“The heroic age of the president is, for now, over. No president is going to come along and save us and Congress isn’t going to save us. Events will demand a reckoning, and then we’ll save ourselves. And in this we will re-find our greatness” —Peggy Noonan,  The Wall Street Journal, October 28, 2006

Political Worldview

  • “The hard Right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it”—Billy Graham in Parade in 1981, recalled in a timely fashion in the October 2006 issue of Christianity Today.
  • “America was the moral leader of the world on the laws of war. But now President George W. Bush has traded that moral high ground for a few paltry votes”—Financial Times (FT), 9/30/06
  • “After the ‘thumpin’ given to the Republicans in the US mid-term elections, the question can no longer be avoided: is George W. Bush really French? The very suggestion would surely provoke a string of choice Texan expletives in response. But in many respects Mr. Bush would appear to fit more snugly into the French political tradition than his own. His championing of military interventionism, absolutism and national exceptionalism has uncanny echoes of Napoleon, Louis XIV and Charles de Gaulle”—FT, 11/16/06
  • “Republican political veterans go easy on ideology, but they’re tough on incompetence. They see Mr. Bush through the eyes of experience and maturity. They hate a lack of care. The see Mr. Bush as careless, and on more than Iraq, careless with old alliances, disrespectful of the opinions of mankind. ‘He never listens,’ an elected official who is a Bush supporter said with a shrug some months ago. Along the way the president’s men and women confused the necessary and legitimate disciplining of a coalition with weird and excessive attempts to silence Republican critics. They have lived in a closed system. They now want to open it a bit but don’t know how. Listening is a habit; theirs has long been to suppress”—Peggy Noonan, President Reagan’s Favorite Speech Writer, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), 10/28/06
  • “Power has corrupted this ruling party, especially over the past five years or so. Of a piece with this has been the breathtaking irresponsibility with which the Republicans have managed the public finances, rightly portrayed by fiscal conservatives as both incontinent and incompetent. The occupation has been bungled so badly it is proliferating militant jihadism. Congress has done lamentably little to hold the Bush administration account for this fiasco. The Republican leadership has also betrayed public trust by licensing and shielding the hubristic overreach of executive power”—FT, 11/7/06.
  • “The Republican-controlled Congress approved a net 271 additional federal government spending programs between 2000 and 2006, a study by the Cato Institute said yesterday, a 19 per cent increase over the period. Chris Edwards, a director of tax policy at Cato, said the increase in the number of programs since 2000 reflected a change in the priorities of the Republican majority in the Congress. “In the late 1990s, President Clinton proposed lots of new programs that the Republicans did not go along with.” But Mr. Edwards said that since 2000, ‘there has been a big expansion’ in subsidies to state and local government and the private sector”—FT, 10/25/06
  • “Republicans on Tuesday managed both to lose their majority in Congress and alienate a fast-growing bloc of Latino swing voters. Other than that, the House GOP strategy of trying to save itself by bucking President Bush and using immigration as a wedge issue worked pretty well. Republicans can’t say they weren’t warned. Like trade protectionism, the immigration issue is the fool’s gold of American politics”—WSJ, 11/10/06
  • “The West Must Address The Roots of Islamic Struggle: The roots of these revolutions are not conceptually different from the seeds for Hitler and his fascism and for the Soviet Union after the first world war by the refusal of the allies to rehabilitate the defeated powers. Desperation, humiliation, disenfranchisement and deprivation led to violence and revolution then and now. A comprehensive strategy must address root causes. If that strategy does not attack the grounds for desperation and humiliation, wrapped in perverse, often suicidal and conflicting interpretations of Islam, this fight can never be won”—FT, 9/8/06.
  • “Rebalancing Act: Democrats Target Wealth Gap and Hope Not to Hit Economy: By almost any measure, the gap between winners and losers in the American economy has widened over the past twenty years. In this month’s election, anxiety about that gap was not far behind voter anger over Iraq and congressional corruption in driving Democrats to victory”—WSJ, 11/21/06

