Over the last several years I find myself more and more being drawn into conversation about religion—specifically, Orthodox Christianity—and economics. Originally, my interest in the economic side of the conversation was minimal. Embarrassing though it is to say now, I only took one economics class in college and while I got a “B” I was an indifferent student of the subject.

Read more on Review: AEI’s Common Sense Concept Series…

This piece was originally written for the Breakpoint blog. Crossposted with their permission.

Christians have a deep ambivalence about Ayn Rand that probably draws as deeply from the facts of her biography as from her famous novels. When the refugee from the old Soviet Union met the Catholic William F. Buckley, she said, “You are too intelligent to believe in God.” Her atheism was militant. Rand’s holy symbol was the dollar sign. Ultimately, Buckley gave Whittaker Chambers the job of writing the National Review essay on Rand’s famous novel Atlas Shrugged that effectively read her and the Objectivists out of the conservative movement. The review characterized Rand’s message as, “To a gas chamber, go!” Chambers thought Rand’s philosophy led to the extinction of the less fit.

Read more on Considering Atlas Shrugged on Film…

The curious alignment of Good Friday and Earth Day last week sparked much reflection about the relationship between the natural world and religious faith, but the previous forty days also manifested a noteworthy confluence of worldly and otherworldly concerns. The season of Lent occasioned a host of religious voices to speak out not simply about spiritual hunger, but about material needs too, as political debates in the nation’s capital and around the country focused on what to do about federal spending.

Read more on Debt and the Demands of Progress…

The following is a devotional on the meaning of Easter, or Pascha, from Angaelos, General Bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom. More from Bishop Angaelos may be found on his blog. Also see “Copts welcome Easter amid hope, fear and determination to fight for rights” on Ahram Online.

Read more on Coptic Bishop: On the Resurrection…

My contribution to this week’s Acton News & Commentary. Earth Day is Friday. Sign up for Acton’s free weekly email newsletter here.

Humility, Prudence, and Earth Day

By John Couretas

At a World Council of Churches conference last year on the French-Swiss border, much was made of the “likelihood of mass population displacement” driven by climate change and the mass migration of people fleeing zones inundated by rising seas. While the WCC acknowledged that “there are no solid estimates” about the likely numbers of what it called climate refugees, that didn’t stop assembled experts from throwing out some guesses: 20 million, hundreds of millions, or 1 billion people.

Read more on Commentary: Humility, Prudence, and Earth Day…

The Acton Institute and Kuyper College are partnering to produce a first-ever English translation of Abraham Kuyper’s seminal work Common Grace (De gemeene gratie). The three-volume project will be published through Acton’s recently acquired imprint, Christian’s Library Press, and the first volume is slated to appear in the fall of 2012.

Read more on Acton Institute and Kuyper College launch ‘Common Grace,’ a major Abraham Kuyper translation project…

The American Spectator published a new commentary by Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg. The commentary was also picked up by RealClearReligion.

Christians in a Post-Welfare State World

By Samuel Gregg

As the debt-crisis continues to shake America’s and Europe’s
economies, Christians of all confessions find themselves in the
unaccustomed position of debating the morality and economics of
deficits and how to overcome them.

At present, these are important discussions. But frankly
they’re nothing compared to the debate that has yet to come. And
the question is this: How should Christians realize their
obligations to the poor in a post-welfare state
world?

However the debt-crisis unfolds, the Social
Democratic/progressive dream of a welfare state that would
substantially resolve questions of poverty has clearly run its
course. It will end in a fiscal Armageddon when the bills can’t be
paid, or (and miracles have been known to happen) when political
leaders begin dismantling the Leviathans of state-welfare to avert
financial disaster.

Either way, the welfare state’s impending demise is going
to force Christians to seriously rethink how they help the least
among us.

Why? Because for the past 80 years, many Christians have
simply assumed they should support large welfare states. In Europe,
Christian Democrats played a significant role in designing the
social security systems that have helped bankrupt countries like
Portugal and Greece. Some Christians have also proved remarkably
unwilling to acknowledge welfarism’s well-documented social and
economic dysfunctionalities.

As America’s welfare programs are slowly wound back, those
Christian charities who have been heavily reliant upon government
contracts will need to look more to the generosity of churchgoers
– many of whom are disturbed by the very secular character assumed
by many religious charities so as to enhance their chances of
landing government contracts. Read more on Samuel Gregg: Christians in a Post-Welfare State World…

Is it conceivable to endorse the cinematic adaptation of Ayn Rand’s libertarian manifesto Atlas Shrugged – as I do – while rejecting the flawed ideology which inspired it?

I would argue, yes. On the one hand, I place the Beatles at the pinnacle of 1960s pop music while concluding that their song “Mr. Moonlight” is wince-inducing to the point of being unlistenable. Likewise, I admire 99.9 percent of G.K. Chesterton’s body of work yet disagree with him on his assertion only men should vote. On the other hand, I disagree for the most part with Camille Paglia’s worldview yet admire her writing style and intellectual honesty.

Read more on Atlas Shrugged – See the Movie, Skip the Book…

In today’s Grand Rapids Press I respond to a previous piece by religion columnist Charley Honey, “Religious voices have a place in the state’s budget cut discussions.”

I argue in “Christ’s kingdom is bigger than the federal government” that there is a basic confusion from many religious voices in the budget debate about the primary role of the federal government, and make the point that Abraham Kuyper’s “famous quotation attributes the claims of lordship over ‘every square inch’ of the world to Christ, not to the government. To miss this critical distinction is to undermine the very basis of Kuyper’s comprehensive and variegated social thought. For Kuyper, there are important differences among the responsibilities of the government, the church, the family, schools and a host of other social realities.”

Read more on Christ’s Kingdom and the Federal Government…

In today’s Acton Commentary, “Debt and the Birth Dearth,” I examine the interrelationship between demographics, economics, and morality, especially within the context of America’s current public debt crisis.

I conclude by pointing to the spiritual nature of our “debts”:

Read more on Acton Commentary: Debt and the Birth Dearth…