Acton Vault

In this episode, we’re bringing you a panel from our recent Poverty Cure Summit.

The Poverty Cure Summit provides an opportunity for participants to listen to scholars, human service providers, and community leaders address the most critical issues we face today that can either exacerbate or alleviate poverty. These speakers will join panel discussions to discuss the legal, economic, social, and technological issues pertaining to both domestic (U.S.) and global poverty. Rooted in foundational principles of anthropology, politics, natural law, and economics, participants gained a deeper understanding of the root causes of poverty and identified practical means to reduce it and promote human flourishing.

This panel examines charity in the Muslim tradition.

The featured panelists are:

• Ali Salman, founding member & CEO, Islam and Liberty Network. 
• Mahmoud El-Gamal, Professor of Economics and Statistics, Baker Institute Rice Faculty Scholar, Chair in Islamic Economics, Finance, and Management, Rice University
• Moderator: Abdullah bin Hamid Ali, Founding Director of the Lamppost Education Initiative

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For this episode, we are taking you back to June 17, 1997 and the Acton Institute's 7th Annual Dinner in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The guest of honor that evening was Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.

Scalia, who passed away suddenly on February 13, 2016, was a jurisprudential giant. One of the foremost proponents of originalist and textualist interpretation of the Constitution and law, his witty, humorous, and frequently biting writing style made his dissenting opinions, and sometimes his majority opinions, both must-reads and very accessible to non-lawyers.

His remarks to those gathered at Acton's Annual Dinner were entitled "On Interpreting the Constitution". In them, he explained his originalist approach to Constitutional law and the severe drawbacks that he saw with any alternative method of interpretation,

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There's been renewed interest in the role Christianity has played in liberalism since Larry Siedentop’s 2014 book, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism. Building on Siedentop, Daniel Klein says universal benevolent monotheism, and Christianity in particular, has led to the articulation of a specific social grammar and corresponding rights—in short Adam Smith’s “liberal plan.” But can liberalism be sustained in a world that no longer takes its ethics from that monotheism?

Daniel Klein is professor of economics and JIN Chair at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where Erik Matson and he lead a program in Adam Smith. He is also associate fellow at the Ratio Institute (Stockholm), research fellow at the Independent Institute, and chief editor of Econ Journal Watch. He and Matson also lead CL Press and curate the Liberty Fund column called Just Sentiments.

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About Daniel Klein

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Books connect us in a very real way to people and ideas from the past. This talk will explore how we can help the current and future generations understand the thoughts and the minds of the thinkers of the past through printed books and publications.

For the past 25 years, Kristopher Bex has served as the President and board member of The Remnant Trust, Inc. Currently located in Lubbock, Texas and Cambridge City, Indiana, The Remnant Trust was founded in 1997 and incorporated in 1999. Mr. Bex served The Remnant Trust in its infancy as an original board member and incorporator. He found its ideas to be unique, interesting and thought it might accomplish some good in a rapidly evolving world of modernizing technology.

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For this episode, we're bringing you a session from our recent Poverty Cure Summit. A conversation entitled "Hope for the City: Neighborhoods, Commerce, and Social Capital" featuring Rachel Ferguson, Justin S. Beene, and Ismael Hernandez.

The Poverty Cure Summit provides an opportunity for participants to listen to scholars, human service providers, and community leaders address the most critical issues we face today that can either exacerbate or alleviate poverty. Speakers joined panel discussions to discuss the legal, economic, social, and technological issues pertaining to both domestic (U.S.) and global poverty. Rooted in foundational principles of anthropology, politics, natural law, and economics, participants gained a deeper understanding of the root causes of poverty and identify practical means to reduce it and promote human flourishing.

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In 1867, Sen. Charles Sumner posed the question “are we a nation?” in the wake of the Civil War. As America confronts new extremes of polarization in the 21st century, the question is inescapable again. Samuel Goldman explores the ways the U.S. does and does not correspond to historical conceptions of the nation-state.

Samuel Goldman is an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is also director of the Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom. In addition to his academic work, Goldman is an affiliate scholar at the Acton Institute and has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications.

