"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton

‘A Broadened Perspective on the Ethics of Early Modern Exchange’

Camarin M. Porter of the Department of History at University of Wisconsin-Madison reviews a text edited by Stephen J. Grabill, Sourcebook in Late-Scholastic Monetary Theory: The Contributions of Martin de Azpilcueta, Luis de Molina, and Juan de Mariana (Lexington, 2007). The review appears courtesy of H-Net, a unique and indispensable set of list-servs hosted by Michigan State University.

The Sourcebook includes translations into English of selected texts from the significant figures listed in the book’s subtitle, as well as a general introduction by Grabill and specialized introductions for each text: Azpilcueta’s Commentary on the Resolution of Money (1556), Molina’s Treatise on Money (1597), and Mariana’s Treatise on the Alteration of Money (1609).

In this extensive review, Porter writes, “For each of the three texts, the Sourcebook efficiently accomplishes its goal of setting each authors’ specific concerns in areas of moral theology and economics within full social and intellectual contexts.”

Books for the Arsenal of Ordered Liberty

As we begin the New Year, I find myself thinking about books that fill the conservative armamentarium for resisting the left-liberal onslaught on the past handful of years. I’ve omitted some categories, like military and foreign policy, because they are outside my areas of expertise and don’t apply as much to the Acton mission, anyway. Here are my recommendations:

Economics:

Common Sense Economics by James Gwartney, Richard Stroup, and Dwight Lee — Dr. Gwartney taught the first economics class I ever took as a university student and made a permanent impression. Socialism has looked like wishing-makes-it-so madness ever since I sat under the powerfully logical lectures of this confident professor.

The Role of Government:

Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics by P.J. O’Rourke — Though this book is billed as an economics book, I think of it as having broader philosophical and practical lessons to teach about the way government works in healthy societies and how it creates pathology in unhealthy ones. It has the trademark O’Rourke humor, but the moral of the story is deadly serious.

Bi-Partisan Hope (if such a thing exists):

Re-Inventing Government by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler — One of the worst parts of the decline of the New Democrat movement in America is that it took the kind of thinking in Re-Inventing Government with it. The authors argue that government is not very good at actually, you know, doing stuff. It would be better for the government to privatize as much as possible and take advantage of market incentives where it can. The central insight, which I love, is that the age of monolithic government bureaucracies should quickly pass in favor of lean government which focuses on entrepreneurial policy where it makes sense for government to intervene. The logic of Re-Inventing Government could easily support new ideas about public schooling where government might fund education, but wouldn’t have to run schools.

Abortion:

The Party of Death by Ramesh Ponnuru — The author documents the slide of the American left into an almost soulless devotion to abortion laissez faire and an accompanying disinterest in maintaining the sanctity of life in other areas. This book did not get the attention it deserved in a year dominated by news about Iraq. Ponnuru is one of the most articulate and rhetorically powerful defenders of the sanctity of life writing during the last ten years.

Religion and Money:

Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem by Jay Richards — Evangelicals, especially younger evangelicals, have been increasingly squishy on free-market economics of late. This has been so much so that different organizations, like the Acton Institute, Heritage, and AEI have undertaken initiatives to reach out to them on matters of economic policy. Jay Richards (a think tank vet of Discovery, Acton, and Heritage) has written a book tailor-made for this audience. I’ve had the privilege of hearing him discuss these matters and he is highly persuasive.

Christianity and Whatever Historical Awfulness You Care to Name:

God’s Battalions by Rodney Stark — Stark is legendary in my old grad program for once telling a socialist student “Listen to me. Marx is doo-doo.” In this book, he takes on the old and busted claim that the Crusades were a purely evil enterprise. I recommend this one because it is his latest, but he has written several other fantastic volumes on the intersection of faith, history, and society. For the Glory of God is particularly notable.

*Hunter Baker is the author of The End of Secularism.

Wealth and Fidelity, Golf and Marriage

Amidst all the craziness of l’affaire d’Tigre there are some important questions being raised about the linkage between power, wealth, and faithfulness.

The Wealth Report at The Wall Street Journal asks, “Is it harder to stay faithful with large wealth?”

The initial sociological findings don’t seem to correlate wealth with adultery, at least at any higher rates than the general population of males (interestingly enough, a 2007 survey led to the conclusion, “When it comes to infidelity, money has a bigger impact on women than men.”).

Jesus gives us an apt axiom: “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.”

And so there’s the corollary question of whether dishonesty in one area of life should lead us to question whether there is dishonesty in other areas. Tiger Woods’ apparent and alleged marital infidelities might make us wonder about his emotional control, for instance. Does his robot-like and highly-controlled exterior hide deeper emotional turmoil, as his outbursts on the golf course (both positive and negative) suggest?

