Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).

Posts by Joe Carter

February 03, 2015

How Puritans Became Capitalists

In his book, Heavenly Merchandize, Mark Valeri, professor of church history at Union Presbyterian Seminary, finds that the American economy as we know it emerged from a series of important shifts in the views of Puritan ministers: IDEAS: You’re saying that the market didn’t rise at the expense of religion, but was enabled by it? Continue Reading...
February 03, 2015

Why Government Money Alone Can’t Fix Poor Schools

The largest initiative to combat poverty by funding public schools has occurred in Camden, New Jersey, the poorest small city in America. New Jersey spends about 60 percent more on education per pupil than the national average according to 2012 census figures, or about $19,000 in 2013. Continue Reading...
February 02, 2015

The Only Solution to World Poverty

One of the primary assumptions of the modern age is that all choices are multiple choice. Whether we are choosing the color of the car we drive, the occupation that we will work, or the lifestyle we will live, choice is the dominate paradigm. Continue Reading...
January 29, 2015

Does Slave Redemption Increase Slavery?

Thousands of girls and women in Iraq and Syria have been captured by the Islamic State and sold into sex slavery. But one Iraqi man is trying to save them by buying sex slaves in order to free and reunite them with their families. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2015

Communion and Consumerism

“Consumption serves, sustains and deepens community—above all the Eucharistic community,” says Rev. Gregory Jensen in this week’s Acton Commentary. Consumption is not an end in itself but has a purpose. We are, Schmemann says, called by God “to propagate and have dominion over the earth”; that is to say, consumption serves human flourishing. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2015

How ‘Downton Abbey’ Shows Income Inequality Doesn’t Matter

After what seemed to be an interminably long wait, Downton Abbey, a British period drama on PBS, recently returned to America. Many of us who have been hooked on the show for four seasons tune in each Sunday night to watch the new twists in the saga of the Earl and Countess of Grantham, their household, and their servants. Continue Reading...