Acton Institute Powerblog

Promoting free societies characterized by liberty & religious principles

Advanced Studies in Freedom Weekend Edition

BRYN MAWR, July 9, 2006 – I arrived safely at Bryn Mawr College yesterday for the beginning of the Institute for Humane Studies Advanced Studies in Freedom Conference. Someone will have to explain to me the economic efficiency of flying from Detroit to Philadelphia by way of Atlanta. Continue Reading...

The Digital Ad Fontes!

The Drexel University Libraries have posted video and audio from the Scholarly Communications Symposium convened earlier this year. The event, held on April 28, 2006, included a presentation by me, “The Digital Ad Fontes! Continue Reading...

Don Bosch: Best of the Blogs

Acton PowerBlog contributor Don Bosch (aka The Evangelical Ecologist) had his post, “Guilt Free Ecology,” picked up and recognized by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in their feature “Best of the Blogs,” on June 18. Continue Reading...

Balmer’s Partisan Polemics

Noted evangelical scholar Randall Balmer castigates the religious right in a recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The critique, in my view, amounts to little more than a slightly more sophisticated version of Jim Wallis. Continue Reading...

Obama, Where Art Thou?

From Barack Obama’s speech to Jim Wallis’s Call for Renewal (worth the read, if for nothing more than to gain an insight on how he sees his crowd. Study one’s rhetoric and style and you’ll know how they view their audience): Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. Continue Reading...

Protestants and Natural Law, Part 2

In Part 1, we saw that the infrastructure of Protestant social teaching is not nearly as sophisticated as Roman Catholic social teaching and that natural law has often been viewed as a bridge between the church and the world. Continue Reading...

Let Us spray: fighting malaria

An article in today’s New York Times, “Push for New Tactics as War on Malaria Falters,” coincides nicely with Acton’s newest ad campaign (see the back cover of the July 1 issue of World). Continue Reading...

Supreme Court update

The Supreme Court is in the midst of its busy season. Important decisions recently handed down include the death-penalty case, Kansas v. Marsh, and the campaign finance case, Randall v. Continue Reading...

Brunner v. Barth

Related to Stephen’s last post, the result of this Googlefight speaks for itself: Emil Brunner versus Karl Barth. By the way, Wipf and Stock Publishers have reprinted the classic exchange of the Barth/Brunner debate, Natural Theology: Comprising “Nature and Grace” by Professor Dr. Continue Reading...

Protestants and natural law, part I

So, why don’t Protestants like Natural Law? The short answer is: there isn’t a short answer. So starting now, and continuing for who knows how long, I plan to tell the story of the Protestant struggle over natural law, from complete rejection by Karl Barth in the 1930s to the recent hint of renewed interest among Protestant intellectuals. Continue Reading...