The American Life League has released an investigative report on the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops’ Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which, it turns out, has been funding dozens of thoroughly unchristian organizations in its fight against domestic poverty. Catholics in the pews who have given to the annual CCHD collection might not be happy to learn that the program’s efforts are frequently right out of line with its “fight poverty: defend human dignity” slogan.

Read more on Marxism, Abortion among CCHD’s Poverty Strategies…

Acton’s director of research Samuel Gregg tackles the question of religious liberty in Islamic states this morning, over at The American Spectator. In a piece titled “The Arab Spring’s Forgotten Freedom,” Gregg describes the tensions between Christians seeking religious freedom in the Middle East and the Islamic states they inhabit, and then looks hopefully to the source of a resolution.

Read more on Samuel Gregg: Religious Freedom and the Arab Spring…

There are no more Christian churches in Afghanistan — not a single public house of Christian worship is left standing. In other news, NATO success against the Taliban may have been intentionally exaggerated, although we already knew that progress in that country is… slow. It’s no surprise, of course, that the United States hasn’t been able to establish self government-in-a-box in a country where, according to the State Department, religious liberty has declined measurably even in the last year.

Read more on Freedom in a Land without Churches?…

This past Sunday one of the songs in our worship service was the hymn, “All Things Bright and Beautiful.”

Here’s the first stanza:

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

If the new translation of Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, were to have a companion hymn, this might well be the perfect candidate.

Read more on ‘All things wise and wonderful…’…

The presence of one group at the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests might be surprising: the Distributist Review has produced this flyer for distribution at the protests.  They don’t seem to have asked themselves whether G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc would have gone down to protest with the unwashed masses (the answer, of course, is never in a million years) but contemporary “neodistributists” are a more inclusive set. They go far beyond the metaphysical and aesthetic principles of Chesterton and Belloc’s economics. Since that flyer’s a little hard to read, we’ve put together a list to help you identify your inner distributist: herewith, Ten Signs You May Be a Distributist:

Read more on 10 Signs You May Be a Distributist…

I’m at the “Whole Life Discipleship: Integrating Faith, Economics, and Work” conference today at Regent University. As I have the opportunity today, I’ll blog (and tweet) some of the lectures. First up is Stephen Grabill of the Acton Institute, and here are some highlights:

Read more on Whole Life Discipleship: Integrating Faith, Economics, and Work…

Occupy Wall Street?

On the Sojourners blog, Shane Claiborne marks the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi by absurdly wondering if “he’d be on Wall Street protesting today.” This follows the practice of shrinking Jesus Christ and various saints of the church down to pocket size (What Would Jesus Cut?) in order to fit them into whatever pet political project is at hand, in this case the Occupy Wall Street antics. Not the whole saint in the context of history, mind you, which could be inconvenient, but a happy little Smurf-Saint you can use to practice ventriloquism.

Read more on St Francis on Wall Street…

I’m pleased to announce that the first fruits of the Kuyper Common Grace Translation project are forthcoming, in the form of Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art. This is the first selection out of the larger three-volume set that will appear in complete translation in English.

Read more on Announcing Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art…

In the latest issue of Religion & Liberty, Acton Institute executive direct Kris Mauren answers the question, “Why does the Acton Institute publish the Journal of Markets & Morality?”

For more, check out my interview with Micheal Hickerson of the Emerging Scholars Network.

Read more on Why the Journal of Markets & Morality?…

Faith leaders protest budget cuts (at U.S. Capitol, not NCC meeting)

A “budget is a moral document,” right?

The Institute on Religion & Democracy reports that following the loss of a major donor, the National Council of Churches (NCC) finds itself “closer than ever before to the precipice” of financial collapse. The progressive/liberal church coalition, comprised largely of mainline Protestant and Orthodox churches, is running out of dough. IRD’s Barton Gingerich:

Read more on National Council of Churches ‘balancing the budget on the backs of the poor’?…