What did Secretary Kerry say about Islamic State and genocide? In a speech on Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the U.S. has determined that the actions of Islamic State (aka ISIS) against Christians and other minority groups in Iraq and Syria constitutes an act of genocide. My purpose in appearing before you today is to assert that, in my judgment, Daesh [Islamic State] is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians,...

The Little Sisters of the Poor,an international congregation of Catholic women religious who serve the elderly poor in over 30 countries around the world, have been given a difficult choice: violate your conscience or pay $70 million a year in fines. For the past few years the Obama administration has been attempting to force the Little Sisters — and other nonprofit religious organizations — to help provide their employees with free access to abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations, and contraceptives. But on...

As many are beginning to realize, and as the new documentary, Poverty, Inc., details at length, the foreign aid movement has largely failed the global poor, promoting top-down solutions at the expense of bottom-up enterprises and institutions. This is partly due to errors in economic thinking, but it es froma lack of understanding and appreciation forthe intangible assets in munities, particularly as it relates to the social and the spiritual. “There has got to be more than just a change...

Your writer persistently has defended genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from munity of religious shareholder activists in this space. Among these activists are the religious investors affiliated with Green America, including As You Sow. Even outside Green America’s orbit, AYS members continue to reject science and the itant reduction of world hunger. Just last week, AYS released its 2016 Proxy Preview wherein it boasts: GMOs: Just two proposals concern themselves with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in 2016, a drop from recent...

An aristocratic British teenager is kidnapped by pirates, sold into slavery, escapes and returns home, es a priest, returns to his land of captivity and face off against hordes of Druids. It’s not a Hollywood story, but the real life adventures of Patrick. Here are five facts about the amazing life of St. Patrick, the Indiana Jones of Christian saints: 1. Taken from his home in southern Britain, Patrick was captured by pirates in A.D. 405 when he was only...

What is Holy Week? Holy Week is the week before Easter, a period which includes the religious holidays of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Holy week does not include Easter Sunday. When did Holy Week get started? The first recording of a Holy Week observance was made by Egeria, a Gallic woman who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land about 381-384. In an account of her travels she wrote for a group of women back...

Much real estate on this blog has been devoted to extolling the scientifically proven safety and morally indispensible qualities of GMOs, and much shade cast by your writer at the religious shareholder activists acting to curtail or eliminate GMO use. No legitimate scientific research has proven GMOs unsafe, and the promise GMOs hold for feeding the world’s poorest is extraordinary. Why, then, the reservations of such progressive groups as As You Sow and Green America? Could it be they simply...

For most musicians, the prospect of a longand stable career in the arts is a lifelong dream. For those who actually “make it,” aspirationscan shift in surprising ways. For Jars of Clay, a popular rock band who achieved success in the 1990s — and wrote the music for Acton’s film series,For the Life of the World—that vocational reckoning came late in their careers. After 20 years of full-time work in the music industry, they decided that in order to stay...

Conservatives and liberals both tend to believe that they alone are motivated by love while their opponents are motivated by hate. How can we solve problems with so much polarization? In a recent TED talk, AEI president Arthur Brooks shares ideas for what we can each do as individuals to break the gridlock. “We might just be able to take the ghastly holy war of ideology that we’re suffering under and turn it into petition of ideas,” says Brooks. ...

Yesterday, Acton Institute Senior Editor Joe Carter joinedhost Al Kresta on Ave Maria Radio’s Kresta in the Afternoonto discuss the phenomenon that is Donald Trump and his presidential campaign. Carter explains that Trump’s appeal lies in the fact that he’s bringing a brand of folk Marxism to an entirely new audience. Trumpis nota Marxist, but his pitting of oppressed classes against their oppressors is drawn from folk Marxism, and has been a powerful political tool in the 2016 campaign. You...