A Recommendation of the Acton Institute

I have been attending theology conferences for over 40 years, and I have just returned from a conference that has inspired, challenged, and equipped me in an incomparable way. The conference is the Acton University, the annual event put on by the Acton Institute. The Acton Institute is a think tank founded by the Rev. Robert Sirico, a Roman Catholic priest and pastor of a busy parish in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Sirico came to the conclusion that many of his ideas about the relationship between faith, politics, economics and the relief of poverty were naïve, and he needed to be better educated in political and economic theory as well as political theology. He founded the institute to share what he was learning with a wider public. Thirty years later the Acton Institute has a global, ecumenical, and interfaith reach. There were 1,200 people at Acton University this year. I met an Anglican bishop from Kenya, a Roman Catholic bishop from Kerala in India, an art professor from a Calvinist college, a young and serious evangelical layman who is also a real estate professional, and a professor of systematic theology from a Baptist seminary. Each meal I sat next to a Lutheran pastor from Brazil who serves a Spanish-speaking congregation and is a police chaplain in Baltimore. There were 69 religious traditions represented, including enough Jews and Muslims to warrant daily prayer services for each.

Here is how the Institute describes its mission on its website.

The Acton Institute organizes seminars aimed at educating religious leaders of all denominations, business executives, entrepreneurs, university professors, and academic researchers in economics principles, and in the connection that can exist between virtue and economic thinking. We exhort religious leaders to embrace the principles of economics as analytic tools in the consideration of economic issues that arise in their ministry, and we exhort business executives and entrepreneurs to integrate their faith more fully into their professional lives, to give of themselves more unselfishly in their communities, and to strive after higher standards of ethical conduct in their work. Our conferences are held primarily in the United States, but we also conduct some conferences in Europe and Latin America.

The conference met for four days in a huge convention center in Grand Rapids, which provided the best convention facilities and service that I have ever experienced. Those who come for the first time are required to take a series of core courses on the Christian vision of the person and society. This is a very thorough exposition of the doctrine of the imago Dei. The implications of this doctrine for “human flourishing in a free and virtuous society” are meticulously articulated. The session begins, as do many of the sessions throughout the four days, with an exposition of the creation narrative in Genesis. Human beings have an inherent dignity in the image and likeness of God, but are fallen. Roman Catholic writers, including popes Leo XIII, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, are quoted, as well as Protestant thinkers including Richard Hooker, C.S. Lewis, and Abraham Kuyper.

The last foundation course is on economic theory. The economic theory is unabashedly pro-capitalist and pro-free market. The major thinkers invoked are Ludwig von Mises and his better-known student Friederich Hayek. Hayek is famous for his critique of socialism, The Road to Serfdom. This perspective and its critique of socialism will be challenging to many. Sirico abandoned socialism for this way of economic thinking because he became convinced that this perspective had the best ability to provide for human flourishing in a free and virtuous society grounded in Christian anthropology.

One of the workshops I attended was a practical application of this economic theory to the stimulation of the economy by the accumulation of government debt and increasing the money supply. The speaker compared the financial and societal crisis that Japan is enduring with our government’s current policies. The speaker warned of the Japanification of the United States, predicted that no major political party would address the crisis, and demonstrated how those at the bottom of the society would pay the biggest price, even with generous social welfare programs, because of the declining purchasing power of the dollar. I found this careful connection of issues of macroeconomics and social justice a new way of thinking.

The overall outline of the conference was given as a foundation in Christian anthropology followed by the vision of the good life and the vision of a just and virtuous society, followed by a study of economics and the study of human action in the marketplace. I found that this outline was strictly adhered to in all the courses I took. Every reflection and every proposal represented a rigorous attempt to take classic Christian anthropology to heart. I disagreed with the conclusions of one speaker on the economics of immigration, but it was still clear he was making a good-faith effort to ground his proposal in the imago Dei.

I attended a masterful workshop on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and four different workshops on anti-poverty and community organizing. One of the most inspiring speakers I heard was Ismael Hernandez, the founder of The Freedom and Virtue Institute. I attended two of his workshops, “Hope for the Inner City” and “Principles of Effective Compassion.” I felt I was listening to a person with a very profound commitment to Jesus Christ and the poor. His story is remarkable. His father was one of leaders of the communist party in Puerto Rico and he was set on the path to be a revolutionary priest in Nicaragua. God intervened and he ended up studying sociology in Mississippi — as he says, “a Black Puerto Rican in Dixie.” Like Sirico, he began to read more widely and reflect critically on his presuppositions. He did not become a priest but has dedicated his life to working with the poor.

His institute is in 20 states and five countries. A story will best illustrate his approach, which has a decades-old track record. One of his first jobs was overseeing a program that encouraged people to buy backpacks for poor school kids and to fill those backpacks with supplies that would then be presented on a given day. He took the children to receive their backpacks. “I am brown and all the kids were brown and all the people giving out the supplies were white. I hated it.” The next year he found a piece of land and with the children started a market garden. The children worked in the garden all summer. Their wages were saved. In the Fall he took them to a bank to open bank accounts and then to Walmart where they bought their own supplies. He takes no government money and will not do anything that does not promote dignity, responsibility, and opportunities for achievement. He is prophetically critical of programs that create dependency and rob people of their human dignity. “Sometimes, we treat the poor like pets. We put out the food and they come, and we pet them and they go their way and we feel good.” At the opening of each workshop he said, “If you don’t remember anything else from this time, remember that each person is unique, irreplaceable, and necessary.”

If any of this report is inspiring to you, I urge you to attend the next Acton University and bring someone from your church with you, especially young adults and business and political leaders. Some will immediately categorize Acton’s approach as coming from the right and dismiss it. That will be a pity. In my view, this vision critiques and challenges both the left and the right. Acton University is an international gathering of people of faith who are making a real difference in their communities. It is worthy of more of a hearing than I can convey in a brief report.