Peter Cook (center) with fellowship recipients Bo Helmlich (right) and Adam Co at Acton’s 1999 Annual Dinner.

In the main hallway of the Acton Institute hangs a large plaque. The plaque carries the names of the most exceptional students to grace Acton’s Toward a Free and Virtuous Society conferences from 1994 forward. These students, named as Cook Fellows for their outstanding promise and engaged participation, share a connection to the great businessman and philanthropist, Peter Cook. Over the 20 years of the Acton Institute, Mr. Cook sponsored more than 200 students to attend Acton programs, equipping them to articulate and defend the value of a free and virtuous society.

Read more on Peter Cook: A Champion of the Free and Virtuous Society…

Today a group of Calvin Seminary students enjoyed a lunchtime talk by Dr. John H. Armstrong, founder of ACT 3 and adjunct professor of evangelism at Wheaton College, “Missional-Ecumenism: The Protestant Challenge and Opportunity.” Dr. Armstrong spoke about his book, Your Church is Too Small: Why Unity in Christ’s Mission Is Vital to the Future of the Church, where he lays out his vision for missional-ecumenism. Rather than emphasizing the institutional and international focus of the older mainline ecumenical movement, Dr. Armstrong’s vision is focused on local and practical work that Christians of all stripes can do together. It is what happens when ecumenism meets subsidiarity.

The Acton Institute co-sponsored the luncheon along with ACT 3, and it was a pleasure to hear Dr. Armstrong’s story and about his engagement with Christians from a variety of different denominational and confessional traditions. One of the important points he made was the formative influence that Roman Catholic Social Teaching has had on his ethical thinking as a Protestant. He pointed especially to Rerum Novarum and the subsequent social encyclicals as important sources for Protestant dialogue and engagement.

Dr. Armstrong will be teaching the course on Introduction to Protestant Social Thought at Acton University 2011, and he will also be speaking at another local event here in Grand Rapids later this week. On Wednesday evening, Dr. Armstrong will discuss “Ecumenism and the Threat of Ideology.” Join us if you are able for a night of fun, fellowship, and discussion.

Dr. Armstrong blogs here and you can follow him on Twitter here.

Read more on When Ecumenism Meets Subsidiarity…

Text of proclamation:

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the everwatchful providence of almighty God.

Read more on Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation…

On Nov. 18, at the General Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Atlanta, Gene Edward Veith of Patrick Henry College gave a lecture titled, “Vocation: The Doctrine of Christian Life.” In the lecture, he explains why theological educators can’t fulfill their own vocation until they recover the vocations of those around them. The lecture was sponsored by the Oikonomia Network, a project of the Kern Family Foundation, dedicated to integrating discipleship with everyday life by developing a biblical perspective on work and economics. The event was hosted by Greg Forster, the Foundation’s program director for American history, economics and religion.

Read more on Vocation: The Doctrine of the Christian Life…

This week’s Acton Commentary. Sign up for our free, weekly email newsletter here.

Europe, Immigration, and Merkel’s Christian Values

By Samuel Gregg

It’s not often senior European political leaders make politically-incorrect statements, but Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has recently made a habit of it. The subject has been the touchy question of Muslim immigration and the challenges it poses for European identity. Not only has Merkel upset the European political class (especially the Left and the Greens) by saying what everyone knows—that multiculturalism has “utterly failed”—but she also argued that the issue was not “too much Islam” but “too little Christianity.”

Read more on Europe, Immigration, and Merkel’s Christian Values…

Kevin J. Jones of the Catholic News Agency interviewed Acton’s Rev. Robert A. Sirico and Dr. Steven Schneck, Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America, to find out how the Tea Party lines up with Catholic Social Teaching. Here’s a snip:

Read more on Catholic Social Teaching and the Tea Party Movement…

A number of Acton staffers, including myself, had the pleasure of attending the 2010 meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society held in Atlanta, Georgia. There will be more on some of the goings-on at this event to come, but to get a sense of what our presence was like in the exhibition space, check out the pictures below. Kudos especially to Kara Eagle who did a great job with design (assisted by Melissa Burkholder) and execution of our exhibit space.

We had a great time meeting new people and reconnecting with old friends. This is an audience that Acton is committed to engaging in the long-term.



Last week we also launched the schedule for Acton University 2011, and we had a station (in use the above picture) for ETS attendees to register on-site.



We enjoyed a lot of foot traffic during the conference, and had the opportunity to introduce ourselves and our work to many people who either hadn’t heard of Acton or were not really very familiar with us.


We also had time, however, to deepen relationships with friends and discuss weighty matters related to stewardship, natural law, virtue, ethics, economics, and the Christian faith. We look forward to seeing you next year if you attend the ETS meeting in San Francisco.

Read more on Acton at ETS 2010…

The University of Maryland — Baltimore County Orthodox Christian Fellowship and the school’s Secular Student Alliance sponsored a Nov. 16 debate on the subject of “The Source of Human Morality” with about 450 people in attendance. Fr. Hans Jacobse, an Orthodox Christian priest and president of the American Orthodox Institute (he blogs here), squared off with Matt Dillahunty, the president of the Atheist Community of Austin, and host of the public access television and Internet show The Atheist Experience. The debate’s organizer noted that Dillahunty “was raised as a fundamentalist Baptist, and was on track to become a minister until he started asking questions about the reasons for his belief. He rejected religion, and now serves as a public voice for rationality and secular morality.”

