Over the course of the last posts, here, and here, and his link on Catholic social teaching, here, Chalcedon has done much to limn the problems many of us have reconciling our present economy to our Christian beliefs.

Most here will know that I have quite deep libertarian political tendencies, but I too, recognize those problems. It seems to me that what we see today as capitalism, is not what I grew up with, it has become something else, the unchanging focus on the quarterly bottom line highlights the problem. The world I grew up in honored, sometimes too much, the loyal employee, who stayed with the same company, doing his best to help the company, which in turn was loyal to him. Today, that entire ethos is gone, and work has both become all encompassing and completely individualized. But we, especially as Christians know that we are far better as individuals in a community, whether that community is a corporation, the military, or indeed the church.

So how did we get here, and where do we go from here, if anywhere. Most of you know how my thinking goes generally, but I’m no expert, I take in data, analyze it in view of my experience, and draw conclusions. As they say, your mileage may differ, in fact, it probably will.

But recently I ran across something that strikes me as relevant. Professor Kathryn Tanner, the Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School. gave a series of Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. I think there are five of them, I’ve only watched the first so far, but I think she has a quite large contribution to make to the conversation.

Here is her introductory lecture.

I do agree with much of what she say about economics, I’m still evaluating, though. What do you think?