And should we wonder whether Tiger would cheat on the golf course? If he’s willing to cheat on his wife, would he cheat at golf? Or does his great love and respect for golf, the ultimate gentleman’s sport, exclude that possibility? And if so, what does that say about his love and respect for his wife?

On the one hand it is clear that one need not be prosperous to be adulterous, greedy, or dishonest. But wealth can sometimes help to insulate us from the common consequences of these sins, and perhaps make facilitate their commission, while at the same time potentially exacerbating the fallout if and when it does come during this life.

Update: A timely word on the economic implications of recent events from SNL, “The PGA Tour: No Tiger, no problem!”

Socialism Flu Shots for Christmas

Got the socialism blues? Worried that a friend or maybe a teenage son or daughter may contract a nasty case of it? Marvin Olasky at World magazine recommends former Acton research fellow Jay Richards’ 2009 HarperOne book, Money Greed and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and not the Problem:

Among the myths Richards demolishes: The Nirvana Myth (contrasting capitalism with an unrealizable ideal rather than with its real alternatives), the Piety Myth (focusing on good intentions rather than results), and the Materialist and Zero-Sum Game Myths (believing that wealth is not created but simply transferred).

Richards, one of that rare breed with a theology doctorate but an understanding of economics, also points out the errors of the Greed Myth (believing that the essence of capitalism is greed), the Usury Myth (that charging interest on money is immoral), and the Freeze-Frame Myth (that what’s happening now regarding population, income, natural resources, or so on, will always happen).

Want to administer some of the immunizations in delicious DVD form? Try a high-quality, narrative-driven Acton documentary that was irenic enough to air on scores of PBS stations around the country but with enough red meat to also air on Fox Business: The Call of the Entrepreneur shows why entrepreneurs and capitalism are part of the solution, and why socialism delivers the opposite of what it promises. The story of Jimmy Lai–the boy who escaped Communist China, founded a media empire, and confronted the Chinese leaders behind the Tiananmen Square Massacre–is alone worth the price of admission.

Sacred Selling

I have been thinking a lot about the way we sell church-related goods and services.

I have been thinking about that and about Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers and sacrificial animal sellers in the temple.

The marketing inside the church has probably never been more feverish than it is today. Hollywood hires savvy Christian marketers to try to gin up interest in certain films among our demographic. We trademark little phrases for sale to Christians. I recently heard an acquaintance excitedly describe a system for integrating Prayer and Your Priorities. I shall not share the catchy name for this system so as to avoid smearing the person working on it. This results in a marketing platform for an inspirational book, a devotional, a daily planner for the system, calendars, sticky notes, etc. I imagine it will prove attractive for some Christian publishing house.

My question, though, is whether this is a wholesome thing for the church. As the author of a book, though not a super consumer-oriented one, I think about it all the time. For example, if called upon to preach at a local church, should I take along a box of books to sell at the end of the service? Should I even mention the book? Should I ask whoever introduces me to mention the book? Should we sell ANYTHING in the church?

The question is not as easy as it may appear. For example, the market instincts of new publishers spread Martin Luther’s work to a large audience. Without the printing press, Luther probably would have died as just another dissenter. Marketing and the honest profit motive are surely reasons why the Bible is as incredibly widely available as it is.

But the question remains. How far do we go in making a profit from the gospel of Jesus Christ? I don’t have a good answer.

PBR: Glory and Money

Sports are still able to foster human virtues, especially classical virtues like courage and fortitude. Like any good thing, sport all too often risks becoming an idol, not because of any fault within the institution itself so much as the fault lying within each human participant.

If there’s anything that distinguishes modern sports from classical antecedents, I suppose it would be the wealth that is often attached to high-profile sports today. You might call it the professionalization of sport. Yesterday’s cover story in USA Today examined the extent to which nominally non-professional sports, like college basketball, have become major industries. This is even more the case with overtly professional sports. It seems to me that in the ancient world, there was a great deal of glory or prestige that was associated with victory. But in addition to that aspect of sporting endeavors, we have the added prospect of great wealth for those who excel at golf, tennis, basketball, or football.

Glory may have been an appropriate motivation for pursuing sports in the ancient world, although there’s no doubt that this kind of fame-seeking can become idolatry in its own way. But I’m sympathetic to the view that sports’ ability to foster human virtue is at least potentially compromised by the additional motivation of wealth-seeking. For every athlete that excels today from a deep “love of the game,” there are a dozen others who are in it just for the paycheck.

Jesus and the Parables

By happy serendipity two books of related interest caught my attention today.

The first is David Cowan’s Economic Parables: The Monetary Teachings of Jesus Christ (Paternoster, 2007). Michael Kruse recommends the book in a brief review.

The other book is a newly-announced Christianity Today award winner in the “Biblical Studies” category. The judges describe Klyne R. Snodgrass’ Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus as “a superb culmination of career-long reflection on one of the most important genres in biblical literature.”

