In this week’s Acton Commentary, Jay Richards looks at the ingrained tendency of many environmentalists to view man’s place in nature as fundamentally destructive. For people of faith, this is simply bad theology. Jay examines this anthropological error, and highlights the work of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, a new coalition that is working to deepen religious reflection on environmental questions. Environmental policies founded on faulty fundamentals can lead to disastrous consequences, as Jay points out. Every environmental policy implemented by...

The Salvation Army Bell Ringers are now audibly calling us to seasonal charitable giving. But the pleas from multiple organizations for our benevolence—from both unprecedented terrorist attacks and natural disasters to the ever-present needs of our less fortunate neighbors—have been virtually ongoing since 9/11. However, amidst all the research about how much Americans give and who needs what the most, and the gloom and doom rhetoric of so-called donor fatigue, it is appropriate to appreciate another principle as important as...

The Financial Times reports that generous farm subsidies in the United States and Western Europe are increasingly beleaguered. If the US and Europe don’t voluntarily eliminate the unfair advantage their agriculture producers enjoy in the global market, then developing nations are likely to take legal action through the WTO. No one wants to see American agriculture destroyed, but the injustice of developed-nation subsidies in light of the struggles of developing-nation farmers is hard to deny. The ramifications of ag subsidy...

A piled by Matt Donnelly at Science & Theology News calls the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance’s recent formation a continuation of “the recent and laudable trend of faith-based organizations making a serious attempt to grapple with the religious basis for environmental stewardship.” The section also provides links to their coverage of a number of other aspects of “the intersection of religious belief and environmental protection.” ...

e all ye faithful? Seems like ridding City Hall of Nativity scenes and other religious art is not enough for some people. Now, homeowner associations are getting into the act. In suburban Detroit, the Samona family was recently notified by their subdivision’s guardians of mon good (and lawn decorations) to remove an outdoor plastic creche. Nothing was said about some other figures on the lawn, including a holiday Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, and Mr. and Mrs. Claus. The Detroit...

On my drive to work this morning, I began wondering about all those relief efforts that were launched after the December 2004 Tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia. So I started the day at the office by looking for reports/numbers online, trying to find some indication of how money was being spent and what progress was being made. I found a great website called ReliefWeb which has really opened my eyes to the hundreds of other problems around the world that...

Here’s a fair-minded and illuminating defense of C. S. Lewis and his Narnia books in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, against the rather vicious attacks of current children’s book author, Philip Pullman. HT: Arts and Letters Daily ...

This made me think of this. If the British pany were really smart, they’d just negotiate a price to use the Book-A-Minute Classics. The versions are a bit different, though. Here’s Dante’s Inferno: “Some woman puts Dante through Hell. THE END.” These are really quite good. I especially like the War and Piece classic. ...

A key barrier to economic growth in the developing world is reliable access to the global information network: the Internet. A UN-sponsored study, “Information Economy Report 2005” by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, (PDF) shows that one of the features of the digital divide between the developing and the developed world has to do with the cost of high-bandwidth Internet access. The report says “that the smaller, e Internet markets in developing countries, particularly in Africa, have...

That’s the title of this week’s survey of Italy in The Economist. The news for Italy is quite depressing. Its economic growth is the slowest in Europe, behind even France and Germany, its productivity is down while its wages are up, and a massive demographic crisis looms. The survey is extensive, covering the structural, political and even cultural impediments today’s Italy faces. These include a tendency to blame Europe and China for Italian woes, an over-reliance on small- and medium-sized...