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Samuel Goldman | Amazon

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The dramatic social changes of the past century have left our world with a fragile sense of identity. Changes in technology and entertainment have constrained spiritual imaginations and reoriented our collective vision of the good life. These trends pave the way for charismatic leaders in politics, the marketplace, and religious communities to provide meaning through belonging to a group, especially one defined by a sense of “movement.” But “movement” thinking disincentivizes the slower work of building—be that the building of character or institutions, and the disastrous result has been on display for decades. Our hope for correcting course is found only in embracing a deeper, more rooted vision of virtue, the brevity of life, and a love for the world around us.

Mike Cosper is a writer and podcast producer/senior director of podcasts at Christianity Today. In 2021 he produced and hosted The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, a serialized podcast telling the story of a Seattle megachurch’s stunning success and collapse. The podcast served as a venue to explore a variety of questions and issues that trouble the church, including character formation, gender, celebrity, and the distorting power of media. His next series launches later this year. 

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‘The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill’ Podcasts | Christianity Today 

About Mike Cosper

Is Christianity doing more harm than good to American men? | Acton Institute PowerBlog 

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Libraries are filled with books on the parables of Christ, and rightly so. In the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, “While civilizations have come and gone, these stories continue to teach us anew with their freshness and their humanity.” Two millennia later, the New Testament parables remain ubiquitous, and yet few have stopped to glean wisdom from one of Christ’s most prevalent analogies: the use of money.

In The Economics of the Parables, Rev. Robert Sirico pulls back the veil of modernity to reveal the timeless economic wisdom of the parables. Thirteen central stories—including “The Laborers in the Vineyard,” “The Rich Fool,” “The Five Talents,” and “The Faithful Steward”—serve as his guide, revealing practical lessons in caring for the poor, stewarding wealth, distributing inheritances, navigating income disparities, and resolving family tensions. 

Rev. Robert A. Sirico is the president emeritus and co-founder of the Acton Institute, and pastor emeritus of Sacred Heart of Jesus parish in Grand Rapids, Mich. His writings on religious, political, economic, and social matters are published in a variety of journals, including: the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the London Financial Times, the Washington Times, The Detroit News, and National Review. He is the author of numerous books, including Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy, A Moral Basis for Liberty, and The Economics of the Parables.

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The Economics of the Parables | Acton Book Shop

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This episode takes us back in time to September 2018 for a talk from our Acton Lecture Series.

Students of 20th century American history know of the importance of the Marshall Plan to the effort to rebuild Europe after World War II, as well as the leading role taken by the United States in building international institutions and alliances that would be central to maintaining peace and checking the expansionist desires of the communist world. What you may not know is that a central figure in the creation of those institutions was a United States Senator from Michigan who, prior to the war, had been a leader of the isolationist faction in Congress. The story of how Arthur Vandenberg came to be one of the founders of modern American foreign policy is recounted in the book Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century, from Hank Meijer.

Hank Meijer is co-chairman and CEO of Meijer, Inc. in Grand Rapids and vice-chairman of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation. He serves on the executive committee of the Food Marketing Institute and is a trustee of the National Constitution Center and The Henry Ford. He is a member of the University of Michigan’s President’s Advisory Group and the Ford School of Public Policy board of advisors and chairs the board of the Kettering Foundation.

His biography of Senator Vandenberg was published in 2017 by the University of Chicago Press.

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Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century | Amazon

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Anyone who has read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings can gather that their author hated tyranny, but few know that the novelist who once described himself as a hobbit “in all but size” was—even by hobbit standards—a zealous proponent of economic freedom and small government. There is a growing concern among many that the West is sliding into political, economic, and moral bankruptcy. In his beloved novels of Middle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien has drawn us a map to freedom.

Several books ably explore how Tolkien’s Catholic faith informed his fiction. None until now have centered on how his passion for liberty and limited government also shaped his work, or how this passion grew directly from his theological vision of man and creation. The Hobbit Party fills this void. Jonathan Witt and Jay Richards bring to The Hobbit Party a combined expertise in literary studies, political theory, economics, philosophy, and theology.

Jonathan Witt, PhD, is Executive Editor of Discovery Institute Press and a senior fellow and senior project manager with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. His latest book is Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design (DI Press, 2018) written with Finnish bioengineer Matti Leisola. Witt also authored Intelligent Design Uncensored (IVP, 2010) with William Dembski, and A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature (IVP, 2006) with Benjamin Wiker. He is also the author of The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom That Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot (Ignatius, 2014), written with Jay Richards.

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