“The struggle for justice always stands or falls on the battlefield of hope.” This is but one of a passel of pithy expressions found throughout Gary Haugen’s new book, Just Courage. Haugen is the president of International Justice Mission, a Washington D.C.-based organization doing outstanding work throughout the world, freeing people bonded in illegal labor arrangements, including forced prostitution. Haugen’s is a practical rather than a theoretical treatise. He admits that monly agreed-to definition of justice remains elusive, but he...

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State and effectively the second most important official in the Catholic Church, has written a new book titled, “L’etica del Bene Comune nella Dottrina Sociale della Chiesa” (The Ethics of the Common Good in the Social Doctrine of the Church), with a preface from the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad. The edition contains the Italian and Russian texts side-by-side, but it has not yet appeared in English though the Zenit...

There’s an interesting clip on YouTube of a discussion about the world food situation between, primarily, author Michal Pollan and Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant. Pollan is a champion of the “slow food” movement, which is, to simplify, associated more generally with trends such as whole foods, farmers markets (“localvores”), organic food production, etc. (The participation of otherwise fiscal and cultural conservatives in what is often presented as a left-leaning movement is a phenomenon that gave rise to the term “crunchy...

Mark your calendars! Jennifer Roback Morse ing to Grand Rapids to speak at Aquinas College on Wednesday, November 19 at 7:00pm. Dr. Morse will speak on the topic of her provocative new book, Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up World. An excerpt from the prologue: The sexual revolution has been a disappointment, but people continue to acquiesce in its assumptions because no appealing alternative seems to be on the horizon. Many Americans think the only alternatives are bination...

What is the root cause of the sub-prime crisis shaking the global economy? We need to know so we don’t allow it to screw up our economy even worse. Many point to dishonesty and poor judgment on Wall Street. There was plenty of that leading up to the near-trillion dollar bailout, and even now the stock market is busily disciplining stupid, panies. Others point to the many people who falsified loan applications to get mortgages beyond their means. That too...

From Christian Newswire: COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Oct. 2 /Christian Newswire/ — The John Jay Institute, a para-academic leadership development center based in downtown Colorado Springs, is pleased to announce a partnership with the Acton Institute, Grand Rapids, Michigan, to premiere the historical documentary film, “The Birth of Freedom” in Colorado. The screening will take place on Wednesday, November 5th at 7pm in the SaGaJi Theatre at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 30 West Dale Street in Colorado Springs. John...

To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the New International Version (NIV), “the best-selling translation with more than 300 million copies in print,” Grand Rapids-based publisher Zondervan is launching a nationwide RV tour, “Bible Across America.” The RV will be making stops at various locations across the nation and encouraging people to contribute a verse to a hand-written Bible. New Zondervan CEO Moe Girkins started the tour off yesterday by inscribing Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and...

It looks to me like Obama has this election about wrapped up. Why? Some of his opponents are resorting to the tired and fallacious reductio ad Hitlerum (aka argumentum ad Hitlerum). Exhibit A is this video: (The original context is this video.) This stuff is just beyond the pale in so many ways. You can find all manner of other similarly odious political rhetoric at YouTube (just check out the “related videos” category). Also, in 2004 Joe Carter discussed what...

Speaking of the Nazis, I highly mend Heiko A. Oberman’s essay, “From Luther to Hitler,” contained in the posthumously published The Two Reformations (Yale University Press, 2003). The piece is short and pointed, well worth the read, and just one of a number of excellent essays in that collection. Here’s how Oberman concludes (p. 85): I do not intend this analysis to serve the cause of exculpating the Germans who were fated to be born too early. Rather I hope...

In the sixth Birth of Freedom video short, William B. Allen addresses the question, “What was Christianity’s Role in the rise of the idea of human equality?” In his discussion, which traces the Judeo-Christian origins of a “universal perspective,” he concludes that “what informs the spirit of Republicanism in the modern era, is this long development, this slow working-out of a specific revelation from God that leads human beings into the discovery of the fullness of their personality in the...