"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton
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This weekend’s Grand Rapids Press featured a story about the release of the NIV Stewardship Study Bible. Ann Byle writes,
Three Grand Rapids-based organizations and numerous local residents joined forces recently to create a study Bible that focuses on stewardship.
The Acton Institute, the Stewardship Council and Zondervan brought the NIV Stewardship Study Bible into print after more than five years of work that began with Brett Elder, the council’s executive director.
Elder traveled the world speaking on generosity. He said people were receptive to his message, but pastors and church leaders asked him for resources to equip their congregations.
“The only resource that transcends culture is Scripture,” said Elder, who began searching for a Bible to fill that need.
Check out the whole story here. And visit the NIV Stewardship Study Bible website to enter the Stewardship 1000 challenge.
In connection with the worldwide celebrations of the quincentenary of John Calvin’s birth in 2009, the Acton Institute BookShoppe recently made available a limited stock of the hard-to-find Light for the City: Calvin’s Preaching, Source of Life and Liberty (Eerdmans, 2004). In this brief and accessible work, Lester DeKoster examines the interaction between the Word proclaimed and the development of Western civilization.
“Preached from off the pulpits for which the Church is divinely made and sustained, God’s biblical Word takes incarnation in human selves and behavior, creating the community long known in the West as the City. Calvinist pulpits implanted the Word even now flourishing in the great democratic achievements of the Western world,” argues DeKoster.
And in the wake of Reformation Day this past weekend, check out some reflections at Mere Comments, which include even more recommended sources for study of the Reformation.
Finally, while it’s often the case that the blogosphere breaks news before the official announcements are made, I can report that the Meeter Center’s Post-Reformation Digital Library (PRDL) is now publicly available. The PRDL is a select bibliography of primary source documents focusing on early modern theology and philosophy, spanning publicly-accessible collections from major research libraries, independent scholarly initiatives, and corporate documentation projects.
The PRDL editorial board includes representatives from institutions from North America and Europe: Dr. Richard A. Muller (Calvin Theological Seminary); Jordan J. Ballor (University of Zurich/Calvin Theological Seminary); Albert Gootjes (Calvin Theological Seminary/Institut d’histoire de la Réformation, Geneva); Todd Rester (Calvin Theological Seminary); Lugene Schemper (ex officio/Calvin College & Seminary); and moderator David Sytsma (Princeton Theological Seminary).
Ahead of it’s “official” release date of Nov. 1, 2009, the NIV Stewardship Study Bible and Effective Stewardship DVD Curriculum can be found on the shelves of most major book retailers around the country.
Zondervan’s release of these foundational resources is the result of a strategic partnership of the Stewardship Council and the Acton Institute working to bring the Biblical message of effective stewardship to bear on the moral and economic climate of our world.
To learn more about these resources go to www.stewardship1000.com.
We’re happy to announce that the latest print issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality is available online.
The Spring 2009 issue includes a noteworthy study by Alan T. Y. Chan and Shu-kam Lee. In “Christ and Business Culture: Another Classification of Christians in Workplaces According to an Empirical Study in Hong Kong,” Chan and Lee outline four types of Christians at work: Christian soldiers, panic followers, strugglers, and Sunday Christians. Following the classification, Chan and Lee “develop a model of potential, evolutionary processes that these Christian types may follow using game-theory analysis” and conclude with “an empirical data set, which was conducted in Hong Kong, to illustrate our classifications and suggest potential strategies to efficiently allocate resources within Christian churches.”
Also included in this issue:
Keith Aaron Boozer is a doctoral student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the journal encourages submissions from graduate students.
This issue also contains a wealth of helpful and incisive reviews of the latest books in Christian social thought, ethics and economics, and the philosophy, history, and methodology of economics. The timely editorial by executive editor Stephen Grabill, “Protestant Social Thought,” and article abstracts of current issues are freely available to nonsubscribers. And as per our “moving wall” policy of two issues, the most recent publicly-available archived issue is volume 11, number 1 (Spring 2008).
Access to the electronic versions of two latest “current” issues is available for individuals on a subscription basis. An electronic-only subscription is available for $10, and there are a number of other options for those wishing to receive the journal in hard copy form. We also encourage you to recommend the journal to friends, schools, and institutions.
The new issue of Religion & Liberty features an interview titled “Debating the Depression” with noted columnist and author Amity Shlaes. Shlaes does a superb job at reminding us about some of the consequences associated with massive government spending and regulation. First and foremost among these consequences is the burden of debt and taxes we are heaping upon future generations. This kind of expansion, without the means to pay for it, will sadly have a negative impact upon the quality of life of future Americans.
Another tremendous contribution comes from Grand Rapids orthopedic surgeon Dr. Donald P. Condit. Religion & Liberty has published an excerpt from his Acton monograph, A Christian Prescription for Health Care Reform. As we have seen, health care is an issue that inspires passion, activism, and tremendous debate, and it’s impossible to have a holistic understanding of this topic outside of a moral framework. The Acton Institute has been at the forefront when it comes to examining the moral implications related to our health care issues.
If you missed the book reviews that have already been previewed on the PowerBlog, we have a review of two books on Byzantium from Religion & Liberty’s Executive Editor John Couretas. I reviewed Dr. Jay Richard’s book Money, Greed, and God. I stated in the review some thoughts, which are essential for defending and expanding the influence of free markets:
Richards understands that for capitalism or free markets to succeed and flourish they must have a moral framework and hold a moral value for the believer. Even if one is, however, not a person of faith, it’s hard to argue against a need for a moral component for business and industry given the current economic crisis.
