Jordan J. Ballor (Dr. theol., University of Zurich; Ph.D., Calvin Theological Seminary) is director of research at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, an initiative of the First Liberty Institute. He has previously held research positions at the Acton Institute and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and has authored multiple books, including a forthcoming introduction to the public theology of Abraham Kuyper. Working with Lexham Press, he served as a general editor for the 12 volume Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology series, and his research can be found in publications including Journal of Markets & Morality, Journal of Religion, Scottish Journal of Theology, Reformation & Renaissance Review, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Faith & Economics, and Calvin Theological Journal. He is also associate director of the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research at Calvin Theological Seminary and the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity & Politics at Calvin University.
Posts by Jordan J. Ballor
February 23, 2018
I finally got around to seeing Black Panther last night, and my early reaction echoes so much of the overwhelmingly positive response to the film. As so many superhero tales do, Black Panther weaves together complex ideas within the often deceptively fantastical trappings of science fiction and fantasy.
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February 20, 2018
We’ve got video available of last week’s book launch discussion about Abraham Kuyper’s travels around the Mediterranean Sea. A portion of his travel record has been published as
On Islam as part of the Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology.
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February 15, 2018
Later today we’re having a book launch discussion about the latest volume in the Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology,
On Islam. This book is a selection from a travel narrative Kuyper published after he voyaged around the Mediterranean Sea in 1905-1906.
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August 16, 2017
In 1887, Abraham Kuyper helped lead a secession from the mainline Reformed church in the Netherlands. A few months later at the Free University in Amsterdam, Kuyper delivered a speech entitled “Twofold Fatherland,” in which he describes the earthly and heavenly citizenship of Christians, and how these realities impact our understanding of our responsibility and identity in this world.
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July 11, 2017
In the Q&A part of a session I led at last month’s Acton University on Abraham Kuyper and Leo XIII (based on this recent volume), I was asked about specific areas where the two figures have something concrete to contribute today.
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June 06, 2017
Pope Leo XIII, writing in the midst of social crisis at the end of the nineteenth century, wisely observed: “When a society is perishing, the wholesome advice to give to those who would restore it is to call it to the principles from which it sprang.”
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April 24, 2017
As of this month, I have joined the “What Good Markets Are Good For: Towards a Moral Justification of Free Markets” project as a postdoctoral researcher in theology and economics. The project is a multi-year, multifaceted endeavor, focusing on the central claim that “societies with free-market economies flourish because and in so far as the key market actors (states, businesses and individuals) respect morality, and act virtuously.”
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April 12, 2017
This week’s Acton Commentary is a meditation by the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), reflecting on the significance of spring for our natural and spiritual lives. “So that bread may come forth from the earth” takes its point of departure from the lines of Psalm 104: “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herbs for the service of man: that he may bring forth bread out of the earth.”
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March 08, 2017
In this week’s Acton Commentary, “The middle class in an age of inequality,” I wonder who will defend the bourgeois virtues, if anyone will “speak out in praise of mediocrity, stability, and predictability.”
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December 28, 2016
In this week’s Acton Commentary I examine the foundations of what is today identified as the “preferential option for the poor” in writings that appeared 125 years ago, Pope Leo’s
Rerum Novarum and Abraham Kuyper’s “The Social Question and the Christian Religion.”
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