Over at Think Christian today I examine some of the moral implications surrounding the announced release of the new Apple Watch. In the background of my thinking was a TEDxPuget Sound talk by Simon Sinek that focuses on identifying the “why” of organizations. It’s important to ask the “why” of our consumption as well, which is why I want to know of moral justifications for purchasing something like a $10,000 gold Apple Watch. Please pass along your suggestions in ments...

Today is the last day you can get a free copy of Acton’s latest monograph, “A Vulnerable World: The High Price of Human Trafficking” by Elise Hilton. Visit Amazon before midnight to download. For more information about the monograph and human trafficking, visit Vulnerable.World. Pope Francis has called human trafficking “an open wound on the body of contemporary society.” This monograph discusses both the economic and moral fall-out of modern-day slavery. ...

In the Middle East, the Islamic State is crucifying Christians and demolishing ancient churches, write Bethany Allen-ebrahimian and Yochi Dreazen at Foreign Policy. Why is this being met with silence from the halls of Congress to Sunday sermons? Every holiday season, politicians in America take to the airwaves to rail against a so-called “war on Christmas” or “war on Easter,” pointing to things like major retailers wishing shoppers generic “happy holidays.” But on the subject of the Middle East, where...

In today’s Christian Post, Breakpoint’s John Stonestreet says it is “bogus” to claim “others have it worse” when es to religious persecution as a way of denying claims of the loss of religious liberty here in the West. Now, let me first state the obvious: Nothing happening here or elsewhere in the West can remotely pared to what Christians in the Islamic world undergo on a daily basis. Our first and second response should be to pray for them, and...

According to the UK Daily Mail, Pope Francis recently told a confidante that the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on priestly marriage was “archaic,” and that he hoped tooverturn the rule during his papacy.This is of course not the first time that Pope Francis has made a statement (or, in this case, has been alleged to have madea statement) that seems out of step with Roman Catholic doctrine or tradition; and as has often been the case in these situations, Acton...

This is a bit second-hand (a source drawing from another source), but I still think the following tidbit on the modern history of clergy and scientific and technological development and discovery in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries from Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile is notable: Knowledge formation, even when theoretical, takes time, some boredom, and the freedom es from having another occupation, therefore allowing one to escape the journalistic-style pressure of modern publish-and-perish [sic, probably intentionally] academia to produce cosmetic knowledge, much...

Max Weber’s classic study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism made the case that the Reformation had a major impact on the rise of free market capitalism. But according to Gene Edward Veith, Weber misunderstood what it was about the Reformation that caused that impact. On February 26th, Veith came to Grand Rapids to talk about what Weber missed in his classic analysis – primarily Martin Luther’s doctrine of vocation, which taught that God is present and active...

Named after distinguished theologian, Michael Novak, this award recognizes outstanding scholarly research that examines the relationship between religion, economic freedom, and the free and virtuous society. Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, assistant professor of economics at Ave Maria University, is the latest Novak Award Winner. Pakaluk is Founder-Director of the Stein Center for Social Research at Ave Maria University. This center is an interdisciplinary institute for advanced studies in social science and social thought. It focuses on questions of gender, personality development,...

Being “missional” and showing a concern for justice for the poor have e issues of increasing concern among American evangelicals. Yet the focus tends to tend to be on urban minorities instead of the largest percentage of Americans living under the poverty line. If you want to hear crickets in a room full of educated, missionally minded, culture-shaping evangelicals, says Anthony Bradley, ask this question: “What are you doing to serve the needs of poor white people?” Even though lower-class...

In a first for the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, 70 countries signed a joint statement specifically addressing the plight of Christians and other minorities in the Middle East. But the Vatican is asking that even more be done for persecuted believers in that region. The Vatican’s top diplomat at the United Nations in Geneva has called for a coordinated international force to stop the “so-called Islamic State” in Syria and Iraq from further assaults on Christians and other minority...