There is more content in the issue, including commentary on Pope Benedict’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate. Lester DeKoster was profiled for the “In the Liberal Tradition” this issue. DeKoster was first and foremost a Christian man of faith, who while serving our Lord, defended the Church against Marxist liberation theologies. Which was just one of his many accomplishments.
Well, at least the book is, anyway. The End of Secularism is now in stock at Acton.org and should be available in stores, too. Help me, faithful readers.
I don’t think I’ll disappoint you. Francis Beckwith, David Dockery, Russell Moore, Father Robert Sirico, Herb London, Jennifer Morse Roback, and Glenn Stanton all liked it. I hope you will, too.
Did you get the best part, by the way? FATHER ROBERT SIRICO. Here is his take on the book:
The task of discerning the alternative to practical atheism lived by many nominal Christians and the pretense of a neutral secularism has been made easier by this rich study. Once authentic Christians grasp the ramifications of the incarnation of Christ, then and only then will it be apparent that, as Baker argues, secularism only makes sense in relation to religion.
Amity Shlaes, a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations, has an excellent primer on public choice in the August 3 edition of Forbes, “The New PC.” Shlaes is also the author of the 2007 book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.
Shlaes, who will be featured in the upcoming issue of Religion & Liberty, writes, “Government reformers view themselves as morally superior, but that is an illusion. They are just like private-sector operators, who do things that are in their own interest, not society’s. Those things include taking advantage of an economic crisis to aggregate power for themselves and their offices.” She goes on to point out five specific instances of recent government action that fits the public choice paradigm.
I have no doubt that many enter politics with good intentions. Some even follow through on those intentions and work for their constituencies. But a precious few remain uncontaminated and uncorrupted by the temptations that political power offers.
This reality is a strong argument in favor of term limits. Even though the individual constiuencies might lose out by replacing older, more senior representatives, who have garnered the most powerful appointments and consolidated the most influence, it has the happy consequence of putting caps on political clout. Every so often the slate is rubbed clean and alliances, power partnerships, and appointments need to be rebuilt.
Anything that puts an absolute ceiling on an individual politician’s power seems like a step in the right direction. Of course, an unintended consequence is that with the sundown of their political career always in view, an individual politician will be just that much more focused on greasing the skids to a comfy private sector job after the term limits come into effect.
John Hartley, the founder and editor of the International Journal of Cultural Studies, does for that journal something like what I did for the Journal of Markets & Morality awhile back. He takes his experience as an editor to reflect on the current state of the scholarly journal amid the challenges and opportunities in the digital age.
Hartley opens his study, “Lament for a Lost Running Order? Obsolescence and Academic Journals,” by concluding that “the academic journal is obsolete,” at least as regards to its “form – especially the print journal.”
There are a number of particular assertions made in support of this conclusion with which I would quibble. I stand by the prediction in my earlier piece, “Scholarship at the Crossroads: The Journal of Markets & Morality Case Study,” (PDF) in which I state, “for the foreseeable future electronic journals will not replace print journals, but both will exist together in a complementary fashion, each addressing different demands.”
But Hartley’s is an interesting and valuable perspective on the impact of digitization on academic journals. And I certainly agree with him that the complete digitization of journals and casting off the printed form “may reduce collegiate trust and fellow-feeling, increase individualist competitiveness, and inhibit innovation.”
He’s also certainly right in his preferred response to such possibilities: “In the face of that prospect, I’m going to keep on thinking about covers, running orders, referees and reading until the role of editor is obsolete too.”
One of the conclusions that resulted from the JMM case study was that instead of unlimited free access to all journal content, we would distinguish between “current” issues and “archived” issues. The former would require subscription to be accessed digitally, and the latter would be freely accessible (with some exceptions for special content). Thus far this solution seems to have worked well, despite the argument by some that in the “network” economy, “value is derived from plentitude” rather than scarcity.
To get access to current issues of the Journal of Markets & Morality, be sure to subscribe today.
Pope Benedict XVI’s much anticipated economics encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, is scheduled to be released early next week, according reports. For a good sense of this pope’s thinking on economics, we offer an article the then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger presented in 1985 at a symposium in Rome. The Acton Institute published it under the title “Market Economy and Ethics.” As indicated by the following quote, the pope believed in integrating morals into economics in order to have sound and successful economic policy:
This determinism, in which man is completely controlled by the binding laws of the market while believing he acts in freedom from them, includes yet another and perhaps even more astounding presupposition, namely, that the natural laws of the market are in essence good (if I may be permitted so to speak) and necessarily work for the good, whatever may be true of the morality of individuals. These two presuppositions are not entirely false, as the successes of the market economy illustrate. But neither are they universally applicable and correct, as is evident in the problems of today’s world economy.
Without developing the problem in its details here — which is not my task — let me merely underscore a sentence of Peter Koslowski’s that illustrates the point in question: “The economy is governed not only by economic laws, but is also determined by men…” Even if the market economy does rest on the ordering of the individual within a determinate network of rules, it cannot make man superfluous or exclude his moral freedom from the world of economics. It is becoming ever so clear that the development of the world economy has also to do with the development of the world community and with the universal family of man, and that the development of the spiritual powers of mankind is essential in the development of the world community. These spiritual powers are themselves a factor in the economy: the market rules function only when a moral consensus exists and sustains them.
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