Financial Worldview

  • “A quick quiz: What do the following have in common? The war in Iraq. Sales of cigarettes. The recent fires in Southern California. The answer: They all contribute to the U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP, and therefore are all considered ‘good,’ at least in the eyes of economists—We continue to track this quarterly statistic as if nothing else matters. If GDP is up, we feel good. Low rates of growth, or God forbid, a shrinking economy mean we are less well off and, presumably, less happy. However, recent research into happiness reveals that beyond $15,000 a year, the link between economic growth and happiness evaporates. Americans are three times wealthier than we were half a century ago, but we are no happier”—Eric Weiner, The Los Angeles Times, published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune on 11/17/06
  • “Study finds money makes people more anti-social: A team of psychologists has discovered why money can’t buy happiness. Pictures of dollar bills, fantasies of wealth and even wads of Monopoly money arouse feelings of self-sufficiency and often anti-social behavior, according to a study published Friday in the journal Science”—Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 11/18/06
  • “The Forbes 400, Taste Makers: Their food makes you fat. Their candy rots your teeth. Their booze leaves you drunk. For these epicureans, it’s always eat, drink—and get rich. This year, for the first time, everyone in The Forbes 400 has at least $1 billion. The collective net worth of the nation’s wealthiest climbed $120 billion, to $1.25 trillion”—Forbes, 10/9/06 (Note: That’s only a bit more than 1% of our nation’s assets as reported by the Bush White House.)
  • “Investors may need to change themselves before investments: If you watch the news these days, it’s hard to deny that the world is a scary place. So is the stock market. And a lot of average investors, fearing the impact that frightening world events will have on an already terrifying market, are looking for some kind of safe haven. Instead of looking out toward the world to decide what to do, many financial advisors suggest they look inside for answers. Financial experts do not plan for the end of the world; they basically believe that the world economy will go up over time”—Charles Jaffee, Palm Beach Post, 8/20/06
  • “Wall Street’s New Love Affair: Why some of the world’s smartest investors are betting billions on clean energy. You know a cultural movement is real when the money men get on board. In just the past year a broad swath of financiers—venture capitalists, hedge funds, investment banks, public pension funds, and even stodgy insurers—have begun sinking billions of dollars into producers of ethanol, fuel cell superbatteries, anything that might tap into the green craze. Saving the planet, protecting America, doing God’s work, cynically exploiting a feel-good trend—call it what you will. Wall Street sees money to be made”—BusinessWeek, 8/14/06
  • “Karma Capitalism: Big Business is embracing Indian philosophy. Suddenly, phrases from ancient Hindu texts such as the Bhagavad Gita are popping up in management tomes and on Web sites of consultants. Top business schools have introduced ‘self-mastery’ classes that use Indian methods to help managers boost their leadership skills and find inner peace in lives dominated by work. More importantly, Indian-born strategists also are helping transform corporations’— BusinessWeek, 10/30/06 (Note: While prominent religious leaders in America focused on politics, which Christ barely mentioned, a Muslim recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for being a leader in the field of micro-enterprise. It empowers the poor on whom Christ focused his time and talent. Our prideful leaders rushing by the world’s hurting could learn from such humble Samaritans.)
  • “When Texas-based energy firm East Cameron Partners wanted to raise cash this year, it turned not to banks or the domestic bond market, but to the Middle East. The result may be the first bond backed by U.S. assets that adheres to Islamic laws against paying interest. Islamic financing differs from conventional financing in its strict adherence to Shariah, or Islamic law, which calls for ethical and equitable financing, and bans speculation”—WSJ, 11/16/06
  • “The toll has now reached 34 top executives and directors, and counting, including no fewer than six chief executives in the past week. Corporate America has never seen anything quite like the carnage caused by the scandal over the backdating of employee share options. Over 100 companies are known to be under investigation”—The Economist, 10/21/06
  • “About 850 U.S. chief executives received backdated or otherwise manipulated stock option grants that boosted their annual pay, on average, by at least 10%. The study, released yesterday by professors at Harvard and Cornell, bolsters the view of federal prosecutors who have viewed stock-option backdating as means to steal money from shareholders”—WSJ, 11/17/06 (Maybe our CEO’s should consider some sort of religious ethic?)

