Free Republic

Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman's book, 'Religion and the Rise of Capitalism,' provides an illuminating, if not always convincing, examination of how theology influenced modern economic thought.“One of the fundamental elements of the spirit of modern capitalism,” German sociologist Max Weber wrote in his landmark 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, “of rational conduct on the basis of the idea of the calling, was born from the spirit of Christian asceticism.”Weber attributed the free-market success so prevalent amongst Protestant societies to its origins in Calvinist predestinarian theology: believers could never know for sure whether they had been...

~~Well-intended forgiveness has been seized on by the media and those in power as an excuse to ignore white supremacy~~ Unfortunately, forgiveness, that element of moral sanctity which facilitates assuaging of grief, has morphed into a barrier obstructing the path to justice and accountability in the United States — a place weakened by the ubiquitousness and insidiousness of racism. Although it’s tough to direct a critical lens at the concept of forgiveness when the situation involves grieving family members tearfully addressing an expressionless, depraved killer who isn’t even asking for it, for posterity’s sake this must be done. What happened...