While efforts to explain the financial crisis will continue for years (historians are still debating the causes of the Great Depression, eight decades later), it seems certain that its genesis cannot be fully understood without some recourse to the moral dimension of human action in the economy. Acton mentators—Jonathan Witt, David Milroy, Sam Gregg—have already weighed in on the question. Economists have long deplored the poor savings rate in the United States, arguing that our ever-increasing debt load (national and...

This week’s Birth of Freedom Video Short features Susan Wise Bauer, author of The History of the Ancient World. She addresses the question, “How did Christian slave owners justify slavery?”, describing how slave owners operated under a false (prescriptive instead of descriptive) understanding of the New Testament’s teaching concerning slavery. Remember, if you haven’t seen the other 7 video shorts, you can check out the rest of the series, learn about premieres in your area, and discover more background information...

Writing mentary for the United Methodist News Service, J. Richard Peck encourages readers to heed John Wesley’s advice on economic policy. “In short, Wesley called for higher taxes upon the wealthy and laws that would prohibit the wasting of natural products,” says Peck. He notes that the cure for economic troubles relating to the poor was to repress luxury. While some of Wesley’s economc advice is certainly sound, especially his views on the danger of debt, his understanding of basic...

Acton Media’s seventh Birth of Freedom short features Rodney Stark, author of The Victory of Reason. In the video, he discusses the question “Why didn’t China have an industrial revolution before the west?” Although evidence points to the beginnings of an agricultural and industrial revolution in the 10th century, the lack of protection for private property has been a disincentive for innovation and hard work. Acton Media’s video shorts from The Birth of Freedom are designed to provide additional insight...

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...

USA Today has an excellent assessment of the impact of faith-based charities in an October 7 piece titled “Faith-based groups man the front lines.” The gist of the article points out the obvious to those who are still recovering from devastating hurricanes, and that’s that religious charities understand and mitted to the long term need of hurricane victims. As a Katrina evacuee myself, I have witnessed mitment and work of Christian churches and charities perform life changing assistance to victims...

Dirt… we sweep our floors, wipe our shoes, and wash our clothes to get rid of it. But how often do we stop and reflect upon the very fact that without soil life would not be possible? This November, the popular RBC television program Day of Discovery will launch a three-part series titled “The Wonder of Creation: Soil.” Acton Institute research fellow Jay W. Richards will be featured as a guest expert in the series. It will air on Ion...

In the wake of the global financial crisis, stories from the pundit class and blogosphere abound proclaiming the imminent death of the conservative movement. This is part of a longer and broader discussion with roots in the post-Reagan era of American politics. (As you’ll see in ments below, I’m not so inclined to think that a move toward particular kinds of populism is necessarily a move away from conservatism.) Writing in the American Conservative earlier this month, Claes G. Ryn...

Jay W. Richards, Research Fellow and Director of Acton Media, was interviewed for a story in the Grand Rapids Press on the topic of religious and nonreligious views. The article, written in light of outspoken atheist Bill Maher’s new movie, looks at differing views of people such as Christopher Hitchens and John Ortberg. Jay Richards debated Christopher Hitchens at Stanford University last January on the topic of atheism vs. theism. Throughout the debate Hitchens grew increasingly angry and by the...

Paola Fantini has expanded her blog post on Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone’s new work on Catholic social doctrine into a book review for the ing Religion & Liberty quarterly published by the Acton Institute. She has also translated the prologue to the book by Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Kirill. These articles are, to my knowledge, the first to translate anything from Cardinal Bertone’s “The Ethics of the Common Good in Catholic Social Doctrine” (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2008) into English. The Italian title...