Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries from Monday, October 2, 2006

Sirico and Sider on Poverty Tonight

Monday, October 2, 2006

Today’s Grand Rapids Press has an article with some background on tonight’s debate between Ron Sider and Rev. Robert A. Sirico. More details are below. If you live in the West Michigan area or are in town tonight, please stop by.

Wealth and Poverty in Light of the Gospel: How Can Christians Work Together if We Disagree?

Mon -- October 2, 2006
Grand Rapids, MI
Calvin Theological Seminary
Auditorium
7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

Ronald J. Sider, professor of theology and culture at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University in Wynnewood, PA, and Father Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, Grand Rapids, MI, will address and respond to each other on how Christian people can work together even if they have different economic/market theories or convictions. The evening will be moderated by Leanne Van Dyk, vice-president of academic affairs at Western Theological Seminary. Co-sponsored by Western Theological Seminary and the Making Connections Initiative at Calvin Theological Seminary. Free and open to the public. Please join us.

Continuing Education Office
Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and Calvin Theological Seminary
3233 Burton St. SE
Grand Rapids MI 49546
616-957-8733
continuing.education@calvin.edu

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in News and Events at 09:36 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Saturday Morning Fun (still), Sunday Morning Values (not so much)

Monday, October 2, 2006

Michelle Malkin has a report up at HotAir on how God’s been edited out of our favorite cartoon veggies. Mostly a poke at NBC, but apparently Big Idea is running out of big ideas too.

Is it time for a write-in campaign from all you Christian vegetarians out there?

Here’s Big Idea’s explanation for the whole thing:

Recognizing that we are making a difference to Saturday morning TV by bringing programming that is “absent of bad and has a presence of good” to homes across America, would we still prefer to air the un-edited versions of VeggieTales on TV? Absolutely! It’s there where we’re able to share a Bible verse and encourage kids by telling them God made them special and He loves them very much. For now, we’re hoping a new cross section of kids will fall in love with Bob & Larry, go deeper into VeggieTales and eventually fall in love with the God who made them. It’s the same “big idea” we’ve worked on for over 13 years.

Emailing NBC would be fruitless, but you can contact Bid Idea at this email address here and tell them what you think.

I think it’s a mistake, and I’ll tell ya why: We had a yard sale last month that included hundreds of kid videos we’ve collected over the years. The very first to go were all the VeggieTales vids, uncut and full of all that God stuff. There’s no question that people are hungry for the Word, and know it when they see it. Even in a kid’s cartoon.

Ever seen plastic fruit on a dining room table that looked good enough to eat? You can add a plastic Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber to that display now.

UPDATE: Wittenburg Door -“ VEGGIETALES CHOPPED IN NBC JUICE-A-MATIC®” Heh.

Posted by Don Bosch in Environmental Stewardship at 09:28 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Is Democracy a Universal Human Desire?

Monday, October 2, 2006

I am presently reading Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), by Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas E. Ricks. Any one who knows of a critical review of this best-selling book would help me by suggesting where I can find said review. The book is, to my mind at this moment, a powerful and fair-minded critique of much that has gone wrong in our Iraq military adventure. According to Ricks blame for our multiple failures, if we are to assign primary blame, lies with the civilian leadership at the Pentagon. This begins with Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has called most of the shots in this war, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the neo-con genius who has been a principal architect of the philosophical thinking that led us into this conflict.

The question I would like to pose about the philosophy that is behind this war is quite simple. President Bush and his advisors have consistently argued (since 9/11) that democracy is an inherent desire that lies in the heart of people. By this argument the Iraqi people deeply desire to live under some form of democracy and we are there to build a nation that allows this desire to be expressed politically. This argument is based upon several intellectual arguments that have been presented by influential thinkers in and out of this administration.

My question: Is the desire for political freedom a value or an instinct? Bush and his advisors argue that it is an instinct. (And on this basis they are seeking to build a democratic nation in Iraq that will become a beacon of hope to other peoples in the Middle East.) I think the desire for political freedom is clearly a value. And it is a value that took us centuries to develop. We value democracy in the West only because of the influences that have come into our way of thinking through both Christian social thought and Enlightenment insights, neither of which is an influence on Iraq at all. Even in the West it took us a long time to come to our present understanding and commitment to democratic values; e.g., we fought a Civil War to define these values less than a hundred and fifty years ago. I do not see a biblical or philosophical basis for arguing that a desire for democracy is instinctive to the human heart. If this is true then how do you explain the people of God under the Old Covenant? And how do you explain the ancients who settled, except for a limited experiment in Greece, for something less? And what about the Middle Ages? There just seems to be little evidence for this argument thus I think it should be challenged in the court of public debate. This challenge does not constitute a capitulation to the far left. Many social and political conservatives have made it before me.

Let it be noted that I personally believe in democracy. I believe it is the best system of government that we know for a people like ourselves, a people with our values and influences. What I question here is the assumption that it is the right, or best, system for all other people. I also seriously question how a Muslim country can truly understand and embrace democracy. Certainly the democracy that we have already introduced is extremely limited given the religious expressions in the Iraqi Constitution.

John H. Armstrong is founder and director of ACT 3, a ministry aimed at “encouraging the church, through its leadership, to pursue doctrinal and ethical reformation and to foster spiritual awakening.”

Posted by John H. Armstrong in Public Policy at 09:12 | Comments (3) | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
democracy, george w. bush, government, instincts, iraq, values, war

Do You See More than Just a 'Carbon Footprint'?

Monday, October 2, 2006

Call it something like an anthropological Rorschach test. What do you see when you look at the picture above? Do you see more than just a ’carbon footprint’?

It’s a fair question to ask, I think, of those who are a part of the radical environmentalist/population control political lobby. It’s also a note of caution to fellow Christians who want to build bridges with those folks...there is a complex of interrelated policies that are logically consistent once you assume the tenets of secular environmentalism.

Some worldviews just aren’t compatible with others.

Rev. Richard Cizik, the point-man on environmental policy for the National Association of Evangelicals, said in a speech earlier this year to the World Bank:

I’d like to take on the population issue, but in my community global warming is the third rail issue. I’ve touched the third rail . . . but still have a job. And I’ll still have a job after my talk here today. But population is a much more dangerous issue to touch. . . We need to confront population control and we can -- we’re not Roman Catholics after all -- but it’s too hot to handle now.

Just how much has secularist misanthropy already infiltrated our thinking?

For more on the connection between the climate change lobby and population control, see the newly released joint paper from the Acton Institute and the Institute on Religion & Democracy, “From Climate Control to Population Control: Troubling Background on the ‘Evangelical Climate Initiative’” (PDF here).

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 08:24 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
abortion, carbon footprint, climate change, environment, environmentalistm, global warming, misanthropy, national association of evangelicals, population control, richard cizik, stewardship.secularism