RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE | Audio: Samuel Gregg on God, Profit, and the Common Good

Don’t Politicize Transgender Issue

I want to be very clear from the outset that moral concerns surrounding transgender identity are not unimportant. But in the likely event that we e to any national consensus on that question any time soon, it is important not to overlook other moral and social concerns that are far more pressing. In particular, there are legitimate concerns regarding safety and privacy, no matter which side one favors, but resorting to the force of law will leave some real victims...

The Power—and Danger—in Luther’s Concept of Work

“MartinLuther probably did more than any Protestant to establish thetheology of work many Christians embrace today,” says Dan Doriani. “Like no theologian before him, he insisted on the dignity and value of all labor.” Doriani highlights many of Luther’s positive contributions to the theology of work, but warnsthat it can lead to confusing “work” and “vocation”: There is occupation without vocation. One can earn bread as a cashier, cook, nanny, or salesperson without hearing a call to that life. A...

Audio: Samuel Gregg on God, Profit, and the Common Good

Acton Institute Director of Research Samuel Gregg joined host John Harper on Relevant Radio’sMorning Air on Friday morning to discuss his latest book,For God and Profit: How Banking and Finance Can Serve the Common Good.Banking and finance are vitally important institutions in a free and prosperous society, and ordered properly contribute a great deal to mon good. The real question of the day is whether or not our banking and finance systems are properly ordered, and if they have gotten...

The ‘Good Food Now!’ Olive Garden Crusade

Your writer lives beyond the outskirts of Midland, Michigan, a small Midwestern town that is buoyed fortuitously by a Fortune pany. It’s a nifty place: Population around 50,000, a plethora of parks and bike trails, three rivers converging west of town, relatively low crime rate, and plenty of establishments of both the local and national variety in which to dine out. One of these eateries is the Darden Restaurants, Inc. chain Olive Garden. Can’t say I’ve ever dined there, but...

The Regulatory State Adds ‘Ten Thousand Commandments’ Every Year

In the Old Testament there mandments. Apparently,God deemed those to be enough to regulate almost every aspect of the lives of his people for thousands of years. You could read all of them in less than 30 minutes. The American federal government, however, is not so succinct. There are over 1 million restrictions in the federal regulations alone (i.e., not counting the statutory law). And thousands more are added every year. Each year the Competitive Enterprise Institute puts out annual...

Does Capitalism Exploit Workers?

One of the mon criticisms of capitalism is that the system exploits workers. It’s an old claim (dating back to at least Karl Marx). But is it true? Philosopher Matt Zwolinski argues that even if individual capitalists want to exploit workers the free market tends to prevent them from doing so. However, government interference in labor markets does allow some parties to gain at someone else’s expense. ...

Video: Michael Matheson Miller Critiques Celebrity Poverty Campaigns

Acton Institute Research Fellow and Director of Poverty, Inc. Michael Matheson Miller made an appearance on Fox Business Channel last week to discuss how his documentary addresses the issue of celebrity efforts at poverty alleviation, noting that often, such campaigns can do more harm than good. You can watch the interview below. ...

Explainer: Supreme Court Punts on Little Sisters Religious Liberty Case

What just happened? The Supreme Court avoided issuing a major ruling today in bined religious liberty case, Zubik v. Burwell. In a unanimous decision, the justices wrote that the Court “expresses no view on the merits of the cases” but were instead sending the case back down to the lower courts for opposing parties to work out promise. What is this case, and what’s it about? The case, Zubik v. bines seven challenges to the Health and Human Services’ (HHS)...

Samuel Gregg on David Bentley Hart and Murderous Markets

Is the dominant economic system we have today, the market economy or patible with Christianity? Orthodox Christian theologian David Bentley Hart in a June 2016First Things article titled,”Mammon Ascendant: Why global capitalism is inimical to Christianity,” is skeptical. As you might gather from the title of his article. On Public Discourse, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg takes a closer look at Hart’s curious economic postulates such as the one about the “purely financial market” and his rather overbroad claim that...

How Does the Economy Actually Work?

In every stage of my formal schooling – from high school to college to graduate school – I took courses in economics. Yet with all that education I struggled to understand a seemingly simple question: How does the economy actually work? Sure, I can still draw supply and demand curves or give the equation for GDP (Y = C + I + G + (X − M)). But when es to picturing a reasonably functional model of how it all...