Mary Ann Glendon makes an excellent point about the outcry for more corporate responsibility while government is simultaneously stripping away the rights of religious conscience of businesses. In The Boston Globe, Glendon notes, The simple truth is that if we want businesses, incorporated or not, to be responsible for their actions, they must be treated as having some moral agency. And with moral agency and accountability must go the freedom to act in accordance with conscience. The push to ghettoize...

In the nation of Kenya, large families (4-5 children) are the norm. While it is difficult to make blanket statements about a nation as diverse as Kenya, children are typically valued in Kenyan families. One woman, Isabela Samora, recounts her experience of awaiting her first child: I can’t wait to see my baby. To be able to hold those tiny hands and see those feet that give me some serious kicks to the ribs. I can’t wait to look at...

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association is holding the World Cup in Brazil, June 2014.Six men have been arrested for fixing Premier League soccer matches.Earlier this month, two British men were arrested for fixing Australian soccer matches.Retired English striker Alan Shearer is calling for “zero tolerance” for fixing of soccer matches. Marcus Gayle, a former striker for Wimbledon, told BBC London regarding the fixing scandal: “I was disgusted that it is still around in the game.” The Minas Gerais state...

Did you miss Acton on Tap? You really shouldn’t miss Acton on Tap. That’s a bad idea. For instance, if you missed last night’s event, you passed up an opportunity to hear Jordan J. Ballor, Executive Editor of the Journal of Markets & Morality and author of Get Your Hands Dirty: Essays on Christian Social Thought (and Action), speak at San Chez Bistro in Grand Rapids, Michigan on the topic of the economics of the Heidelberg Catechism. He focused on...

An icon of Christ as the Divine Sophia, the Wisdom of God (See Proverbs 8) by Eileen McGuckin This past Friday, I attended the Sophia Institute annual conference. I am a fellow of Sophia and presented a short paper there on Orthodox Christian monastic enterprise. The theme of the conference this year was “Monasticism, Asceticism and Holiness in the Eastern Orthodox World.” In addition to my paper, the subjects of the keynote addresses may interest readers of the PowerBlog. The...

mentators, apart from Virginia Postrel and the like, seem to think that it would be tragic for the city of Detroit to lose the art collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) in the city’s bankruptcy proceedings. I agree that liquidating or “monetizing” the collection and shipping the works off to parts unknown like the spare pieces on a totaled car would be tragic. But at the same time, there’s something about the relationship between the DIA collection and...

Pope Francis’ ments about economics has raised concerns among conservatives and libertarians. But at National Review, James Pethokoukis says free marketeers shouldn’t take the critique so personally: If you are a free marketeer offended by Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”) — in which he critiqued “deified” market capitalism and attacked e inequality — ask yourself: What should the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church say about economics in 2013? Should he take a victory lap over...

“There is only one effective solution to world poverty,” says theologian Wayne Grudem in a recent lectureon his latest book, The Poverty of Nations, co-authored with economist Barry Asmus.That solution, he argues, is a rightly ordered free market, and such a solution, he goes further, is “consistent with the teachings of the Bible about productivity, property, government, and personal moral values.” Watch the whole thing here: Grudem’s primary question, “What causes wealth or poverty in the world?,” is not new,...