Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Effective Compassion

October 11, 2006

Food Force Goes Global

Via International Civic Engagement: Already available in English, Japanese, Italian and Polish, the game will now be accessible in French, Hungarian and Chinese by the end of next week, vastly increasing the forum for the UN World Food Programme’s (WFP) ‘Food Force’ www.food-force.com Continue Reading...
September 22, 2006

Tithe and Tithe Again

In a way, the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford recognizes a fact that Ron Sider has written on and I have thought about for a long time. In “A New Take on Tithing,” Claude Rosenberg & Tim Stone write: Too often, individuals make decisions about how much money to donate to charitable causes on an ad hoc basis. Continue Reading...
September 14, 2006

In Defense of Compassionate Conservatism

In his Townhall.com column, which also appears over at Human Events Online, Acton senior fellow Marvin Olasky mentions the work of the Acton Institute’s Samaritan Award in defense of “compassionate conservatism”: Those who think compassionate conservatism is dead should come to Samaritan Award programs in Richmond or Fairfield, California; Memphis, Nashville or Knoxville, Tennessee; Camden, N.J., Continue Reading...
September 08, 2006

Subsidiarity Inverted

Jeff Mirus of CatholicCulture.org flogs an address by Capuchin friar and dean of theology at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, Father David Couturier. I share Mirus’s assessment that “one is at times unsure exactly what Fr. Continue Reading...
September 07, 2006

Ex Ante vs. Ex Post Government Action

I haven’t started Marvin Olasky’s new book yet, but here’s a bit from the abstract of a new NBER paper, “Rules Rather Than Discretion: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina,” by Howard Kunreuther and Mark Pauly. Continue Reading...
August 23, 2006

Welfare Reform is Working

Anthony Bradley, a research fellow for the Acton Institute, looks back on the effects of the welfare reform of 1996. Many people criticized this legislation as it was being passed and predicted that the result would be increased poverty. Continue Reading...
August 23, 2006

Can Rick Warren Save the World?

Fox News broadcast a one hour special the other day titled: “The Purpose Driven Life: Can Rick Warren Save the World?” Accidentally, while channel surfing from the Red Sox vs. Yankees baseball game on ESPN to various news channels, I got in on the opening segment of the Warren special and was hooked for the whole. Continue Reading...
August 11, 2006

Local Help on the Street

We’re working through the meaning of the tenth anniversary of welfare reform, debating important ‘next phase’ issues like marriage and fatherhood and what those mean to helping people leave poverty…permanently. That debate about government’s appropriate role in addressing social need is important. Continue Reading...