Katie Nienow worked in youth ministry for four years. After deciding to transition into the world of business, her former boss was not pleased. “You’re leaving the one thing God has best designed you to do,” he said. Throughout her time in ministry, Nienow says that her interest in business and economics felt “ancillary to the call.” In a new video from Nathan Clarke and This Is Our City, she explains how that perspective was fundamentally transformed. As Nienow explains:...

Former Acton research fellow Jay Richards has another bestseller, as of last night–Infiltrated: How to Stop the Insiders and Activists Who are Exploiting the Financial Crisis to Control Our Lives and Our Fortunes. IF you follow free market writers closely, you known that government interventions in the financial markets, rather than too much economic freedom, fueled the housing bubble and paved the way to the subsequent housing collapse and financial crisis. Infiltrated deftly summarizes this, but it’s in two other...

Darryl Hart has a bit of a go at “the hyperventilation that goes on in some neo-Calvinist circles when folks talk about the power of the gospel to redeem all of life,” using the woes of the city of Detroit as a trump card. Hart wonders why he hasn’t “seen too many posts from the transformers about Detroit’s decline and bankruptcy.” I don’t know if The Gospel Coalition is going to have anything say about Detroit’s bankruptcy, but Tim Keller...

Asianews reports the toll from violence in Egypt over a mere three day period. Hundreds have been killed, but there is little doubt that Christian churches, businesses, and organizations have been targeted. Here is what Asianews is calling a “representative” list: Catholic churches and convents 1. Franciscan church and school (road 23) – burned (Suez)2. Monastery of the Holy Shepherd and hospital – burned (Suez)3. Church of the Good Shepherd, Monastery of the Good Shepherd – burned in molotov attack...

Astute Acton readers more than likely are aware already that U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has fired another salvo in the ongoing battle to silence conservative voices. Durbin joins our progressive friends in the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and As You Sow – both involved in proxy shareholder resolutions that would panies to disclose donations to nonprofits – in their attempts to declare lights-out on the American Legislative Exchange Council. At issue for Durbin is ALEC’s draft legislation called...

Was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series of children’s books written as an anti-New Deal fable? The Wilder family papers suggest they were: From the publication of the first book in 1932, the series was immediately popular. And, at a time when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was introducing the major federal initiatives of the New Deal and Social Security as a way out of the Depression, the Little House books lulled children to sleep with the opposite...

Sometimes we are not aware of the foolishness of our private speech until our words go public. This is one of the morals of the story of Philadelphia Eagle’s receiver Riley Cooper’s n-word slip. In a video taken at a Kenny Chesney concert in June, Cooper became frustrated that an African-American security guard would not allow him backstage. With a beer in his hand Cooper responded, “I will jump this fence and fight every n***ger here, bro.” Cooper’s gaffe serves...

St. Ignatius of Antioch was martyred at the jaws of wild beasts in the Roman colosseum sometime around 110 AD. In her historical study of wealth and poverty in the early Church, Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich, Helen Rhee offers the following interesting historical tidbit with regards to how early Christians were able to minister to their imprisoned brothers and sisters who awaited martyrdom: Bribing the prison guards, which must have cost a certain amount, features frequently enough in...

Sky News talks with Bishop Angaelos, the General Bishop of Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, about the ongoing bloodshed in Egypt. (HT: Byzantine, TX) Bishop Angaelos also issued this statement through The Coptic Orthodox Church UK media office today: Comment on the on-going situation in Egypt by His Grace Bishop Angaelos, General Bishop of The Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom – 16 August 2013 As a clergyman for over twenty years, and a Christian for the...

In 2010, voters in Oklahoma passed a legislatively-referred constitutional amendment that would prohibit state courts from using international law or Sharia law when making rulings. But yesterday, a federal judge ruled the amendment violated religious freedoms granted by the U.S. Constitution: In finding the law in violation of the United States Constitution’s Establishment Clause, U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the certification of the results of the state question that put the Sharia law ban into...