As the idea of homosexual marriage has become increasingly acceptable in American culture and as the legal institutions have begun to accommodate it, it has become increasingly popular among evangelical Christians to argue for a complete separation of Church and State on the issue of marriage. In a surprising twist, the patron saint of their position is none other than C.S. Lewis, who writes in Mere Christianity:

There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.

There are, of course, questions to be asked about Lewis’s inclusion of marriage in a book entitled Mere Christianity.
More importantly, those Christian libertarians who critique Christian (political) conservatives’ rejection of politically sanctioned homosexual marriage push Lewis’s words beyond their natural and (I would argue) intended meaning. In context, Lewis is writing specifically about the question of divorce. To this extent, they are write about Lewis’s distinction between the Church and the state’s approach to marriage.

But the state’s allowance of divorce in some cases does not necessarily entail the state’s approval of homosexual marriage. The questions of state sanctioned divorce and state sanctioned homosexual marriage are as distinct as Christian and secular marriages. Lewis’s words prove nothing for the Christian libertarian on the question of homosexual marriage other than that there is a distinction between Christian and secular marriage, a distinction which no Christian conservative would argue against (and which is in line with the broader tradition of the Church).

(HT: Scott Overpeck, whose use of Lewis prompted this post)

(Update:  another silly spelling error fixed.  Many apologies!)

Ah, summer…a time of year to kick back, relax, sip some lemonade by the pool, and enjoy the slower pace of life.

Maybe for some, but this year I’m doing everything I can to learn, travel, and think as much as possible before the cold snows of my hometown and the capricious whims of Uncle Sam make it difficult for guys like me to take time off (although, with at least one possible candidate pushing for an end to American involvement in the Middle East, I might have more time off than I really want—there always is an uncanny lull before the storm).

However, this summer is not so much about American politics as it is about things going on outside our borders. After spending a week at the Acton Institute to study and think about economics, liberty, and religion I’m headed out to do some ground work and research of my own overseas. Two weeks doesn’t seem like nearly enough time to see, learn, and assimilate all that the New Jersey-sized country of Israel has to offer, but it’s all I have to work with.

Items on the itinerary include:

• Meeting with Israeli Christians and hearing the stories of an oft overlooked minority group
• Travel to the north and to Galilee to walk the countryside of Jesus and sort out the compression of millenia of cultures and artifacts
• Explore the Old City of Jerusalem
• Discuss politics, religion, and philsophy with students at the prestigious Hebrew University
• Experiment with my beginning Arabic, non-existent Hebrew, and over-dramatic body language in the markets and bazaars as I hunt for bargain-basement discounts
• Trek to Masada, Israel’s tragic Alamo, and reflect on the rise and fall and rise (and fall?) of this nation
• Learn as much as I can from embassy personnel working on the Israel/Palestine Peace Process

Those are some of the highlights. Come back often as I’ll be posting what I can during my travels and putting up a few reflection pieces upon my return.

We’re living in a time when there is a manifest crisis of worship in the church. It’s almost as if we’re in the midst of a rebellion among people who find church less than meaningful. They’re bored. They see the experience of Sunday morning as an exercise in irrelevance. As a reaction against that, it seems that almost any church we visit is experimenting with new forms and new patterns of worship. This experimentation has provoked many disputes over the nature of worship.” (R. C. Sproul. A Taste of Heaven: Worship in the Light of Eternity.” Orlando: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2006: 13, 14)

The second symposium of the newly formed Alliance of Christian Musicians’ Northwest Chapter opened with this quote, and an invitation to explore issues of a possible crisis of worship among America’s Protestant and evangelical churches.

