The following items appear in the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, October 24, 2007: Cornwall’s Beisner and Care of Creation’s Brown Speak at Proclamation PCA The Cornwall Alliance’s Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and Care of Creation’s Rev. Ed Brown spoke as a panel on creation stewardship at Proclamation Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Sunday evening, October 14. Rev. Brown focused on theological foundations for creation stewardship. Dr. Beisner expressed wide agreement with those and then...

Just over a year ago an article of mine was published, “The Aryan clause, the Confessing Church, and the ecumenical movement: Barth and Bonhoeffer on natural theology, 1933–1935,” Scottish Journal of Theology 59 (2006): 263-280. In this piece I argue that the basic theological disagreement between Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer has to do with the former’s radical denial of natural theology. One of the three cases I examine is the exchange between the two theologians when the Aryan clause,...

Costa Rica’s voters ratified the Central American Free Trade Agreement, a sign of hope against a rising tide of populist, anti-trade sentiment in Latin America — and the United States. “In short, this is not the time for Latin America to abandon free trade agendas,” Gregg says. Read the mentary here. ...

I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me. With me are riches and honor, enduring wealth and prosperity. My fruit is better than fine gold; what I yield surpasses choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness, along the paths of justice, bestowing a rich inheritance on those who love me and making their treasuries full. Proverbs 8:17-21 The biblical wisdom literature makes it abundantly plain, as does the rest of the entire Bible,...

On Saturday, October 27, at 7 p.m., BookTV (C-SPAN2) will air a taped Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) cosponsored debate on the topic, “Is Christianity the Problem?” The debate (which occurred Monday) will feature the author of the book What’s So Great About Christianity, by Dinesh D’Souza, and Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is the author of God is not Great. The debate will be moderated by Marvin Olasky, who is the editor in chief of WORLD magazine and a senior fellow at...

Anthony Bradley offers a rave review of the new book published by Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin Poussaint of Harvard Medical School, Come On People: On The Path From Victims to Victors. “Cosby and Poussaint remind us that black America’s hope for escape from abysmal self-destruction is moral formation — not government programs or blaming white people,” Bradley writes. Read the mentary here. ...

French president Nicholas Sarkozy has mended the formation of a “Council of the Wise,” which would have the task of “elaborating proposals for the future development of Europe.” A recent survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation finds a lot of support for the idea in France, the UK, and Germany. I suppose there are various ways to read this. One, hinted at by the survey story linked above, is that people in the EU are uneasy about the direction Europe is...

Related to Sam Gregg’s Acton Commentary today, “Free Trade: Latin America’s Last Hope?” I pass along this ENI news item: “Growing rich-poor gap is new ‘slavery’, say Protestant leaders.” Globalization and free trade are the causes of a new class of worldwide slavery, say the ecumenical officials. Citing the foundational 2004 Accra Confession, Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, says that “an even more pernicious form of human enslavement is being wrought on millions...

I watched the 2006 film The Prestige (based on the 1995 book of the same name) over the weekend. The film does an excellent job of portraying plex relationship between the two main characters, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). These two men are stage illusionists or magicians (the name of the movie derives from the terms that the author gives the three essential part of any magic trick: the setup (pledge), the performance (turn) and the...

I’m endorsing Mike Huckabee for president over at The Evangelical Ecologist thanks to statements from him like this: There has been a perception that conservative Republicans do not care much for the environment or the protection and preservation of natural resources. I remind people that the very word “conservative” means that we are all about conserving things that are valuable and dear. Few things are more valuable to us than the natural resources that God created and gave to us...