* John Carr, “Beyond Red and Blue,” America, Feb. 10, 2014:

In the renewed interest in fighting poverty, “There are unreal, unhelpful divisions between those who focus mostly on family factors as causes and remedies for poverty and those who look to economic forces as primary contributors and solutions. These partisan and ideological walls must come down. A child’s future is shaped by both the choices of the parents and the policies of government, by both the strength of the child’s family and the strength of the economy.”

“The U.S. [Roman Catholic] bishops have offered a four-part framework: 1. The responsibilities of individuals and families to make wise choices, marry before having children, pursue education and work. 2. The supporting roles of community and religious groups (including unions and community organizations). 3. The necessary contributions of a growing economy and the market: decent jobs, wages and benefits. 4. The obligations of government to provide a genuine safety net, promote economic vitality and act when other institutions fail to protect human life, dignity and rights. In Washington, many embrace one of these priorities and neglect the others. The complexity of poverty requires that all these institutions work together to help the poor build better lives.”

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Thomas Messner, Religious Freedom and Marriage in Federal Law, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, no. 2865 (January 20, 2014):

“Those with traditional viewpoints on marriage should have the freedom to conduct their lives and operate their organizations according to their own beliefs, just as people who support same-sex marriage do.”

“Forcing faith-based charities out of the social service sector because they will not provide services that contradict their faith produces the absurd result of decreasing services through a policy purportedly designed to increase them.”

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Richard Epstein, “Rethinking the Contraceptive Mandate,” Hoover Institution’s Defining Ideas, Feb. 10, 2014:

“[T]he classical liberal theory starts from the explicit proposition that the parties should decide the terms of their own contracts in light of their preferences. . . .

“Critics of this view often claim that free association allows men to exclude women, whites to exclude blacks, and straight people to exclude gay people. That characterization is only half correct, because it ignores the flip side whereby blacks can exclude whites, women exclude men, and gays exclude straights. It also ignores the way in which voluntary associations can advance their own affirmative action programs without fearing blowback from the state. The members of all affinity groups express support for their mission. Elsewhere, they eagerly join many organizations with broader membership bases. Classical liberalism just lets them decide which groups to join and why.”

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Peter Greer and Chris Horst, with Anna Haggard, Mission Drift: The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities, and Churches (Bethany House, 2014).

From the back cover: “Many of us in leadership have learned-often painfully-that our mission needs to be built into every aspect of our organization, from leadership to receptionist, from hiring to implementation. We can’t afford not to follow the lessons in this valuable book.” — Richard Stearns, President of World Vision U.S.