Christian Social Thought

April 02, 2019

Grace in our life together: Community beyond markets, states, and ‘social capital’

When discussing the role of economics in our life and world I am always careful to make a distinction: life is economic but economics is not all of life. I’ve suggested this broader understanding of personal and social interests has been common among major free-market theorists since Adam Smith. Continue Reading...

March 28, 2019

Martyrs remind us to fight the ‘isms’

There is a longstanding liturgical and spiritual discipline practiced in Rome during Lent. It involves celebrating mass at the crack of dawn each day at a different church in various corners of the ancient quarter of Rome. Continue Reading...

March 25, 2019

What’s behind the unhappiness epidemic in the NBA?

Recently Adam Silver, the commissioner of the National Basketball Association, spoke about unhappiness among many NBA players, When I meet with them, what surprises me is that they’re truly unhappy. A lot of these men are generally unhappy. Continue Reading...

March 21, 2019

Tenderness: a spiritual ‘currency’?

On March 18, in a meeting with representatives from the Camillan Charismatic Family of healthcare operators, Pope Francis said that Christianity simply “does not work” without practicing tenderness. He said tenderness is a virtue so little exercised in our charitable “encounters” with the sick, poor and suffering that it “risks being dropped from the dictionary” of our everyday language. Continue Reading...

March 19, 2019

Finding common grace in a Ugandan refugee camp

Every day we receive innumerable blessings from God. We receive these blessings apart from our individual standing before God or our membership in any faith community. These blessings are rooted in God’s creation itself. Continue Reading...

March 15, 2019

The person at the center of the economy

When we think about economics we can tend to immediately focus on mathematics, data, and graphs, but at its core economics is the study of human action in a marketplace. Economics is a human science. Continue Reading...

March 11, 2019

Socialists cannot divorce good intentions from sound economics

Corey Robin has contributed an interesting essay to the Boston Review’s forum ‘Economics After Neoliberalism’. I am reluctant to enter into debates on, “Neoliberalism”, a term so nebulous and variegated in its usage as to render it useless as anything other than an all-purpose cudgel with which to browbeat others in middlebrow magazines (See Phil Magness on its pejorative origins). Continue Reading...

February 26, 2019

Warren’s child care plan needs competition

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) unveiled a plan last week for universal child care. Despite her good intentions, her plan would restrict competition, raise prices, and reduce options for parents in need. Continue Reading...

February 26, 2019

Lessons from Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ in economics and life

When I first read Walden I was in the woods. In the Kitchel Lindquist Dunes Preserve to be precise which is also where I first read The Idiot and, amusingly, Dune. Continue Reading...

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