always guard against self-chosen service for God,” he continues. Continue Reading...
July 03, 2014

Can We Separate Church And State? Or Church From Anything?

Thomas Jefferson believed that the practice of one’s faith should not be impinged upon by one’s government. He wrote of this in a letter or address to the Danbury Baptist Association: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions,” he wrote, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.” Continue Reading...
July 01, 2014

The Root of All Freedoms: Kuyper on Freedom of Conscience

The Obama administration’s HHS mandate has led to significant backlash among religious groups, each claiming that certain provisions violate their religious beliefs and freedom of conscience. Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling was a victory for such groups, but other disputes are well underway, with many more to come. Continue Reading...