Much of today’s argumentation regarding worship music center around genre: the tired debate of hymns versus CCM-style “praise” music. Dr. Overman, retired professor of religion at the University of Puget Sound, threatened to overturn the accepted dichotomy by moving the discussion from form to anthropology and ontology. He argued that,

…what has happened, especially in the last 400 years and more in the 20th century, is that human beings have generally lost the perception that we live in a hierarchical universe. All of what were formerly called the “higher levels of reality” have been brought down to one level. The loss of the hierarchy, when applied to the psychology of the Christian, (a hierarchy of the Holy Spirit, one’s own spirit, the mind [thinking, feeling, will], and the body) has been pressed downwards so that human beings today do not first respond by asking questions about their spirit or thinking, but mostly always about their emotions and states of will. The worship wars can be traced fundamentally to the fact that people, when they come to church, have lost the sense that there is such a thing as an extraordinary state of being, extraordinary space, time or manner of speaking. Everything is reduced to the level of the ordinary…defined principally in terms of states of feeling and will.”

Most intriguing about Overman’s remarks is that, if correct, they could fundamentally shift the discussion from an argument of forms and preference to a discussion of what it means to be a Christian human being and, in light of such a shift, might unearth more useful ways to break the stalemate. (more…)

Reading Jason Kuznicki and D.A. Ridgely’s recent posts about marriage made me curious about the historical developments in the American legal understanding of marriage. Kuznicki:

Ultimately, I’d like civil marriage simply to be a form of contract, combined with some clear, legally binding advance directives about property and family affairs. Such an arrangement would have no room at all for gender, and thus same-sex marriage contracts would be accepted as a matter of course. But that’s not what marriage really is, whether for gays or straights. That’s one thing this whole debate has brought to light.

Ridgely:

So, for example, I have harped fairly consistently that the notion of marriage as status, derived as so much of contemporary western culture does from feudal society, is a remnant of that feudalism and should be replaced with the notion of marriage as contract. (In a nutshell, a legal status differs from the private legal relationship arising by contract in that, typically, the parties involved cannot rescind or revise the legal relationship except, if at all, with state permission. Citizenship is a status. Unfortunately, so occasionally and for some purposes are what the Supreme Court has sometimes called the suspect classifications of race and, increasingly, gender. It’s a complicated topic better left for now to a more full discussion elsewhere.)

But replacing status marriage with contract marriage, regardless of its historical baggage, need not and should not change the legal status of parent and child as a general and sociologically normative rule.

I would argue that the crisis and inevitable triumph of homosexual marriage is sufficient proof that marriage is not a status in American legal theory, but a contract. While a contractual understanding was solidified in the 1960s with the advent of no-fault divorce laws, the transition away from ’status’ began much earlier. From Michael Grossberg’s excellent Governing the Hearth:

The definition of marriage as a civil contract had deep roots in English legal tradition and colonial practice. The legacy of colonial legislation and custom, with its blend of Calvinism, Anglicanism, and English ecclesiastical law, remained important because it constituted the major statutory and judicial record for nineteenth-century lawyers. Though differing in many essentials, these sources emphasized the secular, contractual nature of matrimony while at the same time endorsing strict public nuptial vigilance. In most of the colonies communal had replaced ecclesiastical control, and the mutuality of the matrimonial pact was accepted. But while the effectiveness of community supervision waned with time, colonial law, like its English parent, highlighted the civil or public nature of the marriage pact.

Post-Revolutionary views of matrimony evolved from, and reacted against, this heritage. Though the law continued to portray marriage as a civil contract, in a vital transition the accent shifted from the first word to the second. The new emphasis was on the consensual nature of marriage. It also reflected the broader use of contract as the central metaphor for social and economic relations in nineteenth-century America. This occurred as part of the revolutionary change marked by “the gradual displacement of patriarchalism by contractualism.” Contractualism gained strength from the same forces that were eroding the hierarchical conception of society. Rather than viewing the body politic as an amalgam of interdependent, status-defined groups, contract ideology stemmed from a world view whose lode star was the untrammeled autonomy of the individual will. Relations of all kinds were to be governed by the intentions, not the ascribed status, of their makers. The English philosopher Sir Henry Maine characterized this transition as the “movement from status to contract.”

