Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Why the Market Needs the Family
Why the Market Needs the Family
Jan 13, 2026 5:07 PM

The Family & the Market, an Acton University lecture by Jennifer Roback Morse, uses Christian theology and logic to illustrate unique connections between seemingly unrelated aspects of society, at least to the secular world. Morse is the founder and president of the Ruth Institute, where she discovered that the economy depends on the intact family raising children. This Institute has a dream: that every child is ed into a loving home with a married mother and father. Their goal is to create a lasting and Christ-like social movement, and to clean up the consequences of the Sexual Revolution.

Students in this course learn the importance of both parents raising their own children together, as opposed to divorcing, sharing custody, or placing children in foster care. This is vital in order to “respect, honor, and preserve” the genetic identity and cultural heritage of every adult, without exception. Morse emphasizes that when this practice is violated, it gives way to structural injustice and the political correctness of “Alternative Family Forms.” These terms, such as multi-partner fertility, are indicators of our broken reality, and of life problems for children in these environments, mainly, stirring up feelings of resentment in an unloved child.

Morse goes on to further define the Sexual Revolution, or the secular belief that a good and decent society should: separate sex from babies, separate both sex and babies from marriage, and eliminate all differences from men and women except those explicitly chosen by the individual. We can now create babies without sex, and our society propagates hook-up, divorce, and affair culture. Morse believes the agenda of the Sexual Revolution has, all along, been largely based upon the third point, to “re-construct” identities that were merely “social constructs” in the first place. If gender distinctions are eliminated, then any form of parenting, no matter how broken, can function according to this model.

However, we know this to be impossible, false, and untrue. It is irrational, irresponsible, and ultimately would require force and propaganda to stand on its own. Children really do require both a mother and father. Morse drew attention to a popular argument in the divorce culture: “Children are resilient and tougher than we give them credit for.” She responded in kind with a ment exposing the selfish nature of such a claim: “Parents are precious little snowflakes that will fade and die if they don’t get what they want, and children are supposed to be resilient? No.”

With so many children feeling unwanted and unloved, and with donor conceived people feeling like purchased objects and property, we need to focus on all issues the Sexual Revolution passes. When others do not hear our arguments, Christians need to practice healing friendship, be shining examples to those who are struggling, and above all, show deep and passion. Morse left her audience with forting message of hope: “Heal yourself, heal others, and heal the culture, because the Church will last, justice will last, and friendship and love will last.”

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
Radio Free Acton: Virtue in education; Discussing the literary greats
On this Episode of Radio Free Acton, Dan Churchwell, Director of Program Outreach at Acton, speaks with Nathan Hitchcock, education entrepreneur, about the role of character development and virtue in education, and what the future of education might look like. Then, Bruce Edward Walker talks to John J. Miller, Director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College and writer for National Review, about John’s new anthology “Reading Around: Journalism on Authors, Artists, and Ideas.” They discuss some of the...
Walmart removes hammer-and-sickle merchandise
After backlash from across the globe, Walmart has stopped selling items bearing the hammer-and-sickle insignia of the Soviet Union. This followed strongly worded letters from Baltic leaders and a U.S. educational effort largely spearheaded by Mari-Ann Kelam through the Acton Institute. The controversy burst into public consciousness when Kelam wrote an Acton Commentary titled, “Walmart’s T-shirt homage to mass murder,” published on September 5. A number of news outlets picked up the story, both in print and on radio. Lithuania’s...
Explainer: What you should know about the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)
What just happened? Shortly before midnight on September 30, the United States and Canada agreed to a deal to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA). The new trilateral trade agreement is called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). When does it take effect? Before it can take effect, leaders from each of the three countries must sign it and get it approved by their nation’s legislatures. Because this process is expected to take several months, the main provisions of USMCA...
This politician nails entrepreneurship and the importance of work
The news highlights from Theresa May’s speech this morning at the Conservative Party’s 2018 conference may be that she branded Labour the “Jeremy Corbyn Party” mitting her party to “ending austerity,” increasing spending on the NHS (which, she said, “embodies our principles as Conservatives more profoundly” than any other institution), and suspending the national gasoline tax for the ninth year – a move that saved British taxpayers £9 billion a year. But there’s a section noteworthy for its rarity in...
Why you should diversify your investments
Note: This is post #95 in a weekly video series on basic economics. Before it went bankrupt in 2001, many of Enron’s employees had most or all of their retirement funds pany stock. When pany collapsed, as Alex Tabarrok notes, employees who were once multimillionaires ended up with almost nothing. They failed to heed the most basic rule of investing:Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. In this video by Marginal Revolution University, Tabarrok explains why diversification is essential...
8 quotations from Walter Laqueur on Europe’s future, statism, and the allure of evil
One of the preeminent international analysts and students of the transatlantic area, Walter Ze’ev Laqueur, died Sunday at the age of 97. Born on May 26, 1921, in what was then Breslau, Germany (and now Wrocław, Poland), he fled his homeland days before Kristallnacht; his family would die in the Holocaust. He moved to an Israeli kibbutz, to London, and eventually to the United States – moving as seamlessly from journalism, to foreign affairs, to academia. He spoke a half-dozen...
Russell Kirk: Where does virtue come from?
This is the first in a series celebrating the work of Russell Kirk in honor of his 100th birthday this October. Read more from the series here. How can human society form and raise up virtuous people? In the Summer/Fall 1982 issue of Modern Age, Russell Kirk explored this perennial question in an essay titled, “Virtue: Can It Be Taught?” Kirk defined virtues as “the qualities of full humanity: strength, courage, capacity, worth, manliness, moral excellence,” particularly qualities of “moral...
Amazon paying higher wages is smart—forcing everyone to do so is dumb
Amazon recently announced pany will pay all of its U.S. employees a minimum of $15 an hour—more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25. “We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead,” said Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. “We’re excited about this change and encourage petitors and other large employers to join us.” The decision is a smart move for Amazon. Unfortunately, the pany wants to force...
6 Quotes: Russell Kirk on virtue
This is the second in a series celebrating the work of Russell Kirk in honor of his 100th birthday this October. Read more from the serieshere. The Acton Institute was fortunate to have Russell Kirk serve in an advisory capacity from the founding of the institute up until the time of his death. Throughout his career, Kirk was a champion of virtues, whichhe defined as “the qualities of full humanity: strength, courage, capacity, worth, manliness, moral excellence,” particularly qualities of...
Jesus would vote for socialism: German socialist party
Marxism taught that religion is the opiate of the people and tried to indoctrinate children in atheism from their earliest days. Yet a socialist party in Germany has erected a billboard stating, “Jesus would have voted for us.” The fifth-place party in the German Bundestag, Die Linke (“The Left”), “is the direct successor of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) which held East Germany in an iron grip for many decades,” writes Kai Weiss of the Austrian Economics Center....
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved