God bless the Acton Institute. I don’t agree with everything they say. But how can I stay mad at a group that, when I email them a proposal to send me to England for a summer conference to the tune of $3,000, emails me back within 5 minutes to say “you’re funded!”
Here’s the proposal, and my dream trip (minus the boring budget stuff):
Public solutions to poverty and illness: the medieval witness
This grant proposal is in support of a paper, teaching case study, and two book chapters, all related to faith, economics, and public service in the medieval period. The research for these materials would be conducted during a trip this summer to the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, UK, whose theme this year is wealth and poverty. I believe a more balanced perspective on the medieval church’s record in public service to the poor and ill is needed, given the current stereotypes of the Christian Middle Ages as barbaric and heedless of the value of human life (in light of the Inquisition, the Crusades, witch hunts, etc.) and as “Gnostic” about the flesh (extrapolating incorrectly from early and medieval asceticism). Continue reading