This article from The Christian Post relates the warnings of Martin Oca༚, professor at the Baptist Seminary of South Peru, about the increasing attraction of prosperity theology in Latin America. According to Oca༚, prosperity theology (PT) teaches that,

Read more on #1 Theological Export: Gospel of Prosperity…

In the hurly-burly of the last few months, I had missed the release of the new critical edition of Dietrich Bonheoffer’s Ethics, the latest in the massive Augsburg Fortress project, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works.

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In a profile of Mike Gerson, an evangelical Christian and chief speechwriter for President Bush, Karl Rove summarized Gerson’s contributions thusly: “You can count on Mike to ask how a given policy will affect the least among us,” Rove said in an interview. “The shorthand, political way to say it is that Mike is the one always wondering how we can achieve liberal goals with conservative means.”

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Why do so many protestors in the anti-globalization movement seem to have such a big appetite for the products of companies such as Nokia, Seiko, Nissan, Volvo, Toshiba, and the like? Maybe it’s because, as Anthony Bradley writes, their paternalistic views about the poor and the developing world blind them to the reality of the global economy.

Read more on Global Goods for the Anti-Globalization Movement…

Here’s a list of the current members of the President’s Council on Bioethics, whose interest area is sure to become more and more important in coming years, courtesy The Thing Is.

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Thorny issues arise when non-profits take government funding, especially when said non-profits have an explicitly Christian (and evangelistic) purpose. Case in point: “The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit yesterday against the Department of Health and Human Services, accusing the Bush administration of spending federal tax dollars on an abstinence education program that promotes Christianity,” aka Silver Ring Thing.

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Rev. Gerald Zandstra, director of programs at the Acton Institute, has taken a leave of absence to enter the race for the U.S. Senate. This AP story quotes Jerry, and sizes up the campaign.

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In a row over the Freedom of Information Act, Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s administration has finally acknowledged expense information first requested by media outlets nearly two years ago. According to the Detroit Free Press, documents were turned over last month, “But in dozens of instances, pages were missing, or information on the city-supplied records was blacked out.”

Read more on Mayorial Mischief…

This story from The Boston Globe (via Arts & Letters Daily) relects on the changing place of tobacco in contemporary American society. The efforts of various municipalities and anti-smoking activists have largely managed to turn the cigarette into a symbol of knavery rather than gentry.

Read more on The Smoking Culture…

Political leaders in Europe who have tied their fortunes to the creation of the new EU superstate are now dismissing the growing sentiment against the metastasizing, power-hungry bureaucracy in Brussels as “whims of changing opinion polls or referendums.” That’s from German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who finds it increasingly difficult to bully his countrymen into the deal. Here’s how a story in Der Spiegel describes the mood of voters:

Read more on Who Wants the EU?…