Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Acton Commentary

January 23, 2019

Brazil takes an Austrian turn

The new Brazilian government’s czar for economic affairs is bringing in the right people, straight from the Austrian School, says Silvio Simonetti in this week’s Acton Commentary. Presidents and prime ministers often resort to the appointment of “czars” to handle a crisis or coordinate complex policies when a show of urgent political engagement seems in order. Continue Reading...
December 19, 2018

Home to Bethlehem

Bethlehem might be described as our common home for which we each long, says Rev. Robert Sirico in this week’s Acton Commentary.  Although the word nostalgia can be used to express a bittersweet longing for some pleasant remembrance of one’s past, it is safe to say that this is the time of the year when it is virtually unavoidable to drift into a sustained sense of nostalgia and where its experience is most intense.  Continue Reading...
December 12, 2018

A way back from secularism

Secularism separates all things, says Rev. Anthony Perkins in this week’s Acton Commentary, even sacred ones, from their source and turns them into objects. These are difficult times that divide Christians from their neighbors and from one another. Continue Reading...
December 05, 2018

The Christian life and the common good

In this week’s Acton Commentary I show that the idea that “physical needs must be met before people experience spiritual needs” is older than Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs. The key to understanding how this might be lies in a distinction between the order of time and the order of being. Continue Reading...
December 05, 2018

Maslow, material needs, and the gospel

“Human beings are created with bodies and souls,” says Jordan Ballor in this week’s Acton Commentary. “We have both material and spiritual needs.” Earlier this year, Susan Mettes of Christianity Today critiqued the use of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a ministry tool. Continue Reading...
November 14, 2018

Russell Kirk: Where does virtue come from?

“How can human society form and raise up virtuous people?” asks Barton Gingerich in this week’s Acton Commentary. As Gingerich notes, Russell Kirk explored this perennial question in a 1982 essay titled, “Virtue: Can It Be Taught?” Continue Reading...
October 24, 2018

The spiritual core of political hate

“A new study confirms that creeping tribalism has Americans bitterly divided, acrimonious, and dismissive of others based on political differences,” says Rev. Ben Johnson in this week’s Acton Commentary. “Behind this animosity lies a spiritual principle that Rev. Continue Reading...
October 17, 2018

Alexis de Tocqueville, socialism, and the American Way

Tocqueville determined that the one defining factor in the United States was equality of condition, says John Wilsey in this week’s Acton Commentary. Tocqueville noticed that Americans apparently had the singular ability to prevent equality of conditions from yielding democratic despotism. Continue Reading...