sabbath

September 15, 2016

The rhythm of vocation: A challenge to ‘work-life balance’

“If all of our working and all of our resting serves the same vocation of love, why do we so often feel out of balance?” In a recent talk for the Oikonomia Network, author and church historian Dr. Continue Reading...

August 06, 2014

Radio Free Acton: 500 Years of Reformation

2017 will mark the 500th Anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg Castle Church, the event that would eventually lead to what we now know as the Protestant Reformation. Continue Reading...

November 27, 2013

Amazon, Kmart, and the Moral Limits of Shopping

Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows, Why this same strict and most observant watch So nightly toils the subject of the land, And why such daily cast of brazen cannon, And foreign mart for implements of war; Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task Does not divide the Sunday from the week; What might be toward, that this sweaty haste Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day: Who is’t that can inform me? Continue Reading...

July 26, 2012

Calming the Waters

In today’s “On the Square” over at First Things, Leroy Huizenga reflects upon “the technopoly” of our daily lives, where so much of our time is captivated by staring at a computer screen, clicking links, reading posts, checking updates, and so on. Continue Reading...

November 23, 2011

On Blue Laws and Black Friday

In this week’s Acton Commentary, “Blue Laws and Black Friday,” I argue that the increasing encroachment of commercial activity into holidays like Thanksgiving are best seen as questions of morality and the limits of the economic sphere of existence. Continue Reading...

July 15, 2009

Should Europeans Work on Sundays?

Today’s Wall Street Journal Europe carries an editorial titled “Jamais on Sunday” approving of the French government’s attempt to allow some businesses to open on Sunday: Parliament is likely today to pass a bill that would scrap the 1906 law restricting Sunday work. Continue Reading...

February 13, 2008

Klinghoffer on the decalogue on the Sabbath

I’ve lately completed David Klinghoffer’s book on the Ten Commandments, Shattered Tablets. In large part it is a conventional conservative critique of American culture, but along the way the author makes some interesting theological connections, especially when he draws on the long tradition of Jewish biblical commentary. Continue Reading...

December 18, 2006

Hasta La Vista, Siesta

In this week’s Acton Commentary, Anthony Bradley takes a look at the Spanish economy as it faces a “dilemma,” as he puts it, “simultaneously needing immigrants and seeking to curb them.” Continue Reading...