In resisting homosexual marriage, conservatives are (rightly) resisting a development the seeds for which were sewn hundreds of years ago in John Locke and his atomistic and individualistic anthropology. Ridgely and Kuznicki have good reason to be optimistic: the philosophical foundation for homosexual marriage is so deeply embedded in even Christian’s minds that it’s nearly impossible to conceive of grounds upon which our secular culture might reject it.

The recent California Supreme Court decision to sanction homosexual marriage has launched the question of the State’s relationship to matrimony back into the public consciousness.  Jennifer Roback Morse, who was speaking this last week at Acton, has recently written a provocative defense of traditional marriage.  At least Jason Kuznicki of Positive Liberty found it so:

Now, admittedly, it’s fair to turn around a number of these points. For example, the state most certainly forces me to accept — whether I’d like to or not — the validity of certain clearly facetious heterosexual marriages. And even if a marriage is traditional, safe, sound, and morally upright, it is still an attack on my own liberties to be forced by the state to recognize it as such. I’ll make up my own mind, thanks very much. If we’re going to use Morse’s very fine moral sensibilities on this point, then state recognition surely counts as a special favor for heterosexuals, too, and they should learn to do without it.

Make no mistake about it — this recognition of heterosexual unions constitutes “coddling and protection,” even when — a fortiori — heterosexual unions shouldn’t need it. After all, heterosexual marriages aren’t supposed to be creatures of the state, but of civil society. What we have here is perhaps an argument for abolishing state-sanctioned marriage, not for keeping gays out of it per se.

And if we abolished state-sanctioned marriage, what would we be left with? Why, we’d have private heterosexual marriages, regulated by churches and families. And that would likely be all. I suspect — I fear — that we would have virtually no private homosexual marriages. This would perhaps only prove Morse’s point that the one is a natural institution, while the other is generally speaking a grab at state power.

I know my husband disagrees with me, but I do believe that these are serious issues. I wish I saw a way around them. I don’t.

It’s perhaps the strongest indictment of same-sex marriage that virtually no homosexuals even tried to form married familial units before the idea of state-sponsored same-sex marriage caught on. Creature of the state? For the most part, we’re guilty as charged.

In a follow-up post, Kuznicki rejects Morse’s argument, writing:

Worse, none of them can counter the numerous examples of gay irresponsibility out there. The promiscuity, the drug use, the impermanence of gay relationships — all of these suggest that gays who can take care of others are the exception, not the rule. It annoys progressives when conservatives mention these facts. (It’s also annoying when conservatives invent facts to make things seem worse than they really are. But let’s face it, things can be pretty bad here.) The notion that “gays can be responsible” calls for further investigation, to say the least.

This is a serious problem, not something to be brushed aside. The only solution I can see to it — and I know that conservatives will reject it immediately — is to insist that we’re not trying to legislate for “gays” at all. We’re not considering them as a group. That’s not the point of this sort of activism at all.

We are trying to legislate for individuals, on an individual basis, without reference to the groups into which individuals are placed. This frees us from either the collective guilt or collective responsibility tests. These things are traps, and this is the way that Morse wants us to think. For her, it seems, straight people are individuals, while gays are a collective. We judge the one on individual merits, and the other on whatever awful thing we happen to remember from the TV news reports of a gay pride festival. For whatever reason, it’s still terribly easy to think this way.

Kuznicki’s response to Morse’s argument underscores that the marriage debates hinge upon whether marriage is constituted by anything other than legal contracts.  Kuznicki’s contention that Morse wants us to judge homosexuals on the basis of groups is almost right: the question is whether those individual heterosexuals who cannot procreate are a valid objection to the “pre-political” basis of heterosexual marriage, and whether those individual homosexuals who do have loving, committed relationships constitute a valid basis for homosexual marriage.  For Morse and social conservatives, the answers are “no” and “no,” respectively.  But not because we are judging homosexuals as a group.  Rather, for Morse and other social conservatives, the question of the validity of homosexual marriage is not a question to be decided on the basis of sociology, but on morality and metaphysics.  Such reasoning is, I think, commensurate with a liberal democracy.  Whether it is commensurate with this liberal democracy, which seems to only acknowledge scientific rationale as “objective” is another question.

