Jordan J. Ballor

Jordan J. Ballor (Dr. theol., University of Zurich; PhD, Calvin Theological Seminary) is director of research at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy at First Liberty Institute.

Posts by Jordan J. Ballor

March 20, 2019

Captain Marvel’s grit

The latest Marvel film has done well at the box office, and for good reason. It is a solid entry in the MCU, and an introduction to a new character that promises to be central to the ongoing narrative arc following Avengers: Infinity War (some spoilers follow). Continue Reading...
March 06, 2019

Christian action in God’s world

This week’s Acton Commentary is adapted from a foreword to a new volume by Acton research fellow Anthony B. Bradley, Faith in Society: 13 Profiles of Christians Adding Value to the Modern World. Continue Reading...
February 27, 2019

Means of common grace

In this week’s Acton Commentary, we take a short excerpt from the latest volume in the Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology, the second volume of the trilogy on common grace. Continue Reading...
February 20, 2019

The price of being middle class

I was glad to be able to engage P. J. O’Rourke in a wide-ranging discussion for the Acton podcast this week. In this episode of Acton Line, P. J. and I talk about “mutant” capitalism, cryptocurrency (neither of us really understand it), the state of the middle class, the Trump phenomenon, and much more, based on his latest book, None of My Business: P.J. Continue Reading...
February 11, 2019

A rule of thumb for the Green New Deal

I have a couple rules of thumb that I hope help me cut through some of the noise around various policy proposals and political debates. One has to do with budgetary reform (a topic I covered at some length last week): If the plan doesn’t engage with entitlements, then it isn’t really a serious proposal. Continue Reading...
December 05, 2018

The Christian life and the common good

In this week’s Acton Commentary I show that the idea that “physical needs must be met before people experience spiritual needs” is older than Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs. The key to understanding how this might be lies in a distinction between the order of time and the order of being. Continue Reading...
September 26, 2018

Tribalism and the dangers of identity economics

Occasioned by some local controversy over a political endorsement by the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, in the Detroit News today I have a piece worrying about the implications of what might be called ‘identity economics,’ or “where we only agree to economic transactions with those who agree with us on an ever-growing list of moral or even political shibboleths.” Continue Reading...