Blinded by Self-Interest
Mon 05 Jan 2009 • Responses: 1 • by Fred Harburg
Integrity—A Jewel of Great Price
Senior Fellow Fred Harburg asks whether P. T. Barnum was right. Are we all just suckers? Are we so passive, impotent, and naïve that we will stand by and let those with powerful positions and strong force of personality lie, steal, and cheat innocent people out of their retirement accounts, their life savings, their jobs, and their future?
Obama’s Challenges Overseas
Tue 23 Dec 2008 • Responses: 0 • by David Aikman
It’s likely that historians will view the 2008 election as a moment when America turned inward and looked hard at what was going on inside the country. Many recently-elected presidents have taken office with a decidedly strong pre-occupation with foreign affairs: Richard Nixon was one, and George H. W. Bush another. Both men, incidentally, accomplished major things in foreign affairs but were tripped up by American domestic developments.
Secrets Buried in Platitudes
Mon 15 Dec 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Peter Edman
An Advent reflection.
Preparing recently for Advent and Christmas, I was thinking about how much I enjoy running across a good quotation. It’s always gratifying to find someone who can express themselves in a pithy or memorable manner, particularly if they can in the process help us look at the world in a fresh way. Four quotations from the past year stood out for me particularly.
One is from an interview the novelist Walker Percy did toward the end of his life, collected in the book Signposts in a Strange Land. He was asked the secret of the success of his marriage. His answer helps us see something about the world:
There is no secret. Or rather, the secrets are buried in platitudes. That is to say, it has something to do with love, commitment, and family.
Manger Wetter
Mon 15 Dec 2008 • Responses: 2 • by Dan Russ
Coming to Terms with Our Neediness
In this excerpt from his book, Flesh-and-Blood Jesus, Senior Fellow Dan Russ helps us reflect on the scandal and the joy of the birth and humanity of Jesus.
Aitken on McDonald in the American Spectator
Mon 15 Dec 2008 • Responses: 0 • by TTF Staff
Trinity Forum Europe director Jonathan Aitken has written an article on the new philanthropic initiatives of Trinity Forum Founding Chairman Alonzo L. McDonald. “When the Giving Gets Rough” appears in the December 2008-January 2009 issue of the American Spectator.
One such counter-cyclical nonprofit is the McDonald Agape Foundation (MAF), which is expanding its support for Christian scholars, professorial chairs, and education programs in leading universities such as Harvard, Yale, Duke, and Emory. This fall MAF opened its latest benefaction at Oxford--the McDonald Center for Theology, Ethics and Public Life. I predict it will make a ground breaking impact far beyond the dreaming spires of my alma mater.
Where No One Sees
Tue 09 Dec 2008 • Responses: 1 • by Sir Richard Dannatt
Character and Leadership in an Age of Image
An address by General Sir Richard Dannatt, KCB CBE MC ADC Gen, at an event at Rhodes House, Oxford, sponsored by the Trinity Forum Europe.
A Teaching Moment
Mon 08 Dec 2008 • Responses: 1 • by Al Sikes
A framework of calling and character
Trinity Forum Chairman Al Sikes looks at the current economic crisis as an opportunity to reanimate the timeless wisdom of Solomon for our culture.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence
Thu 04 Dec 2008 • Responses: 2 • by TTF Staff
If there never be a silence in the soul, and a man goes on always with his own thoughts and schemes and endeavours, it brings about a moral and spiritual madness. That is tenfold worse than mere madness in the brain, when a man judges everything by false ways, puts a wrong value on everything, thinks little of great things and much of little things—that is a common way with all of us more or less, only, thank God, with some of us it is growing less.
There comes a silence every now and then; and God makes it just to put a stop to this kind of thing, and give himself a chance of speaking.
Excerpted from George MacDonald’s sermon “Alone with God,” preached in Westminster Chapel, London; transcribed for the publication The Christian World Pulpit, reprinted in George MacDonald, ed. William J Peterson, Proving the Unseen (Ballantine Books, 1989). Thanks to the George MacDonald e-mail list.
Odysseus and the Seduction of Leadership
Wed 03 Dec 2008 • Responses: 1 • by Paul Vanderbroeck
What should drive your choices?
Executive coach Paul Vanderbroek takes another look at Odysseus. Together the Iliad and the Odyssey tell us a story of a young high-potential leader who let himself be seduced into leaving wife and family to embark on what seemed to be a noble project . . .
Loconte on Niebuhr in Books & Culture
Mon 01 Dec 2008 • Responses: 0 • by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Joseph Loconte has a review essay in the November/December 2008 issue of Books and Culture on the new edition of Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History. “The Irony of American Politics”:
Nevertheless, many Niebuhr admirers have a disposition that blunts much of his message. They have fastened onto his critique of America's national foibles and used it like an axe to dismember U.S. foreign policy under the Bush Administration. Remarkably, they tend to ignore the religious core of Niebuhr's political thought: his Christian understanding of the tragedy of human nature. It was this German-born theologian, after all, who tried to reclaim the biblical doctrine of original sin during the inter-war period.
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