Tag Archives: Jim Wallis

Mentoring

Philosopher Ron Nash lectures on capitalism, morality and freedom

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Watch the lecture. (H/T Luis)

Nash speaks from 0:06 to0:45. Then he takes questions.

His two favorite economists are… WALTER WILLIAMS and THOMAS SOWELL! Just like me!

Christianity isn’t something you do in church to have happy feelings, or to get along with your parents and friends. It’s a worldview. And the whole point of it is that is is true, and helps us to make sense of the world because it is true.

By the way, he even talks about how Jesus uses hyperbole to get people’s attention in the question and answer time. I blogged about that a while back because one of our Christian commenters told me that Jesus never uses hyperbole. (She is a Calvinist, so… you know… ). F.A. Hayek also comes up in the Q&A time. Hayek is my third favorite economist. I think all Christians should have favorite economists. I think we should think about how Christianity relates to every area, from science to history to philosophy to ethics to marriage and family. And to politics and economics, as with this lecture!

We should all have favorite scholars, just like non-Christians have favorite musicians and movie stars. Ron Nash is one of my favorite philosophers.

Who is Ron Nash?

I learned about economics by listening to all the lectures in this course taught by Dr. Nash. He presents a view of economics that is consistent with the laws of logic and the Bible. And this course is comprehensive. I’ve moved on from Dr. Nash’s course to read F. A. Hayek and Thomas Sowell, and then Walter Williams. And I found that Dr. Nash’s course was excellent preparation for these more advanced books.

Take a look at some of the topics:

  • the role of the government in regulating commerce
  • the meaning of justice
  • capitalism and socialism
  • interventionism vs free market capitalism
  • introduction to economics
  • marxism
  • wealth and poverty
  • liberation theology and the religious left
  • judicial activism vs legal positivism
  • pollution
  • public education

You can grab the lectures here.

A little blurb about Dr. Nash

Nash taught theology and philosophy for four decades at three schools. He was chairman of the department of philosophy and religion and director of graduate studies in humanities at Western Kentucky University, where he was on faculty from 1964-91. He was a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary from 1991-2002 and at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1998-2005.

Nash wrote more than 35 books on philosophy, theology and apologetics, including “Faith & Reason: Searching for a Rational Faith,” “Life’s Ultimate Questions” and “Is Jesus the Only Savior?” Nash received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University; his master’s degree from Brown University; and his undergraduate degree from Barrington College.

From this Baptist Press article.

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News

Jay Richards investigates whether George Soros is funding Jim Wallis

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In this post on National Review. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

In World magazine on July 17, Marvin Olasky called on “progressive evangelical” Jim Wallis to come clean and admit that he is not a non-partisan, as he likes to claim, but rather a devoted man of the Left. Olasky reported that Wallis’s organization, Sojourners, had received grants from George Soros’s foundation, the Open Society Institute (OSI), and had lent Sojourners’ mailing list to the Obama campaign.

[…]Among the documents I now have are pages from the OSI website that list two grants to Sojourners — one for $200,000 in 2004, “To support the Messaging and Mobilization Project: Engaging Christians on the Importance of Civic Involvement,” and one for $25,000 in 2006, “To support a branding assessment” for the purpose of merging “Sojourners and Call to Renewal into one organization.” I have physical copies of these pages, which is good, because these pages seem to have disappeared from the OSI website (I’m sure that’s just a coincidence).

[…]But there’s more to it. In two blog posts at Patheos published over the last week, Tim Dalrymple reported that he, too, was looking into Olasky’s charge, and in a thoughtful, unbiased interview published on August 9, he asked Wallis himself about Olasky’s charges.

Before responding directly, Wallis launched into bizarre invective against Olasky, claiming (among other things) that Olasky believes in a “sinless market.” This caricature is practically surreal to anyone familiar with Olasky’s actual views — actually, it’s beyond surreal, since surreal art has some illuminating connection to the original. Olasky is a Calvinist, which means he places particularly strong emphasis on human depravity in every area of human experience, including the market.

Wallis continued:

It’s not hyperbole or overstatement to say that Glenn Beck lies for a living. I’m sad to see Marvin Olasky doing the same thing. No, we don’t receive money from Soros. Given the financial crisis of nonprofits, maybe Marvin should call Soros and ask him to send us money.

So, no, we don’t receive money from George Soros. Our books are totally open, always have been. Our money comes from Christians who support us and who read Sojourners.

