Think back to the last time you heard someone from the pulpit in your church talk about money, the Bible, and your spiritual life. On those occasions when pastors venture into this area, the focus is often and rightly on matters of the heart and one’s attitude toward money and possessions. But in that emphasis often lies an unexamined assumption that goes something like this: Given that the Bible focuses on attitude, not accumulation per se, that materialism is fundamentally about attitude, not amount, and that the human heart has not changed since the Bible was written, little significant difference exists between people in biblical times and people today when it comes to money. Hidden in that assumption is the notion that the ancient world and the world of today are also similar when it comes to money, wealth, and possessions....

Conventional understanding may tend to gloss over the distinction between the concepts of community or society and of state or government. Many in the popular media often use the words community, society, state, and government interchangeably. The common usage of these terms introduces a fallacy with potentially dire consequences. Communal or social obligations are those that all people have in common. This does not mean that every social obligation is, or should be, enforceable by the state or government. While honest debate may ensue about exactly what constitutes a communal or social obligation, before that debate can begin in earnest, a distinction must be made between society and the state. Failing to recognize this distinction introduces the specter of a totalitarianistic outlook. Of course, this outlook...

Francisco Marroquín nacque in un paesino in provincia di Santander, nel nord della Spagna, da una famiglia di nobili proprietari terrieri. Una volta completati gli studi ecclesiastici e presi i voti sacerdotali, Marroquín cominciò a studiare teologia e filosofia presso l’Università di Heusca. Quando si trovava ancora all’Università, fece parte di un movimento di rinnovamento il quale affermava l’uguaglianza di tutte le persone al cospetto di Dio e davanti alla legge e non la società come tale a meno che non fosse basata sul libero esercizio della volontà dell’uomo. Questo...

Marriage is in deep trouble in America, and indeed throughout most of the Western world. The numbers tell the story. By the mid-nineties, nearly one-fifth of all white children in the U.S. lived in single-parent families, almost always headed by mothers. Well over half of all black children now live in such mother-only families. These percentages represent a spectacular increase from just a few decades ago. A similar trend is at work in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, and throughout the Caribbean (though not in other parts of the world, including the Far East). Add in the number of kids living with a divorced parent—more than 1 million in the U.S. by 1995, compared with 500,000 in 1960—and you have a crisis in the traditional family.

As James Q. Wilson, doyen of American...

I demand nothing better, you may be sure, than that you should really have discovered outside of us a benevolent and inexhaustible being, calling itself the state, which has bread for all mouths, work for all hands, capital for all enterprises, credit for all projects, ointment for all wounds, balm for all suffering, advice for all perplexities, solutions for all problems, truth for all minds, distractions for all varieties of boredom, milk for children and wine for old age, which provides for all our needs, foresees all our desires, satisfies all our curiosity, corrects all our errors, amends all our faults, and exempts us all henceforth from the need for foresight, prudence, judgment, sagacity, experience, order, economy, temperance, and industry.¹

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Globalization has emerged as a new paradigm for describing the way in which the human family can relate to each other. Globalization is the increased interconnectedness of all peoples on the face of the earth. We can now more easily, rapidly, and cheaply move, and thus share, ourselves, our consumer goods, our material and human capital, and the values that comprise our respective cultures. Our ever-increasing ability to share our God-given and complementary gifts with one another holds with it the possibilities of enlarging the scope of our communion and solidarity.

The technological revolution and social dimensions of modernity have made this increased interconnectedness possible. Advancements in technology have made quick and radical improvements in communication and transportation capabilities. The social...

In On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding, Michael Novak amends the customary political history of the American founding to reinstate its religious underpinnings. Where most Americans do well in noting the Enlightenment elements of the American regime, they have been taught almost nothing about the religious—indeed, biblical—influence on the United States’ formation as a nation. Novak applies the corrective.

Author of numerous books dealing with freedom, religion, and business, including The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982), Novak situates the “rights talk” of the American founding within “God talk.” By showing how the founders understood rights and liberties to have a transcendent origin, Novak counters the postmodern attempt to hold onto rights...