Religion & Ethics

  • “It’s almost a shame to say but evangelicalism doesn’t have that rich a tradition, and so you have to look for other sources that represent an authentic witness in society”—Michael Gerson, President Bush’s former chief speech writer who is often called Mr. Compassionate Conservatism, WSJ, 10/21/06
  • “Deconstructing the God squad; Not all conservative Christians are Republicans: Post mortems on the 2004 election revealed the idea that ‘values’ were the most important issue in the election was based on a misreading of the polls. Iraq and terrorism were listed separately. But the two together were the chief worry for 34% of the electorate, compared with just 22% who plumped for values. This misreading rested on a bigger misunderstanding of the role that conservative Christians—ie, Christians who identify with conservative denominations—play in American politics. These mysterious people actually make up a third of the population . . . Christian activists are an important part of the Republican coalition—influential in vetting candidates for primaries, getting out the vote and putting pressure on Congress. But these elites do not speak for an undifferentiated mass of Christian Americans. The bad news is that it means that Christian conservatives will do what other Americans are doing; judge the ruling party’s performance on earthly things like Iraq and good management, and find it wanting”—The Economist, 10/21/06.
  • “Inner Demons: A fortnight ago, Ted Haggard was one of the religious right’s brightest stars. He was the founder of a booming mega-church, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a leading campaigner against same sex marriage, a close friend and neighbor of James Dobson, and an enthusiastic ally of President Bush. He liked to say that he and the president agreed on everything except which pickup truck to drive—Mr. Haggard’s fall is a symbol of bigger problems for the religious right. This election cycle was a dismal one for the so-called theocrats. A third of white evangelicals voted for Democrats, many of them complaining about corruption. In 2004, only one in five chose the sinful party. The result was a string of defeats. And all of this comes on the heels of two dismal years. Ralph Reed has been exposed as a huckster. The right’s chosen vehicle of national redemption—the Republican Party—has been tarnished as the party of Mark Foley and Jack Abramoff. And after six years of Republican rule, millions of fetuses are still aborted, and gay marriage has still not been nationally banned. The religious right’s biggest problem however is not scandal: it is the movement’s addiction to overreach”—The Economist, 10/11/06
  • “Haggard warned of ‘Satanists’ and covens abroad in the city—To be a Christian he warned, ‘is to be in a constant state of war.’ What no one saw was the war within Haggard himself”— Newsweek, 11/13/06. (Politics sees the evil in others; spirituality sees the evil within oneself.)
  • “Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts, is making a concerted bid to seize the mantle as the leader of “the Republican wing of the Republican Party.”—Yet Mr. Romney is a devoted Mormon-a former bishop, no less—at a time when religion is playing a growing role in American politics. Anti-Mormon feeling is particularly strong among Bible-believing Christians, a vital part of the Republican base. Many evangelicals regard Mormonism as nothing more than a cult. So will the whiz-kid governor be doomed by the book of Mormon? Not necessarily. Evangelical Christians can be a remarkably pragmatic bunch. They have spent the past few decades building alliances with ‘people of faith’ whom they once regarded as spawn of the devil. And they know a winner when they see one: they happily forgave Reagan his divorce and eccentric theological views”—The Economist, 9/30/06
  • “Christians typically ascribe the qualities of ‘light’ and ‘love’ to God and try to manifest those qualities in their own lives, Kerry concedes. ‘But the Scriptures describe another aspect of God: ‘The Lord God is a man of war’” (Exodus 15:3). And in Deuteronomy, the Lord says, “If I whet my glittering sword, and my hand take hold on judgment: I will render my vengeance to my enemies and will reward them that hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood and my sword shall devour flesh” (Deuteronomy 32:41). They wanted to mimic this more violent aspect of God, Kerry says, a practice common to Identity Christian groups”— From Terror In the Name of God by Jessica Stern, an example of why we should go slow in judging Islam a violent religion simply because there are similar passages in its ancient texts. Kerry was the “theologian” of the cult that bombed the Oklahoma federal building and sought to terrorize our cities by pouring barrels of cyanide in water supplies, all in the name of the Christian God.
  • “Megachurches think smaller for growth. Large churches are using strategies borrowed from the business world: These organizations say they are modeling their outreach practices on proven business and marketing strategies—not unlike what Wal-Mart is doing by adding more fashionable clothes—to reach potential new customers—According to academics, that change represents a shift from some past marketing efforts, which sought to make church more fun and inviting to baby boomers—A study released last month says that people seeking religion today want something else from churches. This is encouraging churches to develop new messages and new ways to spread them”—New York Times, 10/22/06 (Gotta give consumers what they want!)
  • “MBA students are the biggest cheaters of all graduate students, with 56% admitting to misdemeanors such as using crib notes and downloading essays from the internet. The statistic comes from a survey of graduate students to be published in the Academy of Management Learning and Education journal. The report will be unpleasant reading to US business schools, many of which are still smarting from the involvement of their alumni in recent corporate scandals”—FT, 9/21/06 (Seems money just brings out the worst in all of us.)
  • “Surveys show that born-again Christian teens are just as active in stealing and swapping music as their secular peers who pinch the latest Eminem rap hit. ‘We are all conflicted, it’s true,’ said John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association. ‘It’s like stealing. You wouldn’t walk into a Christian bookstore and steal a Bible off the shelf. Some fans say, ‘This music is made to spread the word, and I’m just helping.’”—Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 10/11/06 (Interestingly, our youth may get such ethics from our prominent ministers. In an article about pastors buying sermons and not crediting the source, the 11/15/06 edition of the WSJ quoted Rick Warren as saying pastors need not bother as they ‘are preaching a sermon, not footnoting a term paper.’ That is quite similar to the logic of the teenagers, as well as those pirating goods all around the world, as they too are beyond the classroom where ethics are considered important enough to use.)

