Religious Freedom at the Ballot Box
Jonathan S. Tobin, Commentary
Just as significant [as the HHS mandate] is a referendum battle in Florida that will not only help determine the future of religious liberty in this country, but whether we are capable of facing up to our troubled past.
David Brooks recently took on the conservative movement for relying too heavily on pro-market arguments and tired formulas rather than emphasizing its historic features of custom, social harmony, and moral preservation.
As I’ve already noted in response to the Brooks piece, I agree that conservatism needs a renewed intellectual foundation brought about by a return to these emphases, yet I disagree that a lopsided devotion to “economic freedom” is what’s stalling us. If we hope to restore traditionalist conservatism, we’d do well to recognize that this means restoring economic conservatism along with it. Brooks is upset that dogmatic pro-market folks have seized the Republican Party, yet this is the same Republican Party that nominated the architect of Romneycare and can’t seem to get serious about the deficit.
Conservatism is faltering all around, and the reasons for each “sect’s” demise are more or less interrelated. As I’ve written elsewhere, we need to restore a holistic conservative imagination that ties its social and economic strains together by grounding them both in Russell Kirk’s “enduring moral order.”
For David Brooks, restoration is all about “balance,” but for the true conservative, it needs to be about integration.
Read more on David Brooks, Economic Liberty, and the Real Threat to Social Preservation…
At an Acton Institute event on Oct. 3 in Grand Rapids, Mich., Amway President Doug DeVos delivered a talk on ‘Free Enterprise and the Entrepreneurial Spirit’ to an audience of 200 people. He was introduced by the Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute.
Read more on Video: Amway’s Doug DeVos on ‘Free Enterprise and the Entrepreneurial Spirit’…
At the online Prager University, lecturer Frank Pastore asks: “Do you have the ability to shape your own destiny? Is there a difference between your mind and your brain? Or is free will just a convenient delusion? Are you really just a product of physical forces beyond your control?”
When my kids go to the pediatrician it is a mad house while we are waiting for the doctor to come in. All three of my kids are doing the random dance. The oldest is behind the bench inspecting the lamp, the youngest is hopping from one book to another spread out on the floor and the boy is using the bean bag chair as a fort.
Business Declares the Glory of God
Nathan Clarke, Christianity Today
How real-estate developer Walter Crutchfield’s gift at making money became a vocation.
Religious views should be welcomed in our public life
Interview with John Witte Jr., Faith & Leadership
Over 1,000 pastors across the U.S. agreed to participate in yesterday’s Pulpit Freedom Sunday. The event, part of a strategic litigation plan sponsored by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), is an annual attempt to provoke the IRS into revoking the non-profit status of churches. Pastors signed a pledge agreeing to “evaluate candidate(s) running for political office during a regular worship service in light of biblical Truth and church doctrine.”
While the IRS has reportedly issued threats to pastors who use the pulpit of political speeches, the agency has never actually taken the issue to court. “[The IRS prefers] to put out these vague statements and regulations and enforce it through a system of intimidation, says Erik Stanley, ADF’s senior legal counsel. “Pastors are afraid to address anything political from the pulpit.”
Although I have a number of friends at ADF and highly value the work they do, I’ve never been comfortable with their encouraging pastors to make political endorsements And I’m not the only one. According to a recent survey by LifeWay Research, nearly 90 percent of Protestant pastors believe they should not endorse candidates for public office from the pulpit.
My own view is that preachers are called to preach, not provide punditry. As Daniel Darling, a Chicago-area pastor and author, recently wrote,
West Michigan businessman, John Kennedy, has joined over 90 plaintiffs in filing suit against the federal government in its attempts to force business owners and employers to pay for procedures and medications that violate religious beliefs. Kennedy joins other business owners, such as Hobby Lobby CEO David Green who says “God owns” his business.
Read more on West MI CEO files lawsuit, cannot comply with Obamacare…
Joseph Pearce offers a controversial (and irrefutable) argument that faith is a prerequisite to true freedom:
In an age that seems to believe that Christianity is an obstacle to liberty it will prove provocative to insist, contrary to such belief, that Christian faith is essential to liberty’s very existence. Yet, as counter-intuitive as it may seem to disciples of the progressivist zeitgeist, it must be insisted that faith enshrines freedom. Without the shrine that faith erects to freedom, the liberties that we take for granted will be eroded and ultimately destroyed. Faith preserves freedom. It protects it. It insists upon it. Where there is faith there is freedom. Where faith falters, so does freedom. This truth, so uncomfortably perplexing for so many of our contemporaries, was encapsulated by G. K. Chesterton when he asserted that “the modern world, with its modern movements, is living on its Catholic capital. It is using, and using up, the truths that remain to it out of the old treasury of Christendom.”
How Do We Recover the Moral Foundations of Economics?
E. Calvin Beisner, Economics for Everybody
In Christian ethics, two virtues stand supreme: justice (or righteousness) and love (or grace). The moral economy will take both of these into account. It will not reward injustice or hate, but will reward justice and love.
