Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary believes that Jesus had an economic plan. She’s written a book, #Occupy the Bible: What Jesus Really Said (and Did) About Money and Power, and claims that Jesus came to reverse economic inequality.
Read more on ‘Jesus Had An Economic Plan’: Was it Redistribution?…
From the video vault, a classic presentation by Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute, based on his monograph The Entrepreneurial Vocation.
Over at the Christian Post, Napp Nazworth does a good job summarizing some of the political jockeying that has been going on ahead of and now in the midst of the release of the latest Batman film, “The Dark Knight Rises.” He includes the following tidbit:
Adbusters is an anti-capitalist magazine founded by Marxist Kalle Lasn and was instrumental in fueling the similarly anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street movement.
“You notice that they are precisely the ones who don’t tell us what personal responsibilities we have,” Rev. Sirico said. “They make abstract all of our obligations: It’s the obligation of the people, the obligation of the state, the obligation of some general mass of something-or-other.”
Read “Rev. Robert Sirico on the cultural left’s lack of ethics” in The Daily Caller. To see the extended 27-minute version of the video, go here.
Get your copy of Rev. Sirico’s new book Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy today. Read more on Video: Rev. Sirico on Mammon and the cultural left…
“If Christians want to advance the common good,” says D.C. Innes in a a review of the new documentary With Liberty or Justice for All, “they should turn to their own hearts, not the government.”
Read more on What Jeremiah and Ezekiel Can Teach the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street…
Jordan Ballor is a busy man. He serves as a research fellow here at Acton, as well as being the executive editor of the Journal of Markets & Morality. As if those duties don’t keep him busy enough, he also finds time to do the occasional radio interview, in this case on 101.5 WORD FM in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, discussing how Christians should react to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Read more on Audio: Jordan Ballor on Christian Responses to Occupy Wall Street…
Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 220 AD)
The following section from Tertullian’s Apology has been illuminating some of my thinking about Christian social engagement lately:
So we sojourn with you in the world, abjuring neither forum, nor shambles, nor bath, nor booth, nor workshop, nor inn, nor weekly market, nor any other places of commerce. We sail with you, and fight with you, and till the ground with you; and in like manner we unite with you in your traffickings—even in the various arts we make public property of our works for your benefit.
This passage, in which Tertullian describes the involvement of Christians in all the workings of Roman life, first occurred to me awhile back when there was the brief flurry of worry over undue Christian influence, particularly “Dominionism,” on politics. The essay I wrote in response to that phenomenon has now appeared in The City, which you can check out here, “Christians, Citizens, and Civilization: The Common Good.” In this piece I make the claim that “the commitment to Jesus Christ as another prince, the ‘prince of Peace,’ makes us better, not worse, citizens.”
Over at the Patheos Evangelical Portal, I write about “How Christians Ought to ‘Occupy’ Wall Street (and All Streets).” My argument is that the occupiers that ought to be foremost in the minds of religious leaders are those who “occupy” their pews on Sunday mornings and jobs in the world throughout the week. Indeed, “Christians therefore must occupy the world in their occupations.” That’s where the renewing and reforming presence of the church in its organic expression finds its greatest work.
In this week’s Acton Commentary, I examine Jesus’s famous parable of the Lost Sheep in the context of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells the parable after some people grumble about him eating with “tax collectors and sinners.” Tax collectors at the time had a bad reputation of unfair business practices and government ties. Yet, Jesus tells the parable of a man who left ninety-nine sheep to find the one that went missing in order to caution his detractors about marginalizing even these tax collectors.
“You’ve lost a good opportunity to shut up.” So said French president Nicolas Sarkozy to UK prime minister David Cameron as an instance of what BusinessWeek has dubbed “Europe’s Insult Diplomacy.” But it’s a retort that strikes me as equally relevant for the pontifications that pour forth from ecumenical officials in Geneva on almost every topic under the sun.
