The Narrow Act

Now reintroduced with the addition of a Paris Review interview with the Argentine author, The Narrow Act was singled out by Borges as "the best, the most intelligent, and most carefully done" of the many books about

How does history end? -- The Red Queen -- Will to power -- Economics outside the corridor -- Allegory of good government -- The European scissors -- Mandate of Heaven -- Broken Red Queen -- Devil in the details -- What's the matter with Ferguson? -- The paper leviathan -- Wahhab's children -- Red Queen out of control -- Into the corridor -- Living with the leviathan.

Jim Clark is the founder of Ministers Training Institute which has been training five-fold ministry for thirty years. In apostolic form he has planted churches and has overseen pastors since the 1980's. Presently he spends his time writing "spiritually technical" books to assist present day ministry. He is the author of The Harmony of Proverbs, The Church and Present Day Apostleship, 101 Things Every Pastor Should Know, Romans, A commentary, A Brief Theology (encapsulated systematic theology). The is presently writing The Church in a Cultural Conflict. Jim was born in Connecticut in the 1930's; he received his BA from William Carey College, his MDiv from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and a Doctorate from Vision International University. He is married to his wife, Janet and they now have seven children, twenty-five grand children and two great-grand children. The reside in Prairieville, Louisiana and are an integral part of the Bethany World Prayer Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; where Jim serves as one of the Apostolic presbyters. "The Narrow Way" a Handbook on Discipleship takes a 'raw' convert into a lifestyle of discipleship beginning with his conversion and water baptism into a thorough training of Jesus' Character (some 50 aspects) to develop proper motives and attitudes. The disciple learns not only the Scriptural values of every aspect of the narrow way, but is also trained to strengthen them using the sixteen disciplines the early church practiced to allow the salvation experience to be enhanced - spirit, soul and body. The goal, of course, for every disciple is to serve God; but in the normal church experience that follows the American culture; it is usually a "fast track" that results in an uninformed and ill-prepared "leader" that ninety-five time out of one hundred - fails; usually causing the ill-trained member to leave the church and often his Lord. The book discusses the aspects and processes from which come true leaders-servants that are ready for Kingdom living.

"Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy? The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, The Narrow Corridor, they have answered this question with great insight." -Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post From the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, a crucial new big-picture framework that answers the question of how liberty flourishes in some states but falls to authoritarianism or anarchy in others--and explains how it can continue to thrive despite new threats. In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argued that countries rise and fall based not on culture, geography, or chance, but on the power of their institutions. In their new book, they build a new theory about liberty and how to achieve it, drawing a wealth of evidence from both current affairs and disparate threads of world history. Liberty is hardly the "natural" order of things. In most places and at most times, the strong have dominated the weak and human freedom has been quashed by force or by customs and norms. Either states have been too weak to protect individuals from these threats, or states have been too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. Liberty emerges only when a delicate and precarious balance is struck between state and society. There is a Western myth that political liberty is a durable construct, arrived at by a process of "enlightenment." This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue. In reality, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society: The authors look to the American Civil Rights Movement, Europe’s early and recent history, the Zapotec civilization circa 500 BCE, and Lagos’s efforts to uproot corruption and institute government accountability to illustrate what it takes to get and stay in the corridor. But they also examine Chinese imperial history, colonialism in the Pacific, India’s caste system, Saudi Arabia’s suffocating cage of norms, and the “Paper Leviathan” of many Latin American and African nations to show how countries can drift away from it, and explain the feedback loops that make liberty harder to achieve. Today we are in the midst of a time of wrenching destabilization. We need liberty more than ever, and yet the corridor to liberty is becoming narrower and more treacherous. The danger on the horizon is not "just" the loss of our political freedom, however grim that is in itself; it is also the disintegration of the prosperity and safety that critically depend on liberty. The opposite of the corridor of liberty is the road to ruin.

Vols. 65-96 include "Central law journal's international law list."