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‘The Economics of Apocalypse’: Billy Graham’s sermon on money and materialism

In light of Reverend Billy Graham’s recent passing, we’d do well to pause and reflect on his life and legacy, which was defined by the spreading of the Gospel, and doing so in a way that inspired deep faith and authentic relationship with Jesus. Although Rev. Graham mostly steered clear of the partisan fray, he frequently offered strong challenges to the American people on social and economic issues, from opposing racial segregation to drawing a distinct contrast between Communism and...

(Sir) Billy Graham: Labour Party ‘created a thousand economic problems’

“The Queen will be sending a private message of condolence to the family of Billy Graham,” Buckingham Palace announced Wednesday. The Netflix series The Crown portrays the real-life friendship between Rev. Billy Graham and Queen Elizabeth II. But Graham’s relationship with other UK leaders got off to a rocky start after he repeatedly –and publicly –criticized economic interventionists. Graham believed deeply in the goodness of free enterprise and exchange. In 1949, he said of Clement Atlee’s postwar Labour ministry: The...

New research finds connection between increases in religiosity and increases in income

For centuries economists and other social scientists have noticed that religiosity is associated with a set of characteristics that promote economic success. (A prime example is Max Weber’s theory about the Protestant work ethic.) Yet finding empirical evidence for the connection has been challenging because of the difficulty in determining whether religious influence affects economic behavior or if the traits for economic success lead people to be more religious. A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic...

7 quotations by Billy Graham on work, free enterprise, and communism

Image source: Paul M. Walsh Earlier today, Reverend Billy Grahampassed awayat the age of 99. He will be remembered as a global evangelist, a counselor to presidents, a dispenser of wisdom via his daily advice column, and – for millions – the man who led them to believe in Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. Over the course of his ministry, Rev. Graham brought biblical insights to bear on the social issues of his day. Below are seven...

Radio Free Acton: Philip Booth on Catholic Social Teaching in China; Jay Richards on technology and work

On this episode of Radio Free Acton, Rev. Ben Johnson, Senior Editor at Acton, speaks with Philip Booth, Professor of Finance, Public Policy and Ethics, St. Mary’s University in the UK, about Catholic Social Teaching in China. Then, we have an Econ Quiz segment on wealth redistribution. Finally, Dan Churchwell, Associate Director of Program Outreach at Acton and Jay Richards, Executive Editor at The Stream, talk about how technology affects work. Check out these additional resources on this week’s podcast...

Isolationism and internationalism in Black Panther

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 plex ideas within the often deceptively fantastical trappings of science fiction and fantasy. A few themes among the many immediately leap out, especially the dynamics of isolationism and internationalism that face Wakanda throughout its history. The isolationist attitude is embodied by Wakanda’s past and especially its...

Study: GMOs increase crop yields, reduce ag toxins

“Our mission is to harness economic power—the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace—to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.” Some readers might assume the epigraph above derives from some classic of moral and economic literature – perhaps, say, Adam Smith’s A Wealth of Nations or A Theory of Moral Sentiments. However, the platitude I quoted actually belongs to the staunchly anti-Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) nonprofit Green America. The words, in fact, are Green America’s Mission Statement....

RELIGION & LIBERTY

Spurgeon and the Poverty-Fighting Church

Religion & Liberty: Volume 33, Number 4 Spurgeon and the Poverty-Fighting Church by Christopher Parr • October 30, 2023 Portrait of Charles Spurgeon by Alexander Melville (1885) Charles Spurgeon was a young, zealous 15-year-old boy when he came to faith in Christ. A letter to his mother at the time captures the enthusiasm of his newfound Christian faith: “Oh, how I wish that I could do something for Christ.” God granted that wish, as Spurgeon would e “the prince of...

Nov 13, 2026

C.S. Lewis and the Apocalypse of Gender

From very nearly the beginning, Christianity has wrestled with the question of the body. Heretics from gnostics to docetists devalued physical reality and the body, while orthodox Christianity insisted that the physical world offers us true signs pointing to God. This quarrel persists today, and one form it takes is the general confusion among Christians and non-Christians alike about gender. Is gender an abstracted idea? Is it reducible to biological characteristics? Is it a set of behaviors determined by...

Nov 13, 2026

Creating an Economy of Inclusion

The poor have been the main subject of concern in the whole tradition of Catholic Social Teaching. The Catholic Church talks often about a “preferential option for the poor.” In recent years, many of the Church’s social teaching documents have been particularly focused on the needs of the poorest people in the world’s poorest countries. The first major analysis of this topic could be said to have been in the papal encyclical Populorum Progressio, published in 1967 by Pope...

Nov 13, 2026

Jesus and Class Warfare

Plenty of Marxists have turned to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity. Memorable examples include the works of F.D. Maurice and Zhu Weizhi’s Jesus the Proletarian. After criticizing how so many translations of the New Testament soften Jesus’ teachings regarding material possessions, greed, and wealth, Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has gone so far to ask, “Are Christians supposed to be Communists?” In the Huffington Post, Dan Arel has even claimed that “Jesus was clearly a Marxist,...

Nov 13, 2026

Lord Jonathan Sacks: The West’s Rabbi

In October 1798, the president of the United States wrote to officers of the Massachusetts militia, acknowledging a limitation of federal rule. “We have no government,” John Adams wrote, “armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, and revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.” The nation that Adams had helped to found would require the parts of the body...

Nov 13, 2026

Adam Smith and the Poor

Adam Smith did not seem to think that riches were requisite to happiness: “the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for” (The Theory of Moral Sentiments). But he did not mend beggary. The beggar here is not any beggar, but Diogenes the Cynic, who asked of Alexander the Great only to step back so as not to cast a shadow upon Diogenes as he reclined alongside the highway....

Nov 13, 2026

Up from the Liberal Founding

During the 20th century, scholars of the American founding generally believed that it was liberal. Specifically, they saw the founding as rooted in the political thought of 17th-century English philosopher John Locke. In addition, they saw Locke as a primarily secular thinker, one who sought to isolate the role of religion from political considerations except when necessary to prop up the various assumptions he made for natural rights. These included a divine creator responsible for a rational world for...

Nov 13, 2026

Mistaken About Poverty

Perhaps it is because America is the land of liberty and opportunity that debates about poverty are especially intense in the United States. Americans and would-be Americans have long been told that if they work hard enough and persevere they can achieve their dreams. For many people, the mere existence of poverty—absolute or relative—raises doubts about that promise and the American experiment more generally. Is it true that America suffers more poverty than any other advanced democracy in the...

Nov 13, 2026

Conversation Starters with … Anne Bradley

Anne Bradley is an Acton affiliate scholar, the vice president of academic affairs at The Fund for American Studies, and professor of economics at The Institute of World Politics. There’s much talk about mon good capitalism” these days, especially from the New Right. Is this long overdue, that a hyper-individualism be beaten back, or is it merely cover for increasing state control of the economy? Let me begin by saying that I hate “capitalism with adjectives” in general. This...

Nov 13, 2026

How Dispensationalism Got Left Behind

Whether we like it or not, Americans, in one way or another, have all been indelibly shaped by dispensationalism. Such is the subtext of Daniel Hummel’s provocative telling of the rise and fall of dispensationalism in America. In a little less than 350 pages, Hummel traces how a relatively insignificant Irishman from the Plymouth Brethren, John Nelson Darby, prompted the proliferation of dispensational theology, especially its eschatology, or theology of the end times, among our ecclesiastical, cultural, and political...

Nov 13, 2026