Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Confusing capitalism with consumerism
Confusing capitalism with consumerism
Jan 15, 2026 5:29 AM

Rebecca Hagelin of the Heritage Foundation picks up on my thoughts on consumerism and capitalism and expands on them helpfully in a column.

We should all take her observations about stewardship to heart. I have been a student and a leader of Crown Financial Ministries curriculum, and during my time at Calvin Seminary was even part of a study group to suggest revisions of the curriculum to better reflect Reformed theological sensitivities. I’ve also recently gone through one of Dave Ramsey’s books.

If you’re struggling with debt and controlling your spending, invest your time in one of these or another practical and biblically-grounded guides to responsible financial stewardship.

And speaking of stewardship, participants in this year’s Acton University get the privilege of hearing Dr. Scott Preissler, who is Eklund Professor and Chair of Stewardship at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He’s giving a talk on “Stewardship and Charitable Giving.” Acton’s own Stephen Grabill is giving a lecture titled “A Theology of Stewardship.” And as his ActonU bio states, you should keep your eyes peeled ing months for the ing Stewardship Resource Bible: ESV, of which Dr. Grabill is the general editor.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Re: Broken Windows – University Funding Edition
As Kishore Jayabalan noted yesterday, the fallacy of “broken windows” is, unfortunately, ubiquitous in discussions of public finance and macroeconomics. Though we are told that government spending and public works have a stimulating effect on economic activity, rarely are the costs of such projects discussed. Such is the case with several stimulus projects in my own hometown of Atlanta, GA. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reportson a list that Sen. John McCain and Sen. Tim Coburn drew up,criticizing wasteful stimulus projects throughout...
Carbon Regulation: Ecological Utopia or Economic Nightmare?
In this week’s Acton Commentary, I discuss whether the Environmental Protection Agency’s planned regulation of carbon emissions can be justified from a Christian perspective. The EPA has found that carbon emissions endanger “public health and welfare,” and it is on track to begin regulating vehicle and power plant emissions. Environmentalists claim that policies targeting carbon emissions, such as EPA regulation or a cap-and-trade program, will stimulate the economy by creating green jobs. Unfortunately, this is not the case – the...
Publicly Funded Films: A Cautionary Tale
The most basic lesson of all of the various efforts, by both state and federal governments, to provide incentives for films to be made is that with government es government oversight. Once you go down the road of filing for tax credits or government subsidy in various forms, and you depend on them to get your project made, you open yourself up to a host of regulatory, bureaucratic, and censorship issues. It shouldn’t be a surprise, for instance, that states...
Audio: Rev. Sirico on ‘The Principle of Subsidiarity and the Service to the Poor’
On the new Reclaiming the Culture radio show, host Dolores Meehan recently interviewed Acton President Rev. Robert A. Sirico on the subject of “The Principle of Subsidiarity and the Service to the Poor.” Here’s how Meehan describes the show’s mission: Bay Area Catholics are some of the strongest Catholics in the country. Reclaiming the Culture grew out of the desire to show that the Catholic Church in the Bay Area has the resources to confront the prevailing secular culture. Our...
Abela: Will Teaching Business Ethics Make Business More Ethical?
On the National Catholic Register, Andrew Abela confesses to a “nagging suspicion that teaching business ethics in a university is not delivering on what is expected of it.” The question is both concrete and academic: Abela is the chairman of the Department of Business and Economics at The Catholic University of America and an associate professor of marketing. He was awarded the Acton Institute’s Novak Award in 2009. Here, he explains the problem with “amoral” business attitudes: … we often...
Acton on Tap – August 12: American Exceptionalism
Join us on Thursday, August 12, at Derby Station in Grand Rapids as we continue our Acton on Tap series, a casual and fun night out to discuss important and timely ideas with friends. The event is scheduled for 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm and discussion starts at 6:30. American Exceptionalism is a newsworthy topic as some on both the political left and right lament that America’s greatness is slipping away. But what does American Exceptionalism mean and how did...
The Ecumenical Movement and the Nuclear Question
It’s worth noting that the original context of engagement of the ecumenical movement by figures like Paul Ramsey and Ernest Lefever (two voices that figure prominently in my book, Ecumenical Babel) had much to do with foreign policy and the Cold War, and specifically the question of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Last week marked the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and today is the anniversary of the Nagasaki detonation. As ENI reports (full story after the break), the...
Do We Need Pro-Family Tax Policies?
Last month, in “Europe’s Choice: Populate or Perish,” Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg observed: At a deeper level … Europe’s declining birth-rate may also reflect a change in intellectual horizons. A cultural outlook focused upon the present and disinterested in the future is more likely to view children as a burden rather than a gift to be cared for in quite un-self-interested ways. Individuals and societies that have lost a sense of connection to their past and have no particular...
Family vs. the State in Indian and Chinese Entrepreneurship
This August 3 Wall Street Journal article is based on a Legatum Institute paring Indian and Chinese entrepreneurship and raises important issues about the roles of the state and the family in promoting entrepreneurship. mon elements between Indian and Chinese wealth-creators are their optimistic view of the pared to Americans (“Why I’m Not Hiring”) and Europeans (“Everything’s Fine With Greece, Just Ignore Some Facts”) presumably, and their lack of concern about the impact of the global financial crises on their...
The Economist, Catholicism, and Europe
When es to the sophistication of its coverage of religious affairs, the Economist is better than most other British publications (admittedly not a high standard) which generally insist on trying to read religion through an ideologically-secularist lens. Normally the Economist tries to present religion as a slightly plex matter than “stick-in-the-mud-conservatives”-versus-“open-minded-enlightened-progressivists”, though it usually slips in one of the usual secularist bromides, as if to reassure its audiences that it’s keeping a critical distance. A good example of this is...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved