In preparing for an Acton University lecture last week on Christianity and Government (you can listen to it here)[Audio clip: view full post to listen] I was reflecting on some of the core differences between a Christian vision of government in comparison to modern, secular visions.

Read more on Government and the Good Life…

In the most recent edition of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Acton’s Research Director Samuel Gregg has an article in which he argues that the ongoing financial and economic crisis has raised serious questions about the credibility and usefulness of much mainstream contemporary economics. Drawing partly on his recent book, Wilhelm Röpke’s Political Economy (2010), Gregg suggests that much mainstream economics after Keynes became gradually dominated by a fixation upon econometrics that has threatened at times to reduce economics to a poor cousin of mathematics. As Gregg writes:

Read more on Adam Smith versus John Maynard Keynes…

Last week’s Acton Commentary, “Unity or Unanimity at Reformed Council?” was picked up by a number of news outlets, including the Detroit News and the Holland Sentinel. The latter paper published a response to the piece by Jeffrey Japinga, “Intersection of economics and faith is valid subject for church council.”

Read more on Confessing the Wrong Side…

We’ve posted a dozen or so AU 2010 lectures in our online store and expect to be putting up many more in the days ahead. They’re priced at $1.99 and transactions are through a secure server at the Acton Institute Digital Downloads page. Check back often. Here’s what available now:

Read more on Acton University Lectures Available Online…

At Public Discourse, Acton’s Research Director Samuel Gregg examines why many European governments are so hesitant to engage in much needed but painful economic reforms – especially reforms that involve diminishing the size of expansive welfare states. The causes are many, but in “Fatal Attraction: Democracy and the Welfare State,” Gregg zeroes in on a potentially damaging linkage between democratic systems of government and the growth of large welfare states that seek to provide economic security to ever increasing numbers of people. Substantive economic reform becomes extremely difficulty in these circumstances. Gregg writes:

Read more on Fatal Attraction: Democracy and the Welfare State…

Because of the crush of Acton University blogging activity, I’ll be posting mostly links today. Watch for a wrap up in the days ahead.

Also, Jordan Ballor’s fine Acton Commentary “Unity or Unanimity at Reformed Council?” was published yesterday in the Detroit News under the headline “Ballor: Church activists shouldn’t adopt separation as doctrine.”

Read more on Blogging AU (cont.)…

More great coverage of Acton University. Also check out our Flickr and Twitter (hashtag: #ActonU) feeds in the sidebar.

– Carl Sanders, chair of Bible and Theology, at Washington Bible College/Capital Bible Seminary in Lanham, Md., has posts up at Insomniac Memos and 100 Days, 100 Books: A Reader’s Journal. He reviews the foundational lectures:

Read more on Blogging Acton U…

Ryan T. Anderson, editor of Public Discourse, weighs in on BP’s blowout in the Gulf of Mexico:

What we’re seeing is an animus directed toward modern technology and industry, an unmodulated suspicion of the private sector’s motives, an unexamined belief that markets have failed, all coupled with an uncritical (and nearly unthinking) faith that, in the final analysis, only government and extensive regulation will save us from ourselves and protect Mother Nature.

Read more on BP and the Big Spill…

This week’s Acton Commentary from Jordan Ballor:

Unity or Unanimity at Reformed Council?

By Jordan Ballor

Global Christianity comes to Grand Rapids, Mich., this weekend in the form of the Uniting General Council of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC). Thousands of delegates, exhibitors, and volunteers will gather on the campus of Calvin College to mark the union of two Reformed ecumenical groups, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and the Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC). This new global ecumenical body will include 227 denominations in 108 nations worldwide, with over 80 million Christians of broadly Reformed, Congregational, and Presbyterian membership.

Read more on Acton Commentary: Unity or Unanimity at Reformed Council?…

Acton University 2010 is underway. This year, 450 students and faculty from 55 countries are gathered in Grand Rapids for a deep dive into the “free and virtuous society.” Attendees this year include seminarians and college students — groups that have studied at Acton conferences for two decades now — but also presidents of colleges, corporate executives, Christian missionaries, entrepreneurs, physicians, lawyers, business leaders, retired people and a few high school students.

Read more on Acton University: Day One…