One further note:  while Kuznicki rightly criticizes Morse’s use of “pre-political,” it seems plausible that she actually means something like “sub-political” or “sub-legal,” e.g. an institution grounded upon natural law (not the environment).  If there is such a ’sub-political’ (or better, ’supra-political’) basis for heterosexual marriage, then it is plausible that the State could have an interest in promoting and protecting it to the exclusion of other forms of relationships.

In fact, Kuznicki’s contention that such “coddling” is inconsistent with the fact that heterosexual marriage is a creation not of the state, but of civil society, is unpersuasive.  Individual liberties, which Kuznicki (rightly!) cares deeply about, are not a creation of the state (nor of civil society–I would presume they go even deeper than that).  But that does not mean the state doesn’t have an interest in preserving and protecting them.

Imperialism is a word most often found in the mouths of green and hip college students, slung about in derision of cold-hearted, greedy conservatives that do little more than suck the life, vitality, and cash out of the world’s “bottom billion.”  Haughty sniffs and high blood pressure are usually joined with an emotional harangue lumping the appearance of McDonald’s in poor African countries, neo-cons, and the ubiquitously materialist suburban soccer mom in one streaming monologue of angst.  If you spend time with such young and activist youth in any capacity (or their trendy parents) try turning the tables on them and suggest it is groups like the UNICEF, Planned Parenthood, and numerous national aid agencies that are the true imperialists.  It is these compassionate aid groups that are truly and dangerously imperialistic in ways the conservatives and Christians never will be. (more…)

If there is one idea that comes up in every lecture at Acton University, it is a particular view of the human person mentioned in shorthand as “Christian anthropology.”  This view of the human being as a person made in the image of God, made free, and having an essence or nature is integral to the second most bandied idea here at Acton—natural law.  Natural law, briefly described, is that law which is universally binding and universally accessible through the right operation of human reason.  While not necessarily a Christian idea, also being promulgated by Roman Stoic philosophers in an attempt to unify the Roman Empire across the vast geographic, cultural, and religious divides contained under the standard of the Imperial eagle, Christian theologians and thinkers found that a very similar idea was implicitly and explicitly stated in the Bible.  Drawing on this notion of universal truth, universal morals, and the unity of reason across the human race Christians were able to make sense of the universal message of Gospel in a variety of very different social contexts.

In more recent decades, however, the idea of natural law has fallen on hard times both among the world’s irreligious as well as, interestingly, many Protestant evangelicals.  In a thoughtful and clarifying Acton University lecture this morning, Dr. Stephen Grabill argued that much of the Protestant rejection of natural law can be traced to certain doctrinal emphases arising out of 19th century church teachings.  Besides tracing the historical legacy of 19th century Protestant thought, Grabill also suggested that many of difficulties plaguing evangelicals as they engage with their secular culture on social and political issues can be easily connected to an abandonment of the Christian heritage of natural law.

For many Protestants today, and more especially those in the Reformed tradition, natural law poses two problems, both of which have anthropological roots.  (more…)

“I sense a craving in our churches and youth groups for a deeper union with Christ.” (p.81)

In Sex, Sushi, & Salvation Christian George has continued the informal literary tradition of On the Road and Blue Like Jazz to give us an idiosyncratic “storyized” introduction to the basic truths of the Christian worldview.

Through a disconnected series of “exotic potpourri life slices” (back cover) he guides us with wit, charm, and confessional honesty through timeless facts of life, such as man’s depravity and the ever-presence of God’s loving forgiveness.

Along the way, we learn about the endearing personality and life of the author as we are lead back to to the feet of tried-and-true guides such as the Westminster Catechism, John Wesley, and Jack Handey, (Ok, maybe not Jack Handey); we are also introduced to some lesser-known encouragement from anonymous Puritan poetry, the poetry of a depressed William Cowper, and the broken-but-hopeful lyrics of 1870’s jazz.

