Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a senior writer for The Gospel Coalition, author of The Life and Faith Field Guide for Parents, the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible, and coauthor of How to Argue Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History’s Greatest Communicator. He also serves as an associate pastor at McLean Bible Church in Arlington, Va.

Posts by Joe Carter

February 10, 2016

Determinism, Dependency, and the Irreducible Person

“Sociological determinism informs our public policy,” says Ismael Hernandez in this week’s Acton Commentary. “Those with a stake in the maintenance and expansion of government bureaucracies feed upon pathology and find a willing constituency among those who perceive the world in terms of victims and perpetrators.” Continue Reading...
February 09, 2016

Explainer: President Obama’s FY2017 Budget

What is the President’s budget? Technically, it’s only a budget request—a proposal telling Congress how much money the President believes should be spent on the various Cabinet-level federal functions, like agriculture, defense, education, etc. Continue Reading...
February 08, 2016

Joseph Schumpeter and the Moral Economy

Today is the 133 birthday of the late Austrian-born economist, Joseph A. Schumpeter. A Finance Minister of Austria and later Harvard professor, Schumpeter coined the term “creative destruction” in explaining how capitalism delivers progress: The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop to such concerns as U.S. Continue Reading...
February 08, 2016

What Christians Should Know About Crony Capitalism

Note: This is the latest entry in the Acton blog series, “What Christians Should Know About Economics.” For other entries in the series see this post. The Term: Crony capitalism (sometimes referred to as cronyism or corporatism) What it means: Crony capitalism is a general term for the range of activities in which particular individuals or businesses in a market economy receive government-granted privileges over their customers and/or competitors. Continue Reading...
February 04, 2016

No, Jesus was not a socialist

The resurgence of socialism in America, especially among the young, seems to be based on a widespread form of wishful thinking and historical ignorance. Most people who support Bernie Sanders, for instance, do not realize that most of his ideas have been tried already—and discarded as unworkable. Continue Reading...