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A Quaker economist’s lesson on seeking the truth together

There are several things, universally known, which one is never supposed to discuss over dinner: religion, politics, and money. I violate this generally well regarded rule on a regular basis while never impeding my digestion. My secret? I try, in the words of the prayer of St. Francis, not to seek so much to be understood as to understand. During the course of the discussion there es a time when my interest and inquiry is reciprocated. I try and focus...

WSJ profiles the Acton Institute, the antidote to ‘woke’ capitalism?

The Acton Institute reached an international audience of influencers this weekend with its mission of uniting markets with morality. The Wall Street Journalpublished a profile of Acton, and an extended look at the ministry of Acton co-founder Fr. Robert Sirico, in its “Weekend Interview” feature on Saturday, August 3. “When the Market Meets Morality” by William McGurn introduced a critical group of thought leaders to Acton’s work of promoting a free and virtuous society. McGurn writes that, like Lord Acton,...

Milton Friedman on business as an enemy of enterprise

Milton Friedman is one half of the duo so often identified with “neoliberalism” (the other being Friedrich Hayek), the hegemonic power that is typically seen as constitutive of our contemporary age. Friedman was a brilliant thinker, and one whose ideas warrant attention, not least because of their association with today’s political and economic situation. Oftentimes neoliberalism is connected with an ideology of privatization, which is itself seen as policy intended to empower and prioritize the interests of business and industry....

The El Paso shooting: The rise of Racial Collectivist Terrorism

On Sunday, the nation’s heart broke again as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius opened fire inside an El Paso Walmart, killing 22 people and injuring at least 26 individuals between the ages of two and 82. Minutes before the shooting, Crusius took to the website 8chan to post a manifesto that cobbles together racial and economic collectivism with environmental extremism in a way distinctive of the Alt-Right. As I noted in my Acton University lecture on the subject, the term Alt-Right as...

What is currency manipulation?

Yesterday the Treasury Department took the unusual step of designating China a currency manipulator. Secretary Mnuchin, under the auspices of President Trump, made the change, saying, “In recent days, China has taken concrete steps to devalue its currency, while maintaining substantial foreign exchange reserves despite active use of such tools in the past.” In this video from 2017, CNBC explains what it means for a country to manipulate its currency. (For a more in-depth explanation, see this post.) ...

Magic cards and market forces

Back in the 1990s, the debut of Magic: The Gathering marked a new form of gaming: collectible card games. While many may remember it similarly to Pogs, for example, Magic survived where Pogs did not. In fact, Magic is more popular now than ever. In 2018, I co-wrote and presented a paper on the topic for the Association of Private Enterprise Education that detailed its popularity: Magic: The Gathering … is played by millions of people around the world, with...

Letter from China: Civic virtue without freedom?

I spent most of July traveling to various parts of the People’s Republic of China. Although I made brief trips to Hong Kong in 2000 and Beijing in 2016, I have never experienced anything remotely similar to this more extended stay. Having a Chinese-speaking guide and the opportunity to speak to “friendly” locals (none of whom can be named out of concerns for their safety) provided more perspective than a tourist would normally have. It would be foolish for an...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

Up from the Liberal Founding

During the 20th century, scholars of the American founding generally believed that it was liberal. Specifically, they saw the founding as rooted in the political thought of 17th-century English philosopher John Locke. In addition, they saw Locke as a primarily secular thinker, one who sought to isolate the role of religion from political considerations except when necessary to prop up the various assumptions he made for natural rights. These included a divine creator responsible for a rational world for...

Oct 13, 2026

Creating an Economy of Inclusion

The poor have been the main subject of concern in the whole tradition of Catholic Social Teaching. The Catholic Church talks often about a “preferential option for the poor.” In recent years, many of the Church’s social teaching documents have been particularly focused on the needs of the poorest people in the world’s poorest countries. The first major analysis of this topic could be said to have been in the papal encyclical Populorum Progressio, published in 1967 by Pope...

Oct 13, 2026

C.S. Lewis and the Apocalypse of Gender

From very nearly the beginning, Christianity has wrestled with the question of the body. Heretics from gnostics to docetists devalued physical reality and the body, while orthodox Christianity insisted that the physical world offers us true signs pointing to God. This quarrel persists today, and one form it takes is the general confusion among Christians and non-Christians alike about gender. Is gender an abstracted idea? Is it reducible to biological characteristics? Is it a set of behaviors determined by...

Oct 13, 2026

Adam Smith and the Poor

Adam Smith did not seem to think that riches were requisite to happiness: “the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for” (The Theory of Moral Sentiments). But he did not mend beggary. The beggar here is not any beggar, but Diogenes the Cynic, who asked of Alexander the Great only to step back so as not to cast a shadow upon Diogenes as he reclined alongside the highway....

Oct 13, 2026

Spurgeon and the Poverty-Fighting Church

Religion & Liberty: Volume 33, Number 4 Spurgeon and the Poverty-Fighting Church by Christopher Parr • October 30, 2023 Portrait of Charles Spurgeon by Alexander Melville (1885) Charles Spurgeon was a young, zealous 15-year-old boy when he came to faith in Christ. A letter to his mother at the time captures the enthusiasm of his newfound Christian faith: “Oh, how I wish that I could do something for Christ.” God granted that wish, as Spurgeon would e “the prince of...

Oct 13, 2026

How Dispensationalism Got Left Behind

Whether we like it or not, Americans, in one way or another, have all been indelibly shaped by dispensationalism. Such is the subtext of Daniel Hummel’s provocative telling of the rise and fall of dispensationalism in America. In a little less than 350 pages, Hummel traces how a relatively insignificant Irishman from the Plymouth Brethren, John Nelson Darby, prompted the proliferation of dispensational theology, especially its eschatology, or theology of the end times, among our ecclesiastical, cultural, and political...

Oct 13, 2026

Jesus and Class Warfare

Plenty of Marxists have turned to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity. Memorable examples include the works of F.D. Maurice and Zhu Weizhi’s Jesus the Proletarian. After criticizing how so many translations of the New Testament soften Jesus’ teachings regarding material possessions, greed, and wealth, Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has gone so far to ask, “Are Christians supposed to be Communists?” In the Huffington Post, Dan Arel has even claimed that “Jesus was clearly a Marxist,...

Oct 13, 2026

Conversation Starters with … Anne Bradley

Anne Bradley is an Acton affiliate scholar, the vice president of academic affairs at The Fund for American Studies, and professor of economics at The Institute of World Politics. There’s much talk about mon good capitalism” these days, especially from the New Right. Is this long overdue, that a hyper-individualism be beaten back, or is it merely cover for increasing state control of the economy? Let me begin by saying that I hate “capitalism with adjectives” in general. This...

Oct 13, 2026

Mistaken About Poverty

Perhaps it is because America is the land of liberty and opportunity that debates about poverty are especially intense in the United States. Americans and would-be Americans have long been told that if they work hard enough and persevere they can achieve their dreams. For many people, the mere existence of poverty—absolute or relative—raises doubts about that promise and the American experiment more generally. Is it true that America suffers more poverty than any other advanced democracy in the...

Oct 13, 2026

Lord Jonathan Sacks: The West’s Rabbi

In October 1798, the president of the United States wrote to officers of the Massachusetts militia, acknowledging a limitation of federal rule. “We have no government,” John Adams wrote, “armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, and revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.” The nation that Adams had helped to found would require the parts of the body...

Oct 13, 2026