Read more on Debate: The Source of Human Morality…

Today is my last day at the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) meeting in Atlanta. I plan to make my purchases from the various book sellers this morning, having already reconnoitered the exhibits and mapped out my plan of attack.

One thing that has struck me is that there are a number of new books discussing ecumenism and Christian unity from host of different perspectives. On the one hand this shouldn’t be surprising. The unity of the church is a constant theme, one that is confessed in the Nicene Creed (“We believe…in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.”).

But for a period of time it seemed that ecumenism was in decline. After all, it used to be its own area of theological specialization; there have been (and still are some) professors of ecumenics. On the broader level one thing that breathed life into the ecumenical movement in the last half-century was the founding of what is now known as the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (I had the pleasure of meeting the pope’s representative, Fr. Gregory Fairbanks, at the WCRC Uniting General Council earlier this year in Grand Rapids).

An ENI story notes a recent address from Pope Benedict XVI regarding ecumenism: “Today, some people believe that this journey has lost its impetus, especially in the West,” the Vatican Information Service quoted Pope Benedict XVI as saying. “Thus do we see the urgent need to revive ecumenical interest and give a fresh incisiveness to dialogue.”

Now this story is in the context of Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican dialogue. But “new energy” needs to be found in the mainline ecumenical movement as well. I outline some of the reasons for the decline of groups like the WCC, LWF, and WCRC in my book, Ecumenical Babel. And as the Vatican celebrates fifty years of institutional ecumenical efforts, we have seen a corresponding decline in vigor in the mainline Protestant groups. Some evidence of this is the consistent outreach and emphasis on engaging “evangelicals” from the WCC, whose new president expressed such sentiments at both the WCRC Uniting General Council and the recently concluded Cape Town 2010 meeting of the Lausanne Movement.

So says Mark Tooley of IRD. “Sadly, over the last 50 years, it (the ecumenical movement) has faded into the sidelines and is now largely ignored,” he said. In the 1980s Ernest Lefever, founder of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, observed that “the ecumenical movement’s social witness has become obsolescent, marginal, irrelevant, or worse.”

I outline some of the things needed to reinvigorate the mainline ecumenical movement in my book. I outline correctives on three main levels: the ecclesiastical, the social ethical, and the economic. But I conclude too that

Without pursuing correctives along these general lines, the answer to Gustafson’s challenging question, “Who listens to the moral teachings of Protestant churches?” will continue to be indeterminate, and deservedly so. Without doing the hard work of serious ethical deliberation that engages a variety of conflicting perspectives, the ecumenical movement has little claim to possess authentic moral authority in the public square or among the churches.

After the break you can read the full ENI story on the fiftieth anniversary of the Vatican secretariat (now council) for promoting Christian unity. Read more on The Ecumenical Future…

Joseph Epstein’s essay, “T.S. Eliot and the Demise of the Literary Culture,” in the November issue of Commentary, strengthens the case for The Waste Land author’s enduring legacy. Epstein captures the high points of Eliot’s biographical and literary accomplishments in only eight pages – an admirable feat given the extent of Eliot’s influence on the past century. After filling out the checklist of Eliot’s early poetry, friendships, jobs, marriages, alleged anti-Semitism, and criticism by rote, Epstein concludes Eliot was a tremendous poet and literary critic more than likely destined to be forgotten due to the imminent collapse of Western culture.

One cannot help but agree with Epstein’s assessment of Eliot as an erudite writer and speaker who could fill a hall with 15,000 attendees – in Minnesota, no less – eager to hear the Nobel laureate speak on literature. Epstein notes it is doubtful any writer living today could match Eliot’s drawing power for a live audience. But the Internet and television render such expectations moot. For example, I don’t have counts on how many people visit Web sites devoted to Seamus Heaney, another Nobel laureate poet, but one can easily imagine a number such as 15,000 boosted a hundred-fold.

Likewise, I respectfully reject Epstein’s too-easy assessment of Eliot as the last of a dying breed and the end of culture. While admitting many of Epstein’s concerns about the present and future cultural climate, your writer is not quite ready to throw in the towel. Call me stubborn, foolish or naïve. But I witness culture thriving on a daily basis, from the glorious Gilead by Marilynne Robinson to the agrarian short stories, novels and poetry of Wendell Berry.

Let readers recall as well Eliot knew that our literary tradition evolved, subsuming all that was best from preceding generations as well as what was once considered avant-garde. It’s easy to dismiss contemporary culture simply because there’s so much Cracker Jack to riffle through before finding the prize.

Depicting Eliot as nothing more than a literary high-brow, in any event, misses the totality of a fascinating individual who boasted of his correspondence with Julius Henry Marx – the inimitable middle sibling Groucho of the Marx Brothers and You Bet Your Life television legend – and a English Music Hall regular who would have been more than likely pleased by the success of the Broadway musical Cats based on Eliot’s children’s book, Ol’ Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Read more on Secular Waste Lands and Hollow Men…