What is the problem, the need, the desire? “I sense a growing desire within [Generation Y] to lift up Christ and see His glory as something sacred again. A revival is breaking out among younger evangelicals who proclaim God’s heaviness and worship Him in glory.” (p.80)

As JP Moreland diagnoses in his latest book Kingdom Triangle, this yearning might be due in part to our scientistic (not scientific) materialistic worldview, wherein empirical experimentation reigns tyrannical, and we attempt to ignore the major knowledge traditions, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy, and theology. Although such scientism depends by definition upon a few select (unquestioned) philosophical and theological assumptions, in our view only thing that we count as certain is the experience of the senses filtered through experimental hypotheses. This leaves our spirits crying out for nourishment, but forced to yield reality and factuality in the uncertain hands of narrative, image, myth, and sentiment.

In spite of a desire to avoid “doctrine-resistant” emergent church solutions to this yearning, George walks a close line. As Matt observed in his review, “George seems to be attempting to take the best story-telling aspects of post-modern adherents and weaving them into a conservative theological framework that is grounded, above all, in an authentic experience of the Living God… There is some question, I think, whether Miller’s style can be baptized effectively, or whether it is itself at odds with a conservative theological position.” One sees the very dreaded theological errors such as this in George’s attempt to frame the question about the mystery of the Trinity on page 90. (George asks, “Have you ever pondered the deep mysteries of God? For instance…How can one person be three people at the same time?” p. 90) The difference between super-rational and irrational is the difference between a Celestial spirit and a frog, between the truth of the Holy Trinity and falsity of bad math, and George is unclear at points as to which category he thinks Christianity falls into.

The divine essence is one, but there are three people who share that essence or nature. The essence (and its relation to the persons) is definitely above human reason, but it is within the purview of human rationality and Christian theology to accurately state what we can and do know. And it is a grave error to suggest that the divine essence is “one person.”

There is also some question in the reader’s mind as to whether George intends his audience to be Christians or non-Christians. Donald Miller’s opus is quite clearly a book by a non-conventional Christian for non-conventional Christians. It may equally work for those who grew up Christians but have fallen away, or for those ubiquitous “spiritual but not religious” folk who have not yet not given up completely on the Christian voice for answers and guidance in the spiritual life. George’s approach, on the other hand, seems to be a book by a highly traditional Christian (an interesting and delightful, but highly convetional Christian) dressing up the lovely old faith in the fashionable garb of the narrative of a charming personality.

In spite of such observations, George uses this postmodern narrative structure as a (perhaps admirable) expirment, using it to point us “back the future” where we can rediscover our ideal Christian heritage: That golden combination of a heart-felt faith, a sharpened mind, and a living trust in the supernatural power of our Father. We must avoid “cotton-candy Christianity” (p.81) and “We must take a step back in order to take a step forward. We must go back to the Bible and the roots of our faith. We must rediscover the ancient doctrines, creeds and confessions that enrich our Christian heritage. We must listen to the hymns that history has sung for us long ago; sit under the teachings of the Council of Nicea, the Apostles Creed, and the Westminster Confession.” (p.170)

After all, if Christ did not literally, historically raise from the dead, we are of all men most to be pitied. And Christianity is not a prosperity religion, at least not without perspective to eternity. Rather, as George reminds us, “[t]he call to Christianity is the call to die.” (p. 161)

A special treat for the attendees of Acton University, Mustafa Akyol delivered a lunch lecture addressing the principles of Islam that are basically compatible with free markets and free societies. While his comments were brief and limited by the restraints of a lunch hour, Akyol delivered a coherent and thoughtful argument based on historical examples that concluded with the radical statement (radical at least for many American Christians) that there is no inherent contradiction between Islam and freedom.

