Posts by Jordan J. Ballor
February 27, 2019
In this week’s Acton Commentary, we take a short excerpt from the latest volume in the Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology, the second volume of the trilogy on common grace. Continue Reading...
February 20, 2019
The price of being middle class
I was glad to be able to engage P. J. O’Rourke in a wide-ranging discussion for the Acton podcast this week. In this episode of Acton Line, P. J. and I talk about “mutant” capitalism, cryptocurrency (neither of us really understand it), the state of the middle class, the Trump phenomenon, and much more, based on his latest book, None of My Business: P.J. Continue Reading...
February 11, 2019
A rule of thumb for the Green New Deal
I have a couple rules of thumb that I hope help me cut through some of the noise around various policy proposals and political debates.
One has to do with budgetary reform (a topic I covered at some length last week): If the plan doesn’t engage with entitlements, then it isn’t really a serious proposal. Continue Reading...
February 06, 2019
Further thoughts on debt and growth
There’s been some chatter about the partisanship of concerns about the federal debt recently. Debt is fine if the party you prefer is in control, but otherwise is bad it seems. Continue Reading...
December 05, 2018
The Christian life and the common good
In this week’s Acton Commentary I show that the idea that “physical needs must be met before people experience spiritual needs” is older than Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs.
The key to understanding how this might be lies in a distinction between the order of time and the order of being. Continue Reading...
October 29, 2018
Event: A Kuyperian Response to the Crisis in the Public Square
Every lightning-fast news cycle highlights the turmoil and tension of our current age.
Cultures are clashing both in Europe and in the United States as refugees from the Middle East and Central America seek asylum. Continue Reading...
September 26, 2018
Tribalism and the dangers of identity economics
Occasioned by some local controversy over a political endorsement by the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, in the Detroit News today I have a piece worrying about the implications of what might be called ‘identity economics,’ or “where we only agree to economic transactions with those who agree with us on an ever-growing list of moral or even political shibboleths.” Continue Reading...
July 25, 2018
Adam Smith and the morality of commercial society
Over at Arc Digital today I take a look at Adam Smith’s moral teachings, particularly in light of commercial society and Christian theology. This essay serves as a brief introduction to one of the Moral Markets projects I am working on, as well as a teaser for further exploration of the relationship between Christianity and classical political economy. Continue Reading...
July 05, 2018
Mini-Review: Advice to a Desolate France
Gene Fant, president of North Greenville University, recently attended Acton University as a presidential fellow. He, like many of us, has a bunch of summer reading lined up, and this includes the short treatise from the sixteenth century, Advice to a Desolate France, by Sebastian Castellio. Continue Reading...
July 03, 2018
First Reformed: The toxic mess of syncretism
There’s a lot to process in Paul Schrader’s latest film, “First Reformed.” The first half of the film sets up as a powerful, even brilliant, study of spiritual desolation and the cross-currents of modern idolatry and traditional religion. Continue Reading...