Religion/Belief

August 02, 2011

Evaluating Our Values: A Christian Response to the Debt Crisis

Over at ThinkChristian, I take the opportunity to sketch “what a comprehensive Christian response to the crisis of public and private debt might look like.” I focus “on five main areas: the individual, familial, ecclesial, economic, and political.” Continue Reading...

August 01, 2011

What the Common Good Isn’t

It looks like Congress will vote later today or this evening to raise the debt ceiling and avert a possible default by the United States Treasury. How the debt ceiling compromise will fair when measured against Acton’s Principles for Budget Reform it is too early to know, but one thing is certain: if the deal contains a single budget cut for even the most ineffective of social programs, we’ll hear screams of protest from Jim Wallis and his Circle of Protection. Continue Reading...

July 29, 2011

John Locke and a Chinese Investiture Controversy

Acton’s Director of Research Dr. Samuel Gregg has two new pieces today, in Public Discourse and The American Spectator. The first is a response to Greg Forster’s “Taking Locke Seriously” on June 27 in First Things. Continue Reading...

July 27, 2011

Circle of Protection Subordinates Religion to Politics

The question of “What Would Jesus Cut” raised in new ads for John Boehner’s, Harry Reid’s, and Mitch McConnell’s home states is fundamentally wrongheaded. It reverses the proper approach of religious leaders to politics and threatens to mislead their flocks. Continue Reading...

July 21, 2011

A Bishop in the Public Square

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput was named the next archbishop of Philadelphia on Tuesday, and mainstream coverage of the story immediately turned to sex abuse scandals. Which makes a lot of sense because, you know, that has dominated his tenure in Denver. Continue Reading...

July 15, 2011

Listening to Eastern Christianity through the ‘Melody of Faith’

Armenian Orthodox theologian Vigen Guroian’s The Melody of Faith (2010) seeks to provide an introduction to the basic dogmas of Eastern Christianity, harmonizing various Eastern Christian traditions (and making significant mention of a few Western ones) through continual reference to their writings, to their icons, and especially to their hymnody. Continue Reading...

July 13, 2011

Acton Commentary: Commodifying Compassion

In this week’s Acton Commentary, “Commodifying Compassion,” I look at the instinct to judge a society’s commitment to charity by the level of material expenditure, particularly by the government. One of the things I think is true in this conversation is that our material commitments do show something about our spiritual concerns. Continue Reading...

July 12, 2011

Journal of Markets & Morality 14, no. 1 (Spring 2011)

The newest edition of the Journal of Markets & Morality is now available online to subscribers. This issue of the journal features a Scholia translation of selections from On the Observation of the Mosaic Polity by Franciscus Junius (1545-1602), the Huguenot, Reformed, scholastic theologian (a Latin version of Junius’ original treatise is available for download at Google Books, along with a host of his other works). Continue Reading...

July 08, 2011

Space and “the primal desire to conquer”

Imagine you’re eight and you’re given a dog. The first thing your parents say is that you need to take care of him: feed him, play with him in the backyard, and train him so that he doesn’t do bad things in the house. Continue Reading...

July 06, 2011

On the Relationship between Religion and Liberty

Earlier this year I was invited to participate in a seminar sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies and Students for a Free Economy at Northwood University. In the course of the weekend I was able to establish that while I wasn’t the first theologian to present at an IHS event, I may well have been the first Protestant theologian. Continue Reading...

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