Pope Bendedict Warns France on Money, Power and Greed

Pope Benedict’s visit to secular France and its reformist President Sarkozy has proved to be successful above all expectations, as reported by Vatican newspaper L’Osseservatore Romano. During his Paris homily, at the Esplanade des Invalides, the Holy Father encouraged the 250,000 faithful in attendance to turn to God and to reject false idols, such as money, thirst for material possessions and power.

In his homily the Pope referred to the teachings of Saint Paul to the early Christian communities in which the Apostle warned the ancients of idolatry and greed. The Pope explained how modern society has created its own idols just as the pagans had done in antiquity.

The Pope emphasized that these idols represent a “delusion” that distracts man from reality, that is, from his “true destiny” and “places him in a kingdom of mere appearances” as quoted in Zenit’s article. Benedict underlined that the Church’s condemnation of such idolatry is not, however, a condemnation of the individuals per se, but more so of the evil temptations themselves.

“In our judgments, we must never confuse the sin, which is unacceptable, with the sinner, the state of whose conscience we cannot judge and who, in any case, is always capable of conversion and forgiveness,” he said.

The Pope recognized that the path to God is not always easy, but through the Eucharist, he said, man understands that God “teaches us to shun idols, the illusions of our minds” and that “Christ is the sole and the true Saviour, the only one who points out to man the path to God.”

This does not mean that the Benedict condemns business, trade, all the positive economic phenomenon that allow for wealth and prosperity. But concerned for France’s extreme tendencies toward materialistic relativism, the Pope rightly pointed out how France cannot marginalize itself from religion.

Benedict’s sermon strongly underlined how every believer in the light of God should pursue his own vocation, which may include business or particular talent God has instilled in him.

Had it not been so, I doubt that secular and business orientated President Sarkozy would have ignored State protocol and met the religious leader on his arrival at the airport. The French President was eager to promote “a new dialogue” with the Church and to talk about the need of a “positive laicity” in Europe and its expanding economic unity.

Fundraising and the Fungibility Phenomenon

A fight broke out this week between non-profit groups over fundraising. While not in direct competition for donor dollars, the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance expressed its displeasure with Meijer, Inc. for participating in a fundraising event with the Humane Society of the United States. The program was set up to contribute money to a support Foreclosure Pets Fund, designed to give support to pet owners facing foreclosure.

Meijer suspended the program after fielding complaints from the Alliance that the chain was cooperating with an anti-hunting organization. What does pet foreclosure have to do with anti-hunting? An Alliance statement gets at the crux of the issue, pointing out, “The money donated to the HSUS through this promotion, while not going directly to its anti-hunting campaign, will free up money from the organization’s general fund that can be used to attack the right of sportsmen.”

That, my friends, is called fungibility, a fancy word that simply is used to identify the ability for money or funds to be transferred between sectors of a balance sheet and across budgets. I don’t want to adjudicate the dispute and attempt to determine whether or not the Humane Society really is anti-hunting, but the cogency of the Alliance’s argument hinges on a valuable lesson, what I’m calling here the “fungibility phenomenon.”

When you give to an organization and you earmark the funds to be used in a particular way, you may be inclined to think that your money is somehow isolated from the rest of the non-profit’s budget. Depending on the by-laws of the organization, that may or may not be the case. Unless there is a minmum set amount that the organization determines it will spend on an area irrespective of special and specific additional donation, any funds that are contributed to that particular area lessen the demand for money to come from other parts of the budget.

The fungibility phenomenon isn’t restricted to non-profits, of course. Corrupt governments have been taking advantage of this phenomenon domestically through state lotteries and internationally through government-to-government foreign aid for decades.

But for the discerning giver, it’s important to note that the fungibility phenomon means that when you give, whether or not you specify a particular need or area for the funds to be used, generally you are supporting the mission of the recipient organization in all its facets, some which you may not like.

And if you’re looking for a charity whose mission you can unreservedly support, the Samaritan Guide is a great place to start.

Quran, Money Lending, and Economic Growth

Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute, has a piece in today’s Detroit News titled, “Will Quran limit growth of Muslim nations?” The commentary addresses the economic outlook of Muslims, and Islamic nations, considering their religious position against the charging of interest. Gregg notes:

Given the Arab world’s increasing religiosity, however, one potential obstacle could significantly handicap these nations’ financial creativity and economic diversification policies: Islam’s prohibition of interest-charging.

Gregg also briefly examines how Christians settled the moral dilemma regarding interest:

Christianity once had a usury issue. Christianity began resolving this matter in the medieval period. Scholastic theologians established that, under certain conditions (such as free exchange economies), money was not simply a means of exchange, but also “capital”: that is, a productive good whose owners could legitimately charge others for its use. Not all interest-charging, the scholastics concluded, constituted usury.