According to Akyol, there are three Muslim explanations for the real and perceived lagging of Islamic civilization behind the West. The secular fundamentalists (his term) argue that religion in every form is an impediment to progress and so the main reason Islamic nations are under-developed, close-minded, poor, and despotic in political governance is because the majority of the citizens cling to religion and are unable to open their minds to the truth of a god-less cosmos.

In direct contrast, and taking up most of the air time on national and international news outlets, stand the Islamic fundamentalists—those who argue that the abandonment of fundamental Islamic truths and practices has led to the decline of the Muslim societies. The solution offered by this group of Muslims is most familiar to us in the form of terrorism, but also is expressed in totalitarian governments where the state enforces strictly interpreted Islamic law.

The third group (and obviously Akyol’s preference given its place in his lecture as the third or alternative way), offers a thoughtful and nuanced explanation that draws on social, geographical, economic, and political factors to explain the ascendancy of the West and the decline of the Middle East.

Turning to history to underscore his contention that both the secular fundamentalists and the Islamic fundamentalists, Akyol mentioned a few paradigmatic examples the place of freedom in Islam. He pointed out that Mohammed was a trader before he was a prophet and that even the Qu’ran contains stipulations governing the practice of trade—that it should be freely engaged in and that only God and not the government, has the prerogative to set and fix prices. Later on, the Islamic empire saw the rise of universities and banking develop out of its own notions of freedom of ideas and the freedom of the market. Finally, the great Islamic thinker Ibn Khaldun made the observation that the most prosperous and happy societies are those that had the lowest taxes on their people.

While much more needs to be said to move from these few examples of some sort of freedom in the context of Islam, they serve to at least pique the appetite for further study. Making any sort of abstract or ideological claim on the basis of historical example is always subject to numerous pitfalls as the historian must be careful in choosing paradigmatic examples, rather than choosing examples that fit his theory but may very well be aberrations or deviations from the norm. Christians should be acutely aware of this tendency as it is almost nauseating how often secular pundits misinterpret events of the Middle Ages in order to make a case for the radical shift that came when religion was marginalized during the Enlightenment era.

The historical analysis needs to be continued, but in the meantime I think it worthwhile to join Akyol in a cautious optimism that Islam may not be as diametrically opposed to freedom as bin Laden, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the jihadist movements would have us believe. And Turkey might be the best place to look for the development of a comfortable, even if not organic, relationship between free markets, capitalism, and Islam.

The Judeo-Christian religion has always experienced a tension between expansion and isolation, universality and particularity. From the beginning of the history of the world as outlined in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, we are confronted with a view of mankind that has unity in diversity at its very core. The story of humanity opens in Eden with two (very different) human beings joined together in a dissoluble union as man and wife; the family is at the center of man’s world. However, the story of the unity of mankind quickly devolves into combative tension and difference, dramatically beginning with the Fratricide and rushing forward towards the rise and fall of Babel and finally beings swept away in a great deluge of wrath, to say nothing of water.

As God began to work in history with specific people something like a polarization came about. The Jews understood themselves as a group of people in contrast to Others, the Gentile or the nations. They were a particular group, different and separate from all others, complete with a new sort of religion, a totally different God, and rites, rituals and customs that all created barriers between the Jews and the rest of the world. However, running alongside this radical separation together and underneath it, is the continual reminder that God is not only the God of the Jews but is the God of all mankind, the God who has created all things, established a universal moral order, rules over the nations, and will hold all men accountable for their rebellion, pride, and sin. The Old Testament prophets were consistent and repetitive in their dennoucement of Israelite sin along with pronouncements that God would one day glorify Himself in all the peoples of the world.

These two truths, that God is the God of a particular people and is also the God of all people provides a unique foundation for a Christian theory of globalization. Perhaps most unique, or at least most helpful, given the current reactions to colonialism, imperialism, and cultural hegemony—real and perceived—aspect of a Christian approach to globalization is this dual approach to human diversity. Christianity does not demand a homogenization of culture, although it does place priority on the unifying aspects of human nature and God’s law. By recognizing that there are certain universal aspects to human nature, things like rationality, creativity, communality, and that there also are universal laws with moral import Christianity provides a framework under which diverse communities and societies can be united with a common understanding of themselves, their purpose, and the meaning of their lives, endeavors, and actions. At the same time, this framework is not so restrictive or demanding that is will squelch or destroy the various individual and localized expressions of human nature.

