Anthony Bradley offers a rave review of the new book published by Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin Poussaint of Harvard Medical School, Come On People: On The Path From Victims to Victors. “Cosby and Poussaint remind us that black America’s hope for escape from abysmal self-destruction is moral formation — not government programs or blaming white people,” Bradley writes.

Read more on Bill Cosby Is Right, Again…

Costa Rica’s voters ratified the Central American Free Trade Agreement, a sign of hope against a rising tide of populist, anti-trade sentiment in Latin America — and the United States. “In short, this is not the time for Latin America to abandon free trade agendas,” Gregg says.

Read more on Free Trade: Latin America’s Last Hope?…

The following items appear in the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, October 24, 2007:

Cornwall’s Beisner and Care of Creation’s Brown Speak at Proclamation PCA

The Cornwall Alliance’s Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and Care of Creation’s Rev. Ed Brown spoke as a panel on creation stewardship at Proclamation Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Sunday evening, October 14. Rev. Brown focused on theological foundations for creation stewardship. Dr. Beisner expressed wide agreement with those and then focused on the scientific and economic evidence that recent and foreseeable global warming are largely natural, cyclical, and not catastrophic, and that it is better stewardship to prepare to adapt to future warming or cooling than to try to prevent future warming. Audio recordings of the talks may be heard at http://www.proclamation.org/audio/ by clicking on the links to the three creation panel presentations. Read more on Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up…

Related to Sam Gregg’s Acton Commentary today, “Free Trade: Latin America’s Last Hope?” I pass along this ENI news item: “Growing rich-poor gap is new ‘slavery’, say Protestant leaders.”

Globalization and free trade are the causes of a new class of worldwide slavery, say the ecumenical officials. Citing the foundational 2004 Accra Confession, Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, says that “an even more pernicious form of human enslavement is being wrought on millions through the process of neoliberal globalisation that is driving a dramatic and growing wedge between the rich and the poor.”

Read more on WARC: Globalization is ‘Pernicious Form of Human Enslavement”…

I watched the 2006 film The Prestige (based on the 1995 book of the same name) over the weekend. The film does an excellent job of portraying the complex relationship between the two main characters, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale).

Read more on Biotechnology, Morality, and Human Dignity…

French president Nicholas Sarkozy has recommended the formation of a “Council of the Wise,” which would have the task of “elaborating proposals for the future development of Europe.” A recent survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation finds a lot of support for the idea in France, the UK, and Germany. I suppose there are various ways to read this. One, hinted at by the survey story linked above, is that people in the EU are uneasy about the direction Europe is moving and want to establish a counterweight to the politicians in Brussels. More likely, it seems to me, is that this would be one more bureaucratic agency–only this one not actually doing any of the work of government but instead churning out grandiose projects that would gobble up even more of the continent’s tax dollars. All of which leaves aside the at once frightening and amusing title of the group, which calls to mind something out of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Read more on Gandalf in Brussels?…

Francis Asbury was so well-known in early America that letters addressed to “Bishop Asbury, United States of America” were delivered to him. During his life, Methodist Bishop Asbury (1745-1816) is said to have preached well over 16,000 sermons and traveled nearly 300,000 miles on horseback alone. The explosion of Methodism in the United States after the American Revolution, and during the Second Great Awakening is well documented in the history of the church. When Asbury arrived in the colonies, Methodists numbered at most a few thousand, but most likely were fewer than that. By the time of Asbury’s death, the Methodist Episcopal Church was the largest denomination in the U.S. with more than 200,000 members.

Read more on Francis Asbury & The Rise of American Methodism…

I’m preparing to travel to Minneapolis later this week to present a paper at the annual conference of the Sixteenth Century Society, which is a major academic society focusing on the study of the early modern period.

I’ll attempt to blog from the conference as I have opportunity and there is information of relevant interest to the PowerBlog audience. Posted after the jump is my tentative schedule, including which sessions I’ll be attending (full conference program is in PDF form here). These reflect my own scholarly interests as well as those that mesh with the focus of the Acton Institute and the Journal of Markets & Morality. My paper will be presented in the last group of sessions late Sunday morning, and is titled, “Wolfgang Musculus and the General Covenant.”

Musculus was a second generation Protestant reformer and a contemporary of John Calvin. His doctrine of the covenant is related to later developments of covenantal theology (which has important implications for political and moral thought in the post-Reformation period). Read more on Sixteenth Century Society 2007…

In my three and a half years as a student at Asbury Theological Seminary, I encountered more anti-capitalist rhetoric than I may have experienced in my entire life up to that point. Before Asbury, I attended a state and secular university, Ole Miss, where socialist propaganda was largely out of fashion.

Read more on The Religious Left and Class Warfare…

Kishore Jayabalan, the Director of Acton’s Rome office, took to the airwaves this morning on Relevant Radio’s Morning Air program to discuss recent media speculation about Pope Benedict XVI’s statements on the moral responsibility of Catholics to care for creation. Does this make Benedict “green”? Or is this simply a continuation of long-standing Vatican policy dating to the pontificate of John Paul II and prior?

Read more on Is Benedict XVI “The Green Pope”?…