Over the weekend, the Daily Telegraph’s Charles Moore asked, “Why should the Left win the scramble for Africa?” : [T]he trouble with this subject – perhaps this is why the Left dominates it – is that it attracts posturing. Africa is, among other things, a photo-opportunity. As our own educational system makes it harder and harder to get British pupils to smile at all, so the attraction for politicians of being snapped with rows of black children with happy grins...

A friend forwarded a Website link for The Nonprofit Congress recently that was downright scary. It appears to be the epitome of good intentions fraught with unintended consequences. Or perhaps the consequences are not unintended. The Congress is an apparent call to advocacy (i.e., political pressuring) within the National Council of Nonprofit Associations. To the group’s credit, the “why” is a forthright statement of their view and values: The time e for nonprofits of all sizes and scope e together....

Earlier this month, we marked the 100th anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s birth on February 4, in what is now Wroclaw, Poland. In a message before the International Bonhoeffer Conference on February 3, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a man immersed in a specific cultural heritage, and untroubled by the fact; he was a person of profound and rigorous (and very traditional) personal spirituality; he was mitted to the ecumenical perspective from very early on in his...

George H. Taylor, the State Climatologist for Oregon, writes at TCS Daily, “A Consensus About Consensus.” The article is worth reading. It shows that scientific consensus is often overrated, both in terms of its existence and in terms of its relevance. With resepct to global warming, Taylor looks at some of the claims for scientific consensus, and states, “But even if there actually were a consensus on this issue, it may very well be wrong.” This simply means that the...

Jack Hafer, the producer of the award-winning film, To End All Wars, will be speaking at the 2006 Acton Lecture Series on Wednesday, February 15. This luncheon (which does include a lunch) will be held in the David Cassard room of the Waters Building in downtown Grand Rapids from 12:00pm – 1:30. Mr. Hafer will discuss the challenges of making movies with profound moral messages in today’s Hollywood culture. He will also talk about plans for future projects that break...

Western Europeans often talk about the homogeneity of American politics and how the parties hardly differ from one another. One reason why Europeans believe this is because they often pay attention to US politics only during a presidential campaign, so they do have some justification. But while their opinion is understandable not only does it fail to reflect the real difference between the left and the right in America; it obscures the homogeneity of Western European political life. What is...

The February 11 issue of WORLD Magazine includes a culture feature, “Giving their names back.” Profiled in the article is Citizens for Community Values (CCV), a nonprofit in Memphis that does a victim assistance program called “A Way Out.” It’s a reclamation program of sorts, literally reclaiming women ensnarled in the sex trade industry, and giving them back their lives, reclamation evidenced by names. The very nature of the sex industry, be it topless dancing, stripping or prostitution, requires anonymity–no...

In yesterday’s Acton Commentary, I argued that the biblical foundation for the concepts of stewardship and economics should lead us to see them as united. In this sense I wrote, “Economics can be understood as the theoretical side of stewardship, and stewardship can be understood as the practical side of economics.” I also defined economics as “the thoughtful ordering of the material resources of a household or social unit toward the self-identified good end” and said that the discipline “helps...

Dr. Jan Kłos of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin in Poland is the winner of the 2006 Novak Award and its associated $10,000 prize. An assistant professor with the department of Philosophy’s Chair of Social and Political Ethics, Dr. Kłos began teaching in Lublin in 1999. He has a specific interest in the history of economic freedom, nineteenth century liberalism, and dialogue between modernity and Christian thought. In 2001, he wrote a prize winning essay for the...

The Rev. Edmund Opitz, a longtime champion of liberty, passed away on Feb. 11. Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, looks back on Ed’s remarkable life in an article today on National Review Online (also available on the Acton site as a PDF). Never to be mistaken for an “economic fundamentalist,” much less a theocrat of any variety, Ed was always careful to note that Christianity qua Christianity offered no specific economic model any more than economics...

One of the religion beat’s favorite canards is to implicitly equate what it calls American Christian “fundamentalism” with what it calls Muslim or Islamic “fundamentalism.” After all, both are simply species of the genus. For more on this, check out GetReligion (here and here) and the reference to a piece by Philip Jenkins, which notes, Also, media coverage of any topic, religious or secular, is shaped by the necessity to plex movements and ideologies in a few selected code-words, labels...

This story in the UK’s Education Guardian is remarkable for its links to a number of issues. In contrast to the American system, Britain’s permits “faith” schools that are part of the government system. Thus, this Scottish “Catholic” school is, in the American usage, a “public” school. Now that 75% of its students are Muslim, some Muslims are demanding that the school switch its faith allegiance. One of the obvious issues is the Islamicization of Europe. Here is a Catholic...