In a new video from Biola University, Dallas Willard explains how “business is a primary arrangement, on God’s part, for people to love one another and serve one another.” (HT) Willard goes on to explain how God does not wait for Christians to use business as a means for serving the needs of the world: If God wasn’t in business it wouldn’t even be there. It has this natural tendency to reach out to the neighbor and the neighbor and...

When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued his diktat against 20-ounce soft drinks earlier this year, the negative public outcry was tremendous. es the Interfaith Council on Corporate Responsibility with proxy shareholder resolutions aimed at PepsiCo, the pany of Pepsi Cola, Tropicana, Quaker Oats, Frito Lay and Gatorade. At issue is PepsiCo’s freely acknowledged use of genetically modified organisms in several of its products. Apparently the ICCR takes umbrage with GMOs and, by extension, PepsiCo’s use thereof. The ICCR...

National Public Radio did a roundup of views on what to expect from Pope Francis on economic issues. Reporter Jim Zarroli interviewed Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg and mentators on the Catholic left. NPR host Audie Cornish introduced Zarroli’s report by observing that the new pope es from Argentina, where poverty and debt have long posed serious challenges. In the past, when thrust into debates about the country’s economic future, Francis had made ments about wealth, inequality and the markets....

(March is Women’s History Month. Acton will be highlighting a number of women who have contributed significantly to the issue of liberty during this month.) What does the Victorian era have to do with contemporary culture and society? Quite a bit, in the mind and work of Gertrude Himmelfarb, an American historian who called her own work “the history of ideas.” Himmelfarb has been criticized for her call to the return of traditional values (like shame, personal responsibility and self-reliance)...

As already discussed, Matthew Lee Anderson’s recent Christianity Today cover story on “radical Christianity” has been making waves. This week at The High Calling, Marcus Goodyear offers a healthy critique of one of Anderson’s key subjects, David Platt, aligning quite closely with Anderson’s analysis about the ultimatechallenges such movements face when es to long-term cultural cultivation. Focusing on Platt’s latest book, Follow Me, Goodyear notes that, despite Platt’s admirable efforts to get Christians “off their seats,” he often “emphasizes the...

Today, career politicians are out of fashion. In light of Washington’s dysfunction and a hyper partisan culture, the words of politicians offer little reassurances. Their deeds even less. One career public servant is finding his popularity on an upswing exactly eighty years after his death. I asked my grandfather, who turns 97 in July, to rank America’s great presidents? He immediately answered Ronald Reagan, almost reflexively. And then paused for a few moments and declared, “That Calvin Coolidge fellow was...

Over 100,000 students in Texas are on the charter school wait list—and with the number of charter schools capped at 215, they have a long wait ahead of them. But state senator Dan Patrick—a self-described “education evangelist”—is attempting to implement a radical educational reform. Patrick is sponsoring two consequential school choice proposals. One would remove the limit on the number of licenses Texas issues to operate charter schools and created a special board to oversee the new charter applications he...

Now available for pre-order on Logos Bible Software: all 15 volumes (30 issues) of the Journal of Markets & Morality and all 14 volumes of Acton’s Christian Social Thought series. More titles, including many from Christian’s Library Press, are ing as well. Logos Bible Software allows students, pastors, and scholars to study the Bible through a vast library of fully indexed resources, including original languages, mentaries, encyclopedias, scholarly articles, lexicons, and more. Now among those resources, the Journal of Markets...

In this week’s Acton Commentary, “Not Quite Alone in the Wilderness,” I examine the intergenerational infrastructure of innovation and civilization through the lens of Richard “Dick” Proenneke, whose efforts to build a cabin in the Alaskan wild, alone and by hand, are recorded in the popular documentary, often featured on PBS. Here’s a clip that gives an extended introduction into the project: As Proenneke says, “I was alone, just me and the animals.” In his recent book Redeeming Economics, John...

Acton’s Director of Research and author of ing Europe, Sam Gregg, will be on TheBlaze TV tonight at 6 p.m. EST. The discussion will focus on the current economic situation in Cyprus, where some officials are saying bank depositors could lose up to 40% of their savings. Gregg’s book focuses on Europe’s entitlement culture, heavy taxation, government-regulated markets and over-bearing bureaucracy. He asks the question, “Is this America’s future?” Is the current situation in Cyprus simply a sign of the...