Well, as I said above, I’ve got physical copies of what appear to be grants to Sojourners from the Open Society Institute website, which have since been taken offline. Dalrymple does, too. In fact, until Wednesday, August 11, Dalrymple’s second blog post at Patheos had accompanying PDFs of the OSI webpages.

[…]According to Sojourners’ 990s (go here and search for “Sojourners” in “DC”), their total assets went from $513,896 in 2002 to $4,615,468 in 2009. Call me skeptical, but I’d be willing to bet that this windfall didn’t all come from humble readers of Sojourners magazine.

Wallis supports Barack Obama, a radically pro-abortion President. Abortion is the slavery of our age – a political movement based on pure greed, whose aim is to terminate the lives of a weaker class of humans because of the selfishness of a stronger class of humans. And yet Wallis tries to pass himself off as a Christian. So I know exactly who to believe when his testimony contradicts respected Christian scholars like Marvin O’Lasky and Jay Richards.

Commentary

Who is right about social justice: Glenn Beck or Jim Wallis?

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Here is a Washington post editorial by the executive producer of the Glenn Beck show. (H/T Michelle Malkin)

Social justice is often used as a code word by the left to promote government-controlled redistribution of wealth to favored special interest groups at the expense of other unfavored groups in order to keep the party in power in power. It’s vote buying, essentially, but with the illusion of helping others. And the goal is the equalization of material wealth regardless of personal choices, including moral choices.

Recently, Glenn Beck warned his viewers to beware of churches that push social justice as though it were sanctioned by Christianity somehow.

This is part of the information Glenn revealed in a special TV show about American extremism of the 20th century. In the context of promoting that special, he began talking about how the far left was once again using this terminology to politicize churches. The specific example he named was Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

He told his listeners that if they were in a church that preaches Jeremiah Wright-style social justice, they should leave–or at least get educated on what exactly that means. It took him all of eight seconds to clarify the type of church he was speaking of, but that was long enough for most in the media to end the transcript.

Suddenly, Glenn was accused of attacking the central tenants of the bible, because he supposedly believed that any church that wants to help the poor should be immediately evacuated. This absurd narrative is mainly the product of Rev. Jim Wallis.

To restate the obvious, some simply use the term “social justice” as a substitute for “outreach to the poor.” This is not the kind of “social justice” Glenn was talking about. The fact that this term has been utilized for purposes other than good Christian charity is well documented.

[…]But for Wallis to continue getting attention, he must act as if he believes Glenn is against churches helping the poor. Any honest observer would realize that isn’t the case. Is anyone on earth against charitable outreach to the poor?

Certainly not Glenn.

In his book Arguing With Idiots, Glenn describes helping those less fortunate as an “obligation.” He wrote that capitalism “will inevitably fail if individuals stop caring about the welfare of others.” He just believes the bulk of the help should come from people like you and me, not government bureaucracy. When is the last time you felt charitable on April 15?

[…]Wallis is just as revealing when speaking of his current economic views: “I’m not a liberal, I’m a radical.” Asked if he was calling for the redistribution of wealth across society, he responded: “Absolutely. Without any hesitation. That’s what the gospel is all about.” This is a man that believes an affluent church is no less than “an affront to the gospel” and he’s talking about Glenn being divisive?

I think it’s important to understand just how radical people are when they pass themselves off as Christians, yet have no place for individual charity or the notion of private property, both of which are central in the Bible. I think that Jesus expects us to work in order to have things to share with others, because in that sharing, we can imitate him. The money I earn by the sweat of my brow should not be used by popular people in government to buy votes by subsidizing destructive behaviors, all while blaming me for the behaviors of others.

So I favor capitalism, free markets, private property, the rule of law and voluntary charity by individuals and private organizations – like CHURCHES! To understand what capitalism is, you can watch this lecture entitled “Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem” by Jay W. Richards, delivered at the Heritage Foundation think tank, and televised by C-SPAN2.

If you can’t see the Richards video, here is an audio lecture by Jay Richards on the “Myths Christians Believe about Wealth and Poverty“. Also, why not check out this series of 4 sermons by Wayne Grudem on the relationship between Christianity and economics? (a PDF outline is here). Here’s a lecture featuring Jay Richards from the libertarian Cato Institute. And you can listen to Ron Nash’s course on Christianity and economics.

More posts from Neil Simpson on Jim Wallis and his Sojourners group:

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