What do these things have mon: Gloria Steinem, Yiddish theater, Gospel of Wealth, U.S. Fish Commission, the cult of domesticity and smallpox? They are all highlights of American history for Advanced Placement (AP) high school students. AP classes are typically for college-bound students, and considered to be “tougher” classes. The College Board administers AP classes in high schools, and is releasing its American history framework effective this fall. Here are some things students won’t see: the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln...

What is social justice? How should Christians advocate an effectual social justice rooted in Gospel and natural law? The Institute for Religion and Democracy is hosting a blog symposium in which millennial Christians examine those and other questions related to social justice. In their first entry, Acton’s Dylan Pahman attempts to define social justice: The term social justice, for many Christians today, e to be synonymous with correcting economic inequalities (usually through the apparatus of the state) out of solidarity...

Bishop Romulo Emiliani Sanchez says the lies and lures of human traffickers are the root cause of the surge of illegal immigrant children at the U.S. southern border. Emiliani, an auxiliary of the Catholic Diocese of San Pedro Sula in Honduras, decried the tactics of organized crime and human traffickers for tricking parents and children into thinking that a warm e and easier life awaits them in the U.S. It is unfortunate that the illusion and mirage that the U.S....

John C. Pinheiro, Professor of History and Chair Director of Catholic Studies at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Mich. and Acton Lecture Series lecturer, has written a new book, recently reviewed at First Things. Missionaries of Republicanism: A Religious History of the Mexican-American Warargues that virulent anti-Catholicism was the “defining attitude undergirding the early Republic and antebellum years.” Alan Cornett of First Things calls Pinheiro’s book “fresh” and “convincing.” Pinheiro asks his reader to recall that Catholics were seen as...

Before I try to convince you that Katha Pollitt is dangerously wrong, let me attempt to explain why her opinion is significant. Pollitt was educated at Harvard and the Columbia School of the Arts and has taught at Princeton. She has won a National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary, an NEA grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. She is, in other words, the kind of politically progressive pundit whose opinions, when originally expressed, are...

Wilhelm Röpke is one of the most important 20th century economists that almost no Americans know anything about. Fortunately, that may soon change asRöpke’s classicworkon economics,A Humane Economy,is being republished by ISI Books with an introduction by Samuel Gregg,director of research at the Acton Institute. Intercollegiate Review has posted an excerpt from Gregg’s introduction: The current world crisis could never have grown to such proportions, nor proved as stubborn, if it had not been for the many forces at work...

A few weeks ago, Hobby Lobby made waves when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the arts and crafts chain in its lawsuit against the Health and Human Services Contraception Mandate. West Michigan manufacturer, Autocam, has been engaged in a similar legal fight. John Kennedy, owner of Autocam, stated that his and his family’s Roman Catholic faith “is integral to Autocam’s corporate culture” and the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to provide contraceptives andabortifacients was a violation of their...

Peter Johnson, External Relations Officer at Acton, recently wrote an article for the Institute for Religion and Democracy’s series mentaries on social justice. This series explains what social justice is and examines what it means for Christians in light of the Gospel and natural law. Acton’s Dylan Pahman wrote the first article in this series by defining social justice. Johnson’s piece, Checking On My Privilege (And, Yes, It’s Still There) is the second in the series: The suggestion that the...