A few days ago, a documentary entitled: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a portion of which is devoted to depicting the situation of violence against women in Sierra Leone, aired on Public Broadcasting Station (PBS). Not portrayed in the documentary, but also a factor that puts women in the country at a disadvantage is little or no right to private property. An INRN article states, “…the vast majority of women in Sierra Leone live under...

Speaking at a conference at Bethel College, Acton’s Director of Media, Michael Miller, told the audience that while good intentions are necessary in the fight against poverty, they simply aren’t enough. Miller spoke directly on the topic of foreign aid to developing nations: Western countries providing financial aid to developing nations seems to make sense, but there is no correlation between the extent of aid and economic progress in those countries, Miller said. Much of the aid goes to foreign...

Dr. Pamela Casson, a pediatrician in Colorado Springs, knows what it means literally to be “On Call.” This week she shares with us in this video interview with Jon Hirst how she sees God working through her in her work with families, children and the world around her. Thank you Pamela for giving us an inside look at how you see your work as blessing the world. ...

You might get goose bumps watching this fiery speech by Fr. Andrew Kemberling. After all, it is not every day we hear a wholesale condemnation socialism from a priest on the “pulpit” of a conservative political rally! This vociferous pastor from St. Thomas More parish in Centennial, Colo., delivered an impassioned address last May. It may be old news, but the video has gained enormous popularity and even gone viral (over 1.3 million views) just one month before the U.S....

“Most of us enjoy an economy where we can purchase with ease the things we need and enjoy. However, there is no moral justification for mercialization of some things; human beings are not products to be bought and sold,”writes Elise Hiltonin the latest Acton Commentary (published October 3).The full text of his essay follows. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publicationshere. Obama Administration Leaves Human Trafficking Victims Out in the Cold By Elise Hilton Imagine...

In a model of Orwellian doublespeak, the New York Times published an editorial yesterday defending the ridiculous decision by U.S. District Judge Carol E. Jackson to dismiss the lawsuit filed earlier this year by Frank O’Brien and his O’Brien Industrial Holdings LLC. O’Brien had challenged the requirement that businesses offer employees contraception coverage through health care insurance, claiming it unconstitutionally violated his religious beliefs and the Catholic philosophy he applied in running his business. Not so, say the NYT editors,...

Jordan Ballor’s paper, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Two Kingdoms, and Protestant Social Thought Today,” just made the Social Science Research Network’s current Top Ten download list for Philosophy of Religion eJournal. From the abstract: Last century’s Protestant consensus on the rejection of natural law has been quested in recent decades, but Protestant social thought still has much work to do in order to articulate a coherent and cogent witness to contemporary realities. The doctrine of the two kingdoms has been put...

The audio book version of Rev. Sirico’s Defending the Free Market has just been released, and is available at Amazon. If you haven’t bought book yet (or even if you have) you’ll want to download a copy today. ...

One line from last night’s debate leapt out at me. It wasn’t a stumble amidst the cut and thrust of open debate. It was during President Obama’s closing statement—400 words that I’m guessing he and his staff crafted with painstaking care. About half way through his summation, the president gave his vision of government in a nutshell. He said that “everything that I’ve tried to do, and everything that I’m now proposing for the next four years,” was “designed to...

Call for Papers: “Economics, Christianity & The Crisis: Towards a New Architectonic Critique” The 2008 credit crisis is not only a crisis in economics, but also a crisis in the basic concepts and assumptions that underlie our thinking about economics, economics as a science. Critical analyses are called for of both economic practices and economic theory. New concepts and paradigms are needed. The first Kuyper Seminar Amsterdam aims at exploring what resources the Christian tradition has to offer for developing...