While there are numerous prudential considerations to be made with regard to various global issues and the forms and roles governing interaction between diverse people groups, Christianity, with its universal claims about God and man is able to avoid the human tendency to devolve into sectarian disputes and conflict that pits one local expression of universal truth against another. The Christian context gives usch conflicts access to a higher and more universal vocabulary that makes sense of the differences while still uniting them in fundamental ways.

HT: Reflections on Dr. Samuel Gregg’s morning lecture on Theology and the History of Globalization at Acton University.

I have often found myself banging my head against the wall in frustration with the profligate waste of youthful energy exhibited by groups like Rock the Vote, Green Peace, and other groups that take on grave global issues which, if not obviously immoral are at least examples of injustice or a shriveling of human potential or assault on human dignity. It is fairly easy these days to generate a great deal of righteous indignation over tragic instances of injustice around the world.

The last few generations of students have been bombarded with images of starving Ethiopian children, violently battered Middle Eastern women, and prematurely “experienced” child prostitutes. Christian mission agencies, non-governmental organizations and lobbies, international charities, and multitudinous U.N. committees have worked hard to expose Western youth to harsh realities in far corners of the world, and have become experts at whipping up a frenzy of outrage mingled with pity before quickly passing the basket for donations or soliciting life investments from young people to join the army of aid-workers around the world.

While some might decry the use of images and instances of suffering to fundraise as grossly disrespectful, such tactics have resulted in raising awareness of global tragedies and prompting legions of people to begin thinking about and addressing these issues. The tactics might be insensitive but the greater error is in the misuse of the youthful energy drawn into these causes. More often than not, charitable groups (and Christian groups are sometimes as guilty of this mistake) are really good and arousing pity but really bad at providing solutions. There is often a tacit assumption that any action arising out of compassion or concern is good, simply because it comes from a good intention. However, it’s not only the road to hell that is paved with those sorts of intentions. The road to national destruction and oppression is laid with a similar sort of brick. (more…)

A second intriguing idea (read the first here) suggested by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse in her lecture on the Economic Way of Thinking is that whereas politicians, socialists, and all sorts of folks that populate our opinion making industries see difference between individuals as a potential source of conflict, economists (at least those who endorse free markets) see difference as an opportunity for production, development, collaboration, and cooperation.

The basic premise of free market economics (with a generous hat tip to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations) is that free trades are always mutually beneficial to all the parties involved. A radical notion arising from a very simple observation—people never freely engage in activities that harm them—it nevertheless suggests that free markets lend themselves to flourishing. St. Paul drew on this intuition in his discussion of the way husbands and wives ought to love one another, and the principle holds wherever it is applied. The very simplicity of this observation masks the dynamic impact it has on not only discussions about the best way to engage in commerce and trade, but has far-reaching impact in more trendy topics like world hunger, child labor, global poverty, resource development in third-world countries, and world peace. (more…)

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse just delivered a fascinating lecture overviewing the basics of economic thinking. Beginning with the basic premises of economic science, she rapidly moved through the basic methods of economic inquiry, principles that are foundational to the science itself, before ending with a discussion of the basic instituitions of free markets. For someone like myself without any strong economic training I found the entire topic engaging and of seeming great importance. While many of you may already be glazing over after the first mention of economics (my own knee-jerk reaction to the topic), I urge you to give the field of study a second chance as we work through a few of the most interesting insights.

While many people might see economics and market study a necessary field of inquiry that is far-removed from the work of the Church and perhaps even impossible to approach from a Christian perspective, there are two basic premises of economics that are powerful touch points between Christianity and economics, touch points that allow Christians to open a meaningful and intelligible conversation with economists of all stripes and colors. (more…)