There’s a story that I heard, of a miner, a family down in– it was in the Appalachia area and the church there really thought that they were doing a great deal because they would go in, they said they would pick the poorest families and they would take them Christmas gifts and turkeys and that sort of thing. So they did. They went to this family and they presented them with all the gifts and gave them to them and all the children had gifts; they had a hot meal on the table. The church was so pleased with what they had done, and then they left. And the husband just broke down and cried because he said, “You mean in this community, we are thought of as the poorest family in the community?” The shame that came with that, with the charity that had been given so lovingly out of the best of intentions, but it absolutely shamed him and it destroyed his life. I heard it from his son. He said, “It destroyed my father because he said he was so shamed in front of the rest of the community because they didn’t think that he was a person of worth that they had to take care of his family for him.”

C. Neal Johnson, from an Interview Oct. 8 at a Partners Worldwide Conference in Grand Rapids.

Read more on Neal Johnson: When Charity Shames…

There were a few stories from the Grand Rapids Press over the weekend that form data points pointing toward some depressing trends: a decline in charitable giving (especially to churches), supplanting of private charity by government welfare, and the attempt to suppress explicit Christian identity.

Read more on The Subversion of Charity and Christian Identity…

Take at look at Jonathan Last’s very good piece in the Weekly Standard about the real population problem that is confronting the world–people aren’t having enough babies. In America’s One Child Policy, Last explains how fertility throughout the entire world is declining and what the impact will be on society and the economy.

Read more on The Real Population Problem–Not Enough Babies…

Here is a link to a good summary of McKinsey’s report on business and Africa that can be found at Acton’s good friend Andreas Widmer’s blog Faith and Prosperity.

Andreas is a former Swiss Guard turned high-tech entrepreneur who is now focusing on promoting enterprise solutions to poverty throughout the developing world. He and his colleagues Michael Fairbanks et al. run the Pioneers of Prosperity Awards in different regions throughout the world. I have had the opportunity of attending two of them–one in Rwanda for Africa and one in Jamaica for the Carribean.

Read more on Faith and Prosperity…

Last week several colleagues and I had the opportunity to attend Partners Worldwide conference: Marketplace Revolution: Fighting Global Poverty through Business. Acton was delighted to be one of the sponsors of the event

Read more on Marketplace Revolution…

An interesting call for papers from H-Net, “Almshouses in Europe from the late Middle Ages to the Present – Comparisons and Peculiarities”:

Within the field of poor relief and welfare, research interests have recently shifted towards the history of private charity and charitable foundations. Among these institutions, which contributed to the early modern and modern mixed economy of welfare, the almshouse played an important role as a particular form of social housing. Almshouses originated in the Middle Ages and many of them still exist. They offered elderly people at risk of impoverishment cheap or free accommodation, often alongside clothing, food, fuel and money – the actual alms. Many were founded by private benefactors. Almshouses usually consisted of a limited number of small apartments for one or two persons. Unlike other welfare institutions in early modern Europe (hospitals, orphanages etc.) almshouse apartments allowed their occupants to run an autonomous household under respectable living conditions and considerable privacy.

Read more on Almshouses in Europe from the Late Middle Ages to the Present…

A few weeks ago we noted a study on the better quality and efficiency of care provided by religious, and specifically Christian, hospitals.

Now today comes a report that “doctors who hold religious beliefs are far less likely to allow a patient to die than those who have no faith” (HT: Kruse Kronicle). These results are only surprising for those who think religion is a form of escapism from the troubles of this world.

Read more on The Superiority of Christian Doctors…

Thomson Reuters has issued a new report that shows church-run hospitals provide better quality care more efficiently than other secular hospitals.

Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs at Thomson Reuters, says, “Our data suggest that the leadership of health systems owned by churches may be the most active in aligning quality goals and monitoring achievement of mission across the system.”

It is certainly true that Christian engagement of issues surrounding health care are essential for renewing our system of care. Dr. Donald P. Condit makes this case in his book, A Prescription for Health Care Reform.

If the report accurately reflects the superiority of religious hospitals as opposed to “secular” counterparts, we might speculate a bit at the reasons behind this. It may well be due, in part at least, to the comprehensive view of the human person informed by a religious, and specifically Christian, anthropology.

That is, we are not simply physical beings, but exist with both material and spiritual aspects, body and soul.

Here’s a link to the study in PDF.

Below the break is the story from ENI/RNS.
Read more on The Superiority of Christian Hospitals…

Krista Tippett

Krista Tippett is the host of the radio program Speaking of Faith, broadcast weekly on NPR since 2003. In her conversations with people of all faiths and occupations, Christian and Hindu, novelist and physicist, Tippett aims to better understand the way that belief and spirituality affect our society, worldview, and personal well-being.

In the two books she has published in the last few years, certain themes stand out that define her own view of religion and its place in human life. In particular, Tippett understands that the positive impact that spiritual traditions have on the world rests on their ability to transform the heart and the way we live in relation to one another:

The context of most religious virtue is relationship–practical love in families and communities… These qualities of religion should enlarge, not narrow, our public conversation about all of the important issues before us. They should reframe it. (Speaking of Faith, 3)

Throughout her two books, Speaking of Faith and Einstein’s God, Tippett discusses faith from a perspective shared by the Acton Institute: Human suffering cannot be eliminated through government programs or by reforming political or economic structure. But our spiritual traditions can address complex problems on their deepest level. The religious sensibility inspires virtue, and, even in the midst of great suffering, it can instill hope through an insistence on human dignity and potential. Read more on Krista Tippett: Effective Compassion through Faith…

I mentioned Lester DeKoster’s little classic, Work: The Meaning of Your Life—A Christian Perspective, in the context of the Lutheran World Federation’s General Assembly and the theme, “Give us today our daily bread.”

Read more on DeKoster on Work and Food…