It can't be denied: many people of faith view the entertainment industry with a measure of suspicion. To answer some of this suspicion, Barbara Nicolosi and Spencer Lewerenz have compiled a collection of essays, Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film, and Culture. Nicolosi and Lewerenz are two members of a circle of Hollywood producers, writers, and executives who conceived and support Act One, a Christian screenwriting program in Los Angeles. The essays in this collection are written by others in this circle and serve as a primer to those people of faith with some misguided notions about the entertainment industry.

While some of the more anecdotal selections in the collection are worth flipping past, the essays by Ron Austin, Thom Parham, Barbara Nicolosi, and Charles B. Slocum offer profound reflections on the meaning of cinema, society, and faith and in...

It is a rare thing for an economist to write a bestselling book, but Steven Levitt is a rather rare economist. Winner of the Clark Medal for the best American economist under forty, Levitt does not practice economics as most of his colleagues at the University of Chicago do. Indeed, he is something of maverick, as is made clear by the subtitle of his bestseller, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything .

Levitt does not seek to explain price theory, monetary policy, or trade relations. He turns his attention to rather more quirky questions: Why do crack dealers live at home? Do real estates agents really seek the best deal for their clients? Do abortions lower the crime...

A recent slide in movie attendance suggests a film industry crisis of major proportions, but pop culture potentates seem reluctant to confront it. In May of this year, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll showed that fully 48 percent of American adults say they go to the movies less often then they did in 2000. For nineteen consecutive weeks, including the heart of the summer 2005 blockbuster season, the motion picture industry earned less (despite higher ticket prices) than it brought in during the corresponding period the year before. Projections of ticket sales for all of 2005 indicate that the public will occupy at least 8 percent fewer seats in movie theaters this year than in 2004—an alarming performance at a time of population growth and a...

Whether economic, political, or religious in nature, our world is structured by ideas. And these ideas move so quickly through our media today that they are often accepted before they have been examined for truth. Modern media has the emotional power to make ideas feel true even when they are not. A single moment caught on film can render an entire story somehow “truthful” to an undiscerning audience.

In the entertainment industry, the battle of ideas is fought very differently than in politics or philosophy. Ideas in politics and philosophy depend largely on rhetoric or reason; ideas in film depend almost exclusively on stories. Ideas are woven into themes, into the choices of characters, and into the point of view from which the story is...

Because the Acton Institute deals with issues often at the heart of political debates, some people assume that Acton is a political organization and somehow aligned with a particular agenda or political party. This is simply not the case. Acton is not and does not desire to be affiliated with any political party or candidate or any partisan movement.

There are two reasons why the Acton Institute does not lobby for or against specific candidates or legislation. The first is that we simply are not allowed by law to do so. Because of our 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, we are legally obligated to refrain from engaging in specific partisan activity.

But even if we could do so, we wouldn't. There is another more basic reason why the Acton Institute refrains from endorsing specific political candidates or legislation: the Acton Institute is primarily an educational institution...

During the height of the Cold War, former President Ronald Reagan caused a firestorm of protest when he branded the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.” Liberals and progressives spared no criticism of Reagan blaming him for increasing tensions between the U.S. and its communist rival.

Years later a different story emerged. Natan Sharansky, a Russian scientist serving a nine-year jail term for organizing critics of the Soviet regime, took Reagan's statement as the first crack of light exposing the communist darkness. Sharansky writes:

One day my Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading “Pravda.” Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of...

Why did Pope John Paul II found the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in 1994?

By 1994, Pope John Paul II had already made several major contributions to Catholic social doctrine, and was thus acutely aware both of the need to keep abreast of changing social and economic conditions and of the increasing difficulty of doing so. In 1991, he observed in Centesimus Annus that the Church “needs more constant and more extensive contact with the modern social sciences” if she is to make her own contributions effectively. Three years later, he established the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences to serve as a kind of think tank whose research could offer the Church “elements which she can use in the study and development of her social doctrine.” Writing about the mission of the Academy, he noted that the Church had developed her social doctrine...