Charitable giving in America has risen for the third consecutive year. The picture behind this recent report is rather interesting. Due to the absence of natural disasters, both nationally and internationally, large giving to major relief projects declined. Giving to human services also fell. The giving of corporate America rose only 1.5%. But in a shift from previous years giving to the arts and to cultural and humanities organizations grew rather significantly. The lion’s share of giving is still done by individuals, not by foundations, bequests and corporations. In fact, individual giving was about four times the amount given by all of these other sources combined, demonstrating once again that when individuals have the freedom to gain wealth they are enabled to share. But, as always, the largest percentage of giving was not among the rich. (This comment is not one meant to oppose affluence since there are several reasons why this remains true, and not all of these reasons suggest that the rich are universally uncharitable in the least. There is not a simple pattern here to explain this fact.)

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What causes poverty? The question presently plagues many serious Christian thinkers and leaders. The answers vary but the proposed solutions are the stuff of our political campaigns every four years. We can already hear the discussion from the various candidates for the presidency in 2008, both Republican and Democrat. One candidate, John Edwards, actually wants to make poverty a major issue in the next election, maybe as important as the Iraq War. He openly presents his version of a solution and thus makes it a major part of his stump speech these days.

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Here’s more from David Schmidtz’s Elements of Justice, in which he is engaging Rawls’ thought experiment on original position that presumes a closed society as the basis for his social thought. In a closed society we only enter by birth and leave by dying. Schmidtz observes that

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This year’s hot vacation bible school package is called The Great Bible Reef – Dive Deep Into God’s Word. The folks at BretherenPress are advertising The Great Bible Reef this way:

Dive into the ‘Great Bible Reef’ for an incredible VBS! Kids experience Bible stories through an interactive combination of music, art, science, games, worship, and drama in an underwater adventure. The ‘Great Bible Reef’ will have your kids swimming with delight as they explore all of God’s creation under the sea. Everything you need to dive right into the ‘Great Bible Reef’ is contained in this fun, aquatic pack!

Is an ecumenical, eco-awareness-driven summer bible school going to make a difference in your kids lives? That’s the question parents should be asking before they drop Bobby or Susie off at the church. Read more on The Great Bible Reef – Is Green VBS Good VBS?…

Albert Mohler weighs in on the chimera phenomenon, “The Chimeras Are Coming.” He links to a WaPo article from yesterday, “Making Manimals,” by William Saletan.

Saletan, a writer for Slate.com, concludes with this advice: “If you want permanent restrictions, your best bet is the senator who tried to impose them two years ago. He’s the same presidential candidate now leading the charge against evolution: Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican. He thinks we’re separate from other animals, ‘unique in the created order.’ Too bad this wasn’t true in the past — and won’t be true in the future.”

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There’s lots to digest and consider in a new Barna report on poverty:

A new national survey by The Barna Group regarding people’s perspectives on poverty shows that Americans are quite concerned about what they perceive to be a significant and growing challenge facing the nation. The survey also showed that most people are actively involved in trying to alleviate poverty, although they typically believe it is primarily the government’s job to do so. The religious faith of adults appears to have a limited influence on how people perceive and respond to poverty.

One of the sentences in that introductory paragraph that jumps out at me, of course, is the sense that most people “typically believe it is primarily the government’s job” to combat poverty.

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The idealism and the goals of the United Nations are laudable. The results, at least in recent years, have often been nothing short of a disaster. One example will suffice—the recently created U.N.’s Human Rights Council, begun a year ago this past week. This council is sadly typical of the modern collapse of the U.N. The Human Rights Council consists of 47 members, almost half of which are "unfree" or "partly free" nations, at least as ranked by Freedom House. Trying to get China, Russia, Cuba and Saudi Arabia to reach an agreement on violations of freedom in various countries is like trying to get the mafia to give up crime.

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I’m reading David Schmidtz’s Elements of Justice, which is very ably reviewed (although not by me) in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality (10.1). I just read a striking passage, which discusses the merits of a principle of property rights that respects first possession rather than equal shares.

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I thought this was an interesting bit at the intersection of morality and economics. An insurance brokerage firm, K&B Underwriters, is sponsoring a physicians’ survey designed to determine whether doctors who work within a “culture of life” framework (e.g., eschewing abortion) are less prone to malpractice suits than those who don’t. The company’s hypothesis is that pro-life physicians are indeed “safer” in this way, with the implication that pro-life medical practices could be one criterion taken into account when calculating malpractice insurance. It’s a controversial claim, to be sure, but an intriguing approach—and the results so far seem to be supporting the hypothesis.

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This post will be updated and bumped as more audio becomes available. Newer audio appears at the bottom of the list.

• Economic Liberty in Catholic Social Teaching: Kishore Jayabalan
• Competing Visions of Business: Michael Miller

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