At the bottom of this storm and tornado roundup from The Weather Channel, there is a powerful slideshow on the devastation in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama. The death count in the region stands at 31. Mississippi’s Governor Phil Bryant described yesterday as “The most active tornado day in Mississippi history.” Some people forget that it is denominational church agencies that often are the first to meet the material needs and fort to the afflicted. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief is well...

“Inequality is the root of social evil,” tweeted Pope Francis earlier this week, raising eyebrows across the globe. Like many conservative Christians I expressed my disagreement on social media. “Um, no it’s not. Hate and apathy are the roots of social evil,” I said on Twitter. I also wondered whether Francis had “traded the writings of Peter and Paul for Piketty”—the French Marxist economist whose latest book on the evils of inequality has e a worldwide bestseller. Some Catholics, such...

In a video selected as the winner of a contest sponsored byThe High Calling, Dylan Weston, a ranch hand and wrangler from Pennsylvania, shares how his work glorifies God and adds value to others. This is a great example of how we as Christians might begin to view our role in the bigger picture, particularly as it applies to the economies of creative service and wonder. Dylan does not view his service as a mere means to personal fulfillment or...

Over at Christianity TodayArt Lindsley has a good piece on how C.S. Lewis’s support for true progress led him to oppose Progressivism: Some of Lewis’s most pointed criticisms of “progress” came when he wrote on economics and politics, even though he did not ment on these topics. When he was invited by theObserverin the late 1950’s to write an article on whether progress was even possible, he titled his contribution “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State.” In this essay Lewis...

On Tuesday, April 29, the Acton Institute hosted the conference Faith, State, and the Economy: perspectives from East and West at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. This conference was the first in a five-part international conference series – One and Indivisible? The Relationship Between Religious and Economic Freedom. The one-night event, moderated by Acton’s Rev. Robert A. Sirico, featured four prominent speakers who offered deeper insight into the question of the relationship between religious freedom and economic liberty. The...

The religious crusade against fossil fuels and various methods of extracting it to heat and light our homes, offices, and factories continues apace. The 2014 proxy shareholder season is a veritable spider web of networked religious-affiliated activist groups decrying coal, natural gas, oil, hydraulic fracturing and mining. Ceres, for example, reports “35 institutional investors have filed 142 resolutions in a coordinated effort to spur action by panies” on what it calls climate-related measures. Based in Boston, Mass., the nonprofit group...

Today you’ll be hearing a lot aboutthis latest bit of bad —really, really bad —economic news: Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the first quarter (that is, from the fourth quarter of 2013 to the first quarter of 2014), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. There are a lot...

In our modern era, the ancient sin of covetousness primarily manifests itself in three forms: greed, theft, and arguments about inequality. The greedy selfishly desire to acquire what others have, thieves illicitly acquire what others have, and equality advocates want the government to redistribute what others have. It would be unfair, of course, to assume that all critics of inequality are driven by covetousness. But if you stripped away that sin as a motivation, the number of people who care...

When does inequality e unjust? In this week’sActon Commentary, Jordan Ballor considers that question in the context of Pope Francis’s teachings and Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy: Earlier this week, Pope Francis logged onto his @Pontifex Twitter account to declare that “inequality is the root of social evil.” This was of a piece with his November apostolic exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium,” in which he asserted that “inequality is the root of social ills.” Within the deeper context of his exhortation, it...

Today on the PowerBlog, we’re continuing our Radio Free Acton series featuring people who have attended Acton University and their experiences. As we close in on the deadline for registration for AU 2014, we hope that as you hear from people who have been impacted by the experience of Acton University, you’ll considerregistering for AU 2014and making the experience your own this year. Today’s podcast features Father Hans Jacobse, an Orthodox priest and the founder of the American Orthodox Institute,...