R&L: It monly held that it is impossible to be both a faithful Christian and a good businessman. How do you respond to this view? Beckett: This view is mon, but it is seriously flawed. Based on that logic, we would have to assume the Apostle Paul was not a good businessman when he was making and selling tents. More likely, he was an exemplary businessman, his products high in quality, fair in price. Can you see the people...

R&L: In your new book, Things That Count, you have an essay subtitled, “The Problem of Possessions.” What is the problem with possessions? Meilaender: I suppose there are a number of problems with possessions, not just some single problem. But at least one central problem is the way in which possessions tend to capture our trust. Human beings need to seek security, yet the very act of seeking security seems to seduce us into placing our trust somewhere other...

R&L: Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, noted that, “The individual today is often suffocated between the two poles represented by the state and the market.” You have noted that the way out of this modern dilemma is the strengthening of culture. Could you elaborate? Dulles: The political and economic orders, important though they obviously are, do not exhaust the reality of human life and human society. They deal only with particular aspects of life...

R&L: In the first sentence of your book, The Mystery of Capital, you write, “The hour of capitalism’s greatest triumph is its hour of crisis.” The great triumph, of course, is capitalism’s victory munism. What is the great crisis? De Soto: Everyone had high expectations at the fall of the Berlin Wall, when we thought that the “end of history” was in sight because market economies would allow all to flourish, but now there is a general feeling of...

R&L: How do you view the role of higher education—and of distinctively religious schools, in particular—in a free society? Spitzer: Religious schools—and Roman Catholic schools, in particular—supply an invaluable contribution to a free society. They do so because religious education promotes four religious virtues: the transcendental dignity of the human person, a transcendental ethic, agapic love, and an eschatological hope for the world. These four religious virtues, in turn, promote four secular virtues: the intrinsic dignity of the human...

R&L: Although, on its face, the environmental movement seems to be about economics and politics, you have argued that, at root, it is a spiritual movement. Describe the theology at the foundation of environmentalism. Nelson: The environmental movement, at its heart, is a nervous reaction to humankind’s new relationship to the natural world that has developed over the past three hundred years. Modern science and economics have given human beings the capacity to control nature in ways almost unimaginable...

R&L: It has been said, borrowing Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic, that an economist is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Assuming I place a high value on the environment, and knowing you are an economist about to talk about environmental issues, do I have reason to be ill at ease? Hill: Yes, you do. You have caricatured economists a bit, but economists have spent a great deal of time talking about...

R&L: Early in life, you considered entering the ministry but decided to enter the financial world instead. How did you integrate your inclination toward religious service with your eventual business career? Templeton: When I was a child in Tennessee, my mother worked odd jobs so she could pay half the cost for Gam Sin Qua, a Christian missionary in China. At that time, I thought that being a missionary might be the most beneficial use of my life on...