Character and Ethics
Items on personal character and public action
Blinded by Self-Interest
Mon 05 Jan 2009 • Responses: 5 • 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?
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 . . .
A Task Before Him
Wed 05 Nov 2008 by Al Sikes
Formidable Challenges, but Joined by Lincoln’s Legacy
Trinity Forum Chairman Al Sikes reflects on the legacy and challenges facing the new President-Elect.
The Global Culture of Debt
Fri 31 Oct 2008 by Prabhu Guptara
This essay is adapted from a presentation to the Bettag Konferenz of the EVP (Evangelical People’s Party of Switzerland), 20 September 2008. We are publishing it as background material for the Provocations short piece adapted from Professor Guptara’s lecture on “The Institutionalization of Greed”.
The Institutionalization of Greed
Wed 22 Oct 2008 • Responses: 4 • by Prabhu Guptara
Excerpts from a Trinity Forum Conversation
“As a culture shifts from being focused on tradition or society or God to being focused on money, then the kinds of problems we have had over the past few years are only to be expected.”
Overwhelmed by Culture
Tue 14 Oct 2008 by Al Sikes
It’s not a money crisis. It’s a character crisis.
Trinity Forum Chairman Al Sikes looks at the economic crisis as a teachable moment. It’s time again to address our higher responsibility.
The Financial Tsunami
Mon 29 Sep 2008 by David Aikman
“We are in the midst of a serious financial crisis,” President Bush told the American people in a televised national address on September 24. The “entire economy” of the U.S. was in danger, he explained; the market was “not functioning properly, and “more banks could fail.” Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, a few days earlier had described the crisis as a “once-a-century” phenomenon and the worst he had ever seen. Others referred to the meltdown on Wall Street as a financial “tsunami” that could overwhelm all regular economic activity in the U.S. and create not just a recession but an economic depression not seen in the U.S. or the world since the Great Depression that followed the Wall Street Crash of October 1929.
