The third volume of Christian Economics is now available. This is the Activist's Edition.
As far as I know, there has never been a treatise on economics that has included even one chapter on activism/implementation. I am breaking with this tradition. There is a reason for this. It was articulated by the apostle James almost 2,000 years ago.
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed (James 1:22-25).
Who is my targeted audience? Evangelical Christians, not just in the United States but around the world. Initially, however, Americans are my target audience.
Most American Protestant evangelicals vote Republican. They generally favor the free market. They are not articulate about this defense. They do not cite any Christian economist who has taken this position. But their instincts are conservative. They were supporters of Ronald Reagan.
The clergy of the mainstream Protestant denominations tend to be more liberal. The members are more establishment in their political and economic views.
I no longer know what to make of the economic theories taught by Catholicism. There is no question in my mind that Paul VI was a liberal in every sense. The present Pope is a liberation theologian, but without any traces of Marxist revolution. John Paul II was generally a market-oriented thinker. He had lived under Nazism and Communism, and he wanted no part of central planning. I don't know what the economic views of Benedict XVI were. He was the most conservative Pope theologically since Pius XI, who died in 1958. But, if any Catholic wants to know what the Bible teaches about economics, he ought to read the initial volumes of my book. When the fourth volume is published, I hope he will read it, too.
Within the realm of theologically liberal Protestantism, the social gospel has been the dominant economic worldview. This has been true since 1900. The social gospel promotes the welfare state. These days, the most prominent defender of the position is Jim Wallis. He promotes it in the name of evangelical Protestantism, but he has never presented a theological case for evangelicalism. In book after book, he presents the case for the social gospel. I devote a department to him on this website. His organization, Sojourners, in 2007 took in about $6.5 million a year. For comparison purposes, the Foundation for Economic Education took in $3.5 million, and the Mises Institute took in $3.8 million.
Just for the record, let me make this clear: the social gospel is not social; it is political. Calling it the social gospel was a great moment in deceptive marketing. The phrase got a lot of traction, but it has always been misleading. Society is far more than civil government, yet the focus of the social gospel has always been on what the federal government needs to do to in order to redistribute wealth. This is the theological foundation of the modern welfare state. The idea was promoted by some of the same people who were promoters of progressive economics in the late 19th century. It had the backing of both John D. Rockefeller Senior and Junior.
Christian Economics presents a Bible-based alternative to the social gospel. I plan to devote several chapters of volume 4 to the social gospel. But I've always argued that you can't beat something with nothing. Refuting the social gospel is not sufficient. It is necessary first to lay the theological and economic foundations of biblical economics before taking on the social gospel.
The Activist's Edition is laid out in two sections: covenants and work. I go into the theology of Christian economic activism in the first section. It covers individual, family, church, and state covenants, which are oath-bound before God. I divide each chapter into two sections: theology and implementation. In the second section, I talk about five areas of Christian service other than the four covenants: calling, job, volunteering, education, and business.
You can download a PDF of the manuscript. Or, if you choose, you can read each chapter online.
I hope that people will read the book, find typographical errors and spelling errors, and send these errors to me. I want to clean up the book through the division of labor. I will then publish an indexed PDF of the book early next year. I am working out arrangements for a Christian publisher to produce a paperback edition.
To read the book, go here: https://www.garynorth.com/public/department197.cfm.
© 2022 GaryNorth.com, Inc., 2005-2021 All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission prohibited.