The Economic Ways of Loving

Acton Vault

In this episode, we’re bringing you a talk from our Acton Lecture Series from 2019.

To be economically literate requires neither formal training nor advanced study. For those with the inclination, the most valuable economic principles can be understood with just a little nurturing of the so-called “economic way of thinking.” In this talk, Dr. Sarah Estelle shares how she sees the economic way of thinking as instructive in some of the ways we can love, too. What does economics have to say about our love for mankind? our neighbors around the globe? the least of these among us? our local communities and families? Integrating a Christian perspective and sound economics, Estelle considers in what cases market exchange can communicate love and in which situations market approaches would only crush it.

Dr. Sarah Estelle is an associate professor of economics at Hope College. Most recently she has undertaken work bridging the principles of traditional Christian teaching and classical liberal economics and especially applying the lessons of economics to the Christian virtue of love, thickly construed. She is the director of Religious Liberty in the States, a brand-new statistical index that measures the legal safeguards for the free exercise of religion in the United States. Dr. Estelle is the founding director of Hope’s Markets & Morality student organization, which explores economic issues through a Christian lens and brings speakers and film screenings to campus to enrich the Hope community’s understanding of markets. Markets & Morality celebrates its 10th year in 2022–23.

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