On Saturday, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote a column that appeared to promote the same kind of identity politics that exploded in violence one day earlier in Charlottesville. He began: I’m a white man, so you should listen to absolutely nothing I say, at least on matters of social justice. I have no standing. No way to relate. My color and gender nullify me, and it gets worse: I grew up in the suburbs. Dad made six figures....

As the UK sets out its negotiating policies for Brexit this week and next, it is no secret that European nations remain deeply divided over the role of the European Union. But what role does religion play in how nations see the EU, the Single Market, and the promise of an“ever-closer union”administered from Brussels? That underexplored question is the heart ofThePolitical Theology of European Integration by Mark Royce, which is the subject of a new review atReligion & Liberty Transatlantic....

After losing her husband, Tinashe Butau of Zimbabwe didn’t know what to do. She was now a single mother with four children to feed, and she needed to find a way to provide. When a friend told her about a savings group through a local church, Tinashe saw an opportunity. “I was tired of living from hand to mouth,” she says. “The group provided a means out of poverty and beyond living hand to mouth.” The savings group, which originated...

I was living with thousands of Marines on a base in Japan when I discovered a novel about a handful of Classics students living at a small, eliteVermontcollege. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History instantly became on of my favorite books, partially because at the time (1993) I was dreaming of leaving the Corps and attending St. John’s College, a small college famous for their Great Books program. But I came upon a passage in Tartt’s novel that made me realize...

President and Co-Founder of the Acton Institute, Rev. Robert Sirico, was recently interviewed on EWTNby news anchor Raymond Arroyo to discuss a recent controversial article published by La CiviltàCattolica. The article, approved by the Vatican, received much criticism because it targeted “conservative evangelical and Catholic collaboration around social issues.” Sirico parses the issues revolving around the article, stating how the article was “not substantive and did not exhibit any kind of real understanding of evangelicalism or of conservative, traditional Catholicism.”...

People tend to be poor because they are excluded from market exchange, says Anne Rathbone Bradley in this week’s Acton Commentary. Wealth redistribution doesn’t change that but reforming cronyism does. What we need to ensure is that financial capital doesn’t e equivalent to political power for corporations. The topic of e inequality is not new, but it is increasingly dominating academic and policy conversations. When French economist, Thomas Piketty, wrote a 704-page tome on e inequality in 2014 it sold...

Over the last two decades, global poverty has plummeted and the world’s poorest people have steadily climbed out of the shadow of death. Yet many Christians cannot distinguish between dire poverty and e inequality, falsely believe both are worsening, and oppose the very policies that have lifted the world’s poor out of malnutrition. “Why do we underestimate success?” asks Philip Booth in a new essay forReligion & Liberty Transatlantic. “Why do we accept fake news about these issues?” Booth– a...

Over the past week Americans have been debating the removal of Confederate statues from our public spaces. The discussion was prompted by the white nationalist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia that was supposedly in response to the plan to take down the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. But if the rally was about a statue, why were the protestors shouting about Jews? “Once they started marching, they didn’t talk about Robert E. Lee being a brilliant military tactician,” says...

In its “Houses of Worship” column today, the Wall Street Journal examined how the Acton Institute continues to work for economic liberty, even though that project looks “unfashionable” these days. Writer Mene Ukueberuwa interviewed Acton co-founder and President Rev. Robert A. Sirico, and Kishore Jayabalan, director of Istituto Acton in Rome. The writer noted that opinion polls show declining support for free markets among Christians but said that Acton was continuing its work, without polemics: Far from the Christian capitalist...

“It is odd to call someone so famous an ‘underrated thinker’ but indeed Calvin is,” says economist Tyler Cowen. One of the reasons Calvin is so underrated is that he is so often misunderstood. Most people’s perception of Calvin is not based on his work but on the most dour members of the group we now call Calvinists (which includes me, though I’m not crazy about that label). Calvin was one of the best minds of his day. From an...