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

Why Max Weber was wrong about capitalism

Sociologist Max Weber famously associated Protestantism with capitalism. Although widely accepted by many, that claim is theologically dubious, empirically disprovable, and largely incidental, says Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg: Even when we consider modern capitalism’s emergence, a direct connection between this event and Protestantism is very open to question. Continue Reading...

What Should a Pope Say About Capitalism?

Pope Francis’ recent comments about economics has raised concerns among conservatives and libertarians. But at National Review, James Pethokoukis says free marketeers shouldn’t take the critique so personally: If you are a free marketeer offended by Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”) — in which he critiqued “deified” market capitalism and attacked income inequality — ask yourself: What should the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church say about economics in 2013? Continue Reading...

How John Locke Influenced Catholic Social Teaching

Joe Hargrave argues that John Locke and Pope Leo XIII have more in common than you might imagine: It isn’t often that John Locke is mentioned in discussions of Catholic social teaching, unless it is to set him up as an example of all that the Church supposedly rejects. Continue Reading...

How to Think About Money Like the Working Poor

After reading a comment thread in which her online friends were complaining about poor people’s self-defeating behavior, Linda Walther Tirado wrote an articled titled “Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, Poverty Thoughts,” which chronicled her struggles with near abject poverty. Continue Reading...

The Luxury of Solar-Powered Simplicity

There is a kind of trendy “green” simplicity that is a luxury only the comparatively wealthy can afford, says Dylan Pahman in this week’s Acton Commentary. But there is a movement catching steam that might perfectly encapsulate a type of solar-powered simplicity: The tiny house movement is a recent trend in the United States for building and living in eco-friendly domiciles about half the average size of an apartment. Continue Reading...

War on Contraception? No, an Attack on Religion

Until 2012, no federal law or regulation required employers to cover contraception or abortifacients in their company health plans. But last month a New York Times Times editorial claimed that “the assertion by private businesses and their owners of an unprecedented right to impose the owners’ religious views on workers who do not share them.” Continue Reading...

Free Societies Need Free Markets, Not Forced Conscription

How can we fix all that has gone wrong in our nation’s capital? Mandate military service for all Americans, men and women alike, when they turn 18. At least that’s the provocative solution Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank proposed this weekend: There is no better explanation for what has gone wrong in Washington in recent years than the tabulation done every two years of how many members of Congress served in the military. Continue Reading...