Rev. Robert Sirico has been invited to participate in The Life and Legacy of Charles W. Colson, a luncheon event at the Evangelical Theological Society’s annual meeting next week. The panel discussion will be held on Thursday, November 15th from 11:45am – 1:15pm in Room 101B in the Frontier Airlines Center in Milwaukee. Dr. John Woodbridge of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School will present “Chuck Colson and Recent Evangelical History.” Dr. Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., President Emeritus of Calvin Theological Society, will speak on “Ecumenical and Kuyperian: The Theological Postures of Chuck Colson’s Life and Work.”

Read more on Rev. Sirico to Participate in Luncheon Honoring Chuck Colson’s Life and Legacy…

Pope sends Obama telegram with prayers that freedom, justice flourish
Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

Pope Benedict XVI congratulated U.S. President Barack Obama on his re-election, saying that he prayed the ideals of freedom and justice that guided America’s founders might continue to flourish.

Read more on PowerLinks – 11.08.12…

Writing for National Review Online, Rev. Robert A. Sirico offers three salient points about last night’s election:

1. Americans give signs of moving in a morally and politically more progressive direction, by which I mean that the appeal to the wisdom of past ages and tradition is simply not as compelling as it once was. People today, not all, but many, seem to want the trappings of the tradition (the white gown at the wedding), but not its obligations (chastity before it), thus indicating they would rather live off the legacy of the past than work to create a new and enduring legacy for the future.

Read more on Rev. Sirico: One Election Cannot Fix What Ails Us…

It is clear that what President Barack Obama has achieved is historic: Being re-elected when not a single one of his major initiatives has enjoyed broad popular support.

What is also clear is that the moral and spiritual demographics of the United States have changed considerably.  If Gov. Mitt Romney, an honorable man of moderate political preferences and conservative personal convictions, cannot attract a winning coalition we are in deep trouble.  His loss illustrates the change that has occurred in the nation and the challenges it portends.  Politics is about addition and Gov. Romney surely tried to run an “additional” campaign and I can think of no Republican who was more likely to accomplish what was necessary for a center-right victory.

Last night’s election illustrates that Americans have become a people more dependent on the government. The country will continue to trend culturally and politically to the left. This means that conservative causes that take their impetus from the truths and moral rationality offered by the Judeo-Christian political  and philosophical tradition will continue to be marginalized, the Church’s liberty restricted, and the cultural, moral, political and spiritual leftism, hedonism,  and materialism, with its attendant anomie and nihilism, will continue the long march through all of our cultural and governmental institutions. Read more on What Happened…

Now that the presidential race of 2012 has ended it is time—whether we are ready for it or not—for the presidential race of 2016 to begin. Since the next election will not include any incumbents, the question of who has the relevant “experience” to be the chief executive will once again become an issue of primary concern.

What has been missing from previous discussions, however, is a plan for helping future presidential candidates acquire the skill-set needed to be the leader of the free world. That is why I’ve decided to design a preparatory course that would help prepare future candidates for the job, one that would (Acton bias alert) promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.

Here’s how it’d work. Candidates for the course would signal their intention to run for the highest office in the land by applying to head of their political party. Once the candidate was accepted, the DNC, RNC, or third party organization, would fully fund the cost of the schooling and pay the “student” a salary equivalent to a second-term Congressional representative. Candidates would be provided with full health and dental benefits as well two weeks vacation per year.

The 105-week curriculum would begin the week before Inauguration Day and end just in time for the student to organize their campaign for the coming primary season.

The course would include the following eight sections:

Read more on Prep School for Potential Presidents…

As a part of our evangelical outreach at Acton, we have commissioned four primers from different evangelical traditions on the intersection of faith, work, and economics. The books will be written from the Baptist, Wesleyan, Pentecostal, and Reformed traditions and will be released throughout this coming year.

Read more on New Baptist Primer: ‘Flourishing Faith’…

Over at Crisis Magazine, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg has an analysis of a recent, and little noticed, article that Pope Benedict XVI published on, among other things, “the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.” Gregg writes:

Read more on Samuel Gregg: Benedict XVI and the Pathologies of Religion…

Christians, Let’s Honor the President
Russell D. Moore

We are going to disagree with the President on some (important) things; there will be other areas where we can work with the President. But whether in agreement or disagreement, we can honor. Honor doesn’t mean blanket endorsement.

Read more on PowerLinks – 11.07.12…

Christian’s Library Press and Acton Institute announce the release of the first English translation of The Christian Family by Herman Bavinck.

When this book was first published in Dutch, marriage and the family were already weathering enormous changes, and that trend has not abated. Yet by God’s power the unchanging essence of marriage and the family remains proof, as Bavinck notes, that God’s “purpose with the human race has not yet been achieved.”

Accessible, thoroughly biblical, and astonishingly relevant, The Christian Family offers a mature and concise handling of the origins of marriage and family life along with the effects of sin on these institutions, an appraisal of historic Christian approaches, and an attempt to apply that theology.

Aptly reminding Christians that “the moral health of society depends on the health of family life,” Bavinck issues an evergreen challenge to God’s people: “Christians may not permit their conduct to be determined by the spirit of the age, but must focus on the requirement of God’s commandment.”

John Bolt, professor of Systematic Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary says this about Bavinck’s The Christian Family:
Read more on First English Translation of Herman Bavinck’s ‘The Christian Family’…

Whether the Republicans cry “fraud” or the Democrats scream “disenfranchised” we can be certain of one thing after the polls close: the President of the United States won’t be elected today. Even if there are no hanging chads or last minute court appeals, the election of the President won’t be made until December 13. That is, after all, the way the Founding Fathers designed the system to work.

Confused? Then it’s probably time for a brief refresher on the Electoral College:

Read more on College Cramming: A Refresher Course on the Electoral College…