There’s a story that I heard, of a miner, a family down in– it was in the Appalachia area and the church there really thought that they were doing a great deal because they would go in, they said they would pick the poorest families and they would take them Christmas gifts and turkeys and that sort of thing. So they did. They went to this family and they presented them with all the gifts and gave them to them...

Today is the 235th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. The PowerBlog has some excellent tributes to the Marines in the archives. They are certainly appropriate to highlight today: The Few, The Proud, The Marines Review: Joker One Film Review: Taking Chance Here is an excerpt from my post “The Few, The Proud, The Marines:” When I worked for U.S. Congressman Gene Taylor in Mississippi, one of the rewards of the job was helping veterans with military casework. I...

“Environmentalism, Marxism, Utopianism,” Part 2 of a recent Acton roundtable discussion, is now available. Michael Miller leads a discussion with Samuel Gregg, Jordan Ballor and Anielka Munkel about environmentalism, Marxism, liberation, theology, Christian syncretism, Utopianism and one of Michael’s favorite topics, Alexis de Tocqueville. Check out Acton’s YouTube page here. ...

photo reprinted with permission from The emotional scars and nightmares from Eugene Bondurant Sledge’s memories of the battles at Peleliu and Okinawa haunted him for years. He was among pany of men who didn’t talk about their feelings. The experience, he said, “made savages of us all.” Many years later, from notes taken of the battles in his field Bible, Sledge published With The Old Breed, one of the most stirring personal accounts of war I’ve ever read. passion and...

More on the 1000 Random Acts of Culture project. ...

I’ve just returned to Rome following our Lisbon conference on Catholic Social Teaching, Free Enterprise and Poverty. Judging from the crowded auditorium and the ments from the audience, it was a very successful event. Here I’ll mention a few of my personal highlights from the event: — Bishop Filippo Santoro gave an excellent presentation on the errors of using e transfers to achieve a more equal society, and especially the dependency the poor develop on the state. — Professor Raúl...

I just sent off a draft of a brief review of Carl Trueman‘s new book Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative to appear in the next issue of Religion & Liberty. (You can get plimentary subscription here). I mend the book as a very incisive and insightful challenge to any facile and uncritical identification of the Christian faith with particular political and economic ideologies. Here’s a snippet of the review: [Trueman’s] project is not about demonizing capitalism, wealth, or profits...

An exciting new book for anyone interested in the intersection of morality/theology and economics is John Mueller’s Redeeming Economics. I haven’t yet seen the book myself, but Acton Senior Fellow Jennifer Morse reviews it here. Drawing on Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, Mueller argues for recovering a fourth element of economics (besides consumption, production, and exchange): gift. He calls his approach neo-scholastic economics. Here’s Morse: The enemies of the state who ought to resist state encroachment of the family’s domain have...

In today’s Acton Commentary I explore “The Legalism of Political Christianity.” This quote from Ernest Lefever (not included in the piece but which does appear in my book) represents the basic position well: It is dangerous for any Christian body to identify itself fully with any specific political cause or order, whether the prevailing one or a challenge to it. In identifying with a secular power or agency, the church runs the risk of losing its critical distance and of...

I got news of a new innovation challenge grant from our friend Andreas Widmer at the Seven Fund. Seven is partnering with the Fisherman Foundation and Hapinoy Stores to promote innovative ways to use enterprise as a solution to poverty. Hapinoy stores in the Philippines offer opportunities for women who are at home taking care of their families, to earn extra money by having a store in their house. The Innovation petition is looking for new ways for these micro...