A Humanist for Our Time

The story of Wilhelm Röpke's life is that of a genuine Renaissance man—though in the tradition of Erasmus rather than Machiavelli. It is the tale of a man who combined profound knowledge of several intellectual disciplines with a genuine confidence that people can indeed know the truth. But one of the strengths of John Zmirak's new intellectual biography is that it underlines the extent to which Röpke's life was also a tale of profound moral witness to truth.

by Samuel Gregg, D.Phil.

Environmental Virtues-and Vices

Religious writing on the environment generally fails for several specific reasons. First, most theologians and religious ethicists do not have a gift for science. Environmental science is especially hard because it requires, at a minimum, a good grasp of chemistry, physics, geology, and various subdivisions of biology.

by Robert Royal

Rising to the Challenge of Modern Capitalism (Or Not)

What is the relationship between Christianity and the modern world? Is the spirit of capitalism fundamentally incompatible with the requirements of charity that were first formulated in the New Testament? While these have always been important questions for Christians, they have taken on a renewed sense of urgency. The recent terrorist attacks on New York and Washington forcefully reminded Americans that they cannot escape the question of the relationship between God and politics.

by Marc D. Guerra

Tracing the Matrix of Nationalism and Capitalism

The debate over Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has “still not gone off the boil,” wrote Anthony Giddens in 1976. It seems that Weber’s striking thesis, a quarter of a century after Giddens’s remark, has still not lost any of its steam, a fact manifested by its ability to provoke the thought and research of a scholar as able as Liah Greenfeld.

by Kevin E. Schmiesing

Founding Faith

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.

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Marriage Woes

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.

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Hot Topics in Economics

Bulls, Bears & Golden Calves: Applying Christian Ethics in Economics by John E. Stapleford (Intervarsity Press) is both a reference for Christian thinking on specific economic topics and a helpful companion to the major economics texts of our day. The list of chapters reads like a recipe for staying up all night in group debate or private turmoil (depending on your inclination): environmental stewardship, legalized gambling, debt relief for less developed nations, population control, pornography, immigration.

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Creation of Wealth

The prosperity and way of life in many countries of western civilization (namely Germany, Holland, Switzerland, England, and the United States of America) have existed for a few hundred years now. Much like those who lived in the Roman Empire, the sheer force of this history may persuade contemporary members of secular society to feel invincible against the demise of this prosperity and way of life, demanding it as a birthright rather than accepting it as a delicate heirloom.

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Conservatism, Socratically and Succinctly

In his latest book, Dinesh D’Souza offers a glimpse into a one-sided dialogue on both the merits of and the ideas behind conservatism. He does this by publishing his letters to a curious and interested college student named Chris—who is questioning his own politics and starting to form his own beliefs. These letters each cover one specific topic, many of the so-called “hot” ones—for instance, conservative as opposed to liberal, libertarian, political correctness, feminism, education, abortion, and everything in between.

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A First Amendment Primer

In 1789, with the War of Independence well behind them and the prodigious task of writing a constitution for the new United States of America also completed, the Founding Fathers turned their attention to the individual rights of the citizenry. Thomas Jefferson, in particular, thought that the constitution was incomplete for failing to address the primary freedom of religion. Following the successful passage of his Bill of Religious Freedom in the Virginia Legislature, he brought the issue before the larger Constitutional Convention.

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God, Reason, and the Law

In a recent review of Robert P. George’s The Clash of Orthodoxies, Samuel Gregg, Director of the Acton Institute’s Center for Economic Personalism, observed that “we have witnessed something of a renaissance of natural-law thinking among Christian scholars.” Another piece of evidence of this renaissance is The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World by constitutional scholar and natural-law theorist Russell Hittinger.

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Character for Free

During a recent lecture at Loyola University New Orleans, Michael Novak argued that for centuries individuals have been asking the wrong questions. Up until around 1776, he said, people inquired, “What is the cause of poverty?” Novak suggests they should have been asking what Adam Smith asked—that is, “What is the cause of the wealth of nations?” Or in other words, why are the rich rich?

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