Warden Burl Cain (photo by Erin Oswalt)

In the next issue of Religion & Liberty, we are featuring an interview with Warden Burl Cain of the Louisiana State Penitentiary. In September of 2012, I made a trip down to Angola, La. to tour the prison and interview the warden. I authored a commentary in October that touched on some of my experiences visiting the inmates and prison staff.

Cain is the longest serving warden in the history of the penitentiary, a position he has held since 1995. The prison is more commonly known as “Angola.” Cain is the most well known prison official in the country. He is the subject of the book Cain’s Redemption and has been featured in documentaries and numerous television programs.

Cain is well known for his work as reformer of prison culture and his promotion of moral rehabilitation. He serves on the board of Prison Fellowship, a ministry founded by Chuck Colson. Below is an excerpt from the forthcoming interview:
Read more on Preview: R&L Interviews Angola Warden Burl Cain…

What is the role of the marketplace in the Kingdom of God and in the redemptive process of God’s mission? Join David Doty, Founder and Executive Director of Eden’s Bridge, for an AU Online lecture series to discuss those questions. The Building a Marketplace Theology course is scheduled to begin Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 6:00pm EST.

Read more on New on AU Online: Marketplace Theology…

Julius Medenblik, the president of Calvin Theological Seminary, passes along an anecdote from Michael Lewis’ new book, Boomerang: Travels in the New World.

Read the whole selection for the entire context. It is worth it.

Read more on Changing the Culture of a City…

In an effort to foster goodwill amid fiscal cliff negotiations, Starbucks aimed to send a message to Congress by instructing its D.C.-area employees to write “Come Together” on every cup of coffee sold.

Critiques abound, with this post from Mickey Kaus grabbing much of the attention, asking, “Is Starbucks a cult?”

From Kaus:

“Room for smarm in your latte?”Isn’t there something creepy about Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz having [in Politico's words] “asked his Washington-area employees to write ‘Come Together’ on each customer cup today, tomorrow and Friday, as a gesture to urge leaders to resolve the fiscal cliff”? Did Schultz take a poll of his employees–sorry, “partners,” he calls them–before ordering pressuring asking them to join in this lobbying effort? What if he were, say, the CEO of Chick-fil-A and he “asked” his “partners” to write “Preserve the Family” on the outside of cups and containers?

…if you go to work for a HuffPo outfit like AOL or Patch, that’s the sort of thing you’d expect. But Starbucks?  Maybe Schultz’s baristas came for the (admirable) health benefits, not because they wanted to join him in some mushy Tom Brokawish corporate budget crusade.

Over at the Hang Together blog, Greg Forster says not so fast, arguing that although many businesses “don’t currently do a good job of stewarding their cultural role,” it’s largely because “we’ve spent more than half a century trying to teach businesses to pretend they’re not moral and cultural.”

For Forster, we should “set businesses free to be culture makers,” not tie them down. As cheesy, ineffective, or “creepy” as the Starbucks campaign may be (it’s all of the above, in my opinion), only when we’re comfortable with the inherent cultural purpose of business will we be able to “re-humanize” companies accordingly. Read more on In Defense of Starbucks: Setting Businesses Free to Be Culture Makers…

Should government coerce charity?
Joel J. Miller, Patheos

When it comes to the question of social justice, there is more at play than the needs of the poor. Charity requires not only a recipient but also a giver, and that increases the issue’s moral complexity.

Protecting the Poor
St. Basil the Great, Preachers Institute

Read more on PowerLinks – 01.03.13…

The BBC News reports that 1 out of 10 young people between the ages of 16 and 25 are struggling to cope with life. The main culprit: despair related to unemployment. The survey of 2,000 teens and young adults was conducted by The Prince’s Trust Youth Index.

The survey commentators seem surprised that education and training opportunities alone are not enough to provide hope for unemployed young people. Young people rightly want to know why they are training for jobs that do not exist. This has been particularly difficult for Northern Ireland where 20% of 18 to 24-year-olds cannot find employment. From the BBC:
Read more on Unemployment and Despair in the UK…

Note: This is the second in a series on developing a Christian mind in business school. You can find the intro and links to all previous posts here.

Before we move on to how to think Christianly in business school, we should first discuss how to think Christianly about the decision to go (or not go) to b-school.

For many Christians—particularly my fellow evangelicals—the concept of thinking Christianly about decision-making is reduced to a simply-stated yet deeply confused question: “Does God have a specific plan for my life?”

The answers is yes—and no. Yes, God has a specific plan for our lives. But no, God doesn’t expect us to discern his secret, hidden-from-us will before we make a decision about the direction of our life. As pastor and theologian Kevin DeYoung explains,
Read more on How to Develop a Christian Mind in Business School (Part II)…

Christian’s Library Press has released the third book in their Work & Economics series, Flourishing Churches and Communities: A Pentecostal Primer on Faith, Work, and Economics for Spirit-Empowered Discipleship by Charlie Self. Dr. Self is director of PhD studies in Bible and theology and associate professor of church history at Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield, Missouri.

Read more on New Pentecostal Primer: ‘Flourishing Churches and Communities’…

In the German newsmagazine Spiegel, Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati says that foreign aid to Africa is doing more harm than good:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…

Read more on African Economics Expert: “Please stop the Aid!”…

A Response to L. Rockwell’s “The Economic Lessons of Bethlehem”
Fr. Gregory, Koinonia

While I am in basic agreement with Rockwell regarding things like free market economic and limited government, I think his defense of them in the linked essay is poor.

Read more on PowerLinks – 01.02.13…