Economics Religion

The years since the financial crash have seen the realization dawn that the great promise of modern civilization will go unfulfilled. Study hard, work hard, buy a house, retire happy. It's all a lie, spun for the benefit of a tiny elite. The richest 85 people on earth have as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion. Each month, the numbers change, but they never improve. Magical and spiritual discourse has failed to keep up with this new reality. The Chaos Protocols aims to fix that.

Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.

"Get it into your consciousness that you live in substance as a fish lives in water . . . Can the fish of the sea ever lack for water? Can you, having your being in the sea of God-substance, ever really lack for a sufficiency of creativity or ideas or money or opportunities in any time of need?"

Throughout the twentieth century, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was regarded as an important sociological and economic text, continuing into the twenty-first century, when extreme capitalism has continued to come under fire. Weber's work provided a history, from where the profit motive could be ethically justified. Max Weber combined his interests in sociology, political economy and history to give perspective to his analysis. Concentrating principally on the experience of the West, he returned to the time when religion, its concepts and practice, dominated society.

Max Weber's best-known and most controversial work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1904, remains to this day powerful and fascinating. Weber's highly accessible style is just one of many reasons for his continuing popularity. The book contends that the Protestant ethic made possible and encouraged the development of capitalism in the West.

As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe - to Germany, Japan, Texas, Chile - but it wasn't until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond 'The Family'. Along the way, she's loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next.

Now you can quickly and effectively study and put into practice the greatest personal development program of all time. In only 10 minutes a day, you can begin to implement the success principles that have made more millionaires and top influencers than any other achievement philosophy. Fame? Fortune? Impactful service? More meaningful relationships? You can have anything that you want in life when you discover the secret contained in Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich.

Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets - among economists as well as many ordinary citizens - is a form of religion. And, it turns out, that in a deeper, more historically grounded sense there is something to that idea. Contrary to the conventional historical view of economics as an entirely secular product of the Enlightenment, Benjamin M. Friedman demonstrates that religion exerted a powerful influence from the outset.

In 1654, 23 Jewish families arrived in New Amsterdam (now New York) aboard a French privateer. They were the Sephardim, members of a proud orthodox sect that had served as royal advisors and honored professionals under Moorish rule in Spain and Portugal but were then exiled by intolerant monarchs. A small, closed, and intensely private community, the Sephardim soon established themselves as businessmen and financiers. They became powerful forces in society, with some, like banker Haym Salomon, even providing financial support to George Washington's army during the American Revolution.

In 2015, Inc. magazine recognized Noonday Collection as one of the fastest-growing companies in America. Years earlier, as Jessica Honegger stood at a pawn-shop counter in Austin, Texas, and handed over her grandmother's gold jewelry, her goal was personal: to fund the adoption of her Rwandan son by selling artisan-made jewelry. This first step launched an unexpected side-hustle that would grow into Noonday Collection. She teamed up with her first artisan partner, Jalia, a Ugandan jewelry maker and saw the meaningful impact Noonday brought to Jalia's community.

Islamic Economics is founded on principles of cooperation, generosity, social responsibility, and accountability on the day of Judgement. Capitalist economics is founded on the opposite principles of competition, greed, individualism, and hedonism.

In 2016, writer and filmmaker Ben Howe found himself disillusioned with the religious movement he’d always called home. In the pursuit of electoral victory, many American evangelicals embraced moral relativism and toxic partisanship. Whatever happened to the Moral Majority, who headed to Washington in the ’80s to plant the flag of Christian values? Where were the Christian leaders that emerged from that movement and led the charge against Bill Clinton for his deception and unfaithfulness?

A riveting audiobook about the dramatic changes that will transform the world as we know it. Americans are anxious about the future - the world's and their own. Rosenberg explains the enormous political, economic, and spiritual changes that are underway in the world's most important countries. He answers why these changes are happening, what they mean, and provides insights from exclusive interviews with world leaders.

On any given night, more than half a million Americans and Canadians find themselves sleeping on the streets, in shelters, cars, and other places not meant for human habitation. Yet as this crisis continues to grow, it remains one of the least talked about—especially in churches. Kevin Nye introduces listeners to the Christ he’s met in tents, shelters, and drop-in centers. He demystifies homelessness by journeying into complex issues like affordable housing, mental illness, addiction, and more, while reimagining our theological approach to these matters.

Author Stephen Birmingham, who chronicled the rise of Jewish immigrants to extraordinary wealth and success in Our Crowd, now turns his attention to the Irish. Real Lace tells the colorful and fascinating true stories of America’s most renowned Irish-Catholic families. Scions of courageous, driven, and resilient men and women who escaped starvation during Ireland’s terrible potato famine in the mid-19th century, they battled their way out of the slums of Boston and New York, overcoming prejudice and poverty to achieve great wealth, fame, and political power.

In his penetrating analysis of contemporary society, author John Horvat focuses on the present economic crisis with great insight and clarity. He claims the modern economy has become cold, impersonal, and out of balance. Gone are the human elements of honor and trust so essential to our daily lives. Society has discarded values that should temper our economic activities. Return to Order invites us to reconnect with those institutions and values by applying the timeless principles of an organic Christian order.

Many Christians struggle to make sense of their faith and work. Some are taught the only value in their work is evangelism among their coworkers and earning money to donate to the church and missions. With more than 25 years working in the business sector, Hugh Whelchel was just that guy. He knew there had to be more. His thorough investigation reveals the eternal significance of work within the grand, Biblical story of God's mission throughout history.

From a best-selling author with unprecedented access to Pope Francis, an investigative look at the recent financial scandals at the highest levels of the Vatican. A veritable war is waging in the church: On one side there is Pope Francis' strong message for one church of the poor and all; on the other there is the old Curia, with its endless enemies, and the old and new lobbies struggling to preserve their not-so-Christian privileges.

Traditional economics measures the ways in which we spend our income, but doesn't attribute worth to the crucial human interactions that give our lives meaning. Clair Brown, an economics professor at U.C. Berkeley and a practicing Buddhist, has developed a holistic model, one based on the notion that quality of life should be measured by more than national income. Brown advocates an approach to organizing the economy that embraces rather than skirts questions of values, sustainability, and equity.

The third of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is supposed to bring inflation and famine on an unprecedented scale. But what is the real cause of inflation? What are the real causes of famine? Most famines are the direct results of government’s deliberate decisions. Germany sank into the most severe hyperinflationary period in recorded history after printing 1.3 trillion marks: that translates to about four trillion in today’s dollars. Ironically, that is almost exactly the same amount of money the United States government has printed since 2008.