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Tugging the Entrepreneur Homeward
During the holiday season, business people are routinely excoriated for being greedy and not doing enough for society. In the model of Scrooge before his conversion, they are said to be selfish when they should be looking out for others. Yet in my pastoral experience, I have found this to be untrue. For several years, I have conducted seminars for entrepreneurs, some of whom run America’s largest companies, to help them reconcile their faith with their business life. And what I have learned about these people belies the stereotype.The Church and the Market
At a conference given in Vienna in 1985, Friedrich von Hayek stated that the moral systems and institutions as “Guardians of Tradition” had a decisive influence in the formation of the “extended order” which is characterized by the market. In his last book, The Fatal Conceit, he wrote an important sentence full of controversy: The survival of our civilization “may rest on the question of how people conceive the relation between the moral traditions and a personal God.”Of Markets and Morality
The great mantra of this prevailing culture of self-absorption is tolerance: If only everyone, everywhere, and under all circumstances could only be tolerant, we are assured, what a wonderful and peaceful world it would be. This kind of illiberal faith, this chic toleration, is so intolerant as to assert the truth claims of orthodox Judaism and Christianity.Liberty and the Good Life
U-Turns may be prohibited on interstate highways, but it became the standard traffic pattern in the Republican Congress elected in 1996. Republicans did not contest President Clinton’s plan to balance the budget. They just wanted to do it earlier. They did not object to Clinton’s tax cuts. They just wanted more of them. Republicans want to help families educate their children. But not as expensively or intrusively as do the Democrats.Toward a New Liberty
The 1991 papal encyclical Centesimus Annus has been described as prompting a springtime in Christian social teaching because it makes it easier to see freedom, specifically economic freedom, as a moral mandate. The sad truth is that the two traditions that come together in Centesimus Annus–religious orthodoxy and classical liberal social theory–have appeared to be at odds with each other for the better part of three centuries.Liberal Arts Education in a Free Society
“Pompey now having ordered all things … took his journey homewards…. When he came to Mitylene, he gave the city their freedom … and was present at the contest, there periodically held, of poets…. He was extremely pleased with the theatre itself, and had a model of it taken, intending to erect one in Rome on the same design, but larger and more magnificent. When he came to Rhodes, he attended the lectures of all the philosophers there….The Ultimate Economic Resource
Friends of liberty lost a staunch ally earlier this year when Julian Simon passed away on February 8, just shy of his sixty-fifth birthday. He was infamous for his principled and fact-driven defense of the free society and its ability to unleash the creative force of the human person.Solving Problems by Elimination
We live in a time that places a high value on community. The European Economic Community, global markets, the global village, accords and governance--universal fraternity is the wave of the future. Consequently, Pope John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus, with its emphasis on the human person in community, could be seen as simply following these current trends. For those not aware of its continuity with a living tradition, it appears to be an attempt to build bridges where there are none.Environmentalism: The Triumph of Politics
President Bill Clinton's commitment to an activist environmental agenda was apparent early in his administration. The problem is not that he favors conservation but that he supports political control of the environment. Unfortunately, despite the common assumption that government is the best means of protecting the environment, politics has more often thwarted than advanced sound ecological stewardship.
The Culture of Life, The Culture of the Market
Many who proclaim the culture of life fault the free market for devaluing human life and reducing people to mere economic actors, valued only for their earning potential or their productive capacity. Our times are characterized by a lack of respect for the dignity of the human person, but it is a tragedy to see our allies against the forces that degrade the human person hindered in their efforts because of a misunderstanding of the market economy.Evangelicals and Economics
What does the field of economics have to offer evangelicals? The embrace of economics should be more than merely an excuse to put forward naive views about public policy. Instead, evangelicals should embrace the “economic way of thinking”–a rigorous study of the benefits and costs of personal decisions and public policy. That said, the study of economics is frequently limited in scope; thus, evangelicals would do well to learn the economic way of thinking, using a biblical worldview and applying it to topics of biblical concern.Natural Law and Modern Economics
It is probably fair to say that many Christian intellectuals regard the positivist, rationalist social sciences with some suspicion. Many Christians would reject outright the proposition that the human person can be studied with the same tools and with the same detachment as inanimate objects. Probably many more Christians would be willing to make limited use of social science research, without accepting the whole philosophical apparatus that seems to go with it.