The Media

  • “Media Anarchy Has Its Downside: I spoke with a network producer a few weeks ago, an old warhorse who was trying to explain his frustration at the current ratings race. He wrestled with the subject, and I cut to what I thought he was saying. ‘You mean it’s gone from the dictatorship of a liberal elite to the dictatorship of the retarded.’ Yes, he said. And it’s not progress. When liberals miss something in the media, that’s what they should be missing. Not a unity that never existed but standards that were high. When conservatives say there’s nothing to miss, they’re wrong. We lost some bias, but we lost some standards too”—Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 9/30/06
  • “Today’s network presidents have no journalism experience. Their main concern is that their news divisions make money, and story selection is made, in part, to please sponsors, something that never would have happened in the days of Huntley and Brinkley. In our self-centered, consumer age, their kind are unlikely to pass our way again”—Cal Thomas, 10/27/06
  • “Homes sapping U.S. Wealth: Americans are becoming increasingly house poor. Nationwide, homeowners spent nearly 21% of their incomes on housing costs last year—.The government says housing costs are excessive if they top 30% of household income”—Associated press headline story published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 10/3/06 (This is yet another example of how the media often confuses rather than educates Americans about economics and personal finances. It is also why I believe the housing slowdown is somewhat like Y2K in being a media event rather than reality. Still, if enough fall for the dichotomous view, it could become reality.)
  • “I know that the political consultants are convinced that ‘going negative’ is the only way to move the vote and win an election. But at some point, you wish that the grown-ups in this country—those who don’t see elections as a profit-making business—would remind these talented character assassins of the damage they are doing to the system of representative government”—Syndicated columnist David Broder, 11/8/06. (And such expediency is even more devastating for religion.)

Just the Facts

  • “The world has rarely been more peaceful or felt so insecure. Nightly news bulletins assail their audience with the gruesome images of war and the emotional exhibitionism that passes for much of modern television reporting. George Bush speaks of a war for civilization. Tony Blair of lethal extremism. The facts tell another story. There are many fewer wars now than at any time since 1945. The prospect of conflict between great powers has rarely seemed so remote”— FT, 9/15/06
  • “Sorry, naysayers, but this fact is indisputable: Humankind is growing richer at accelerating rates. In 1500, the gross world product per capita in 2005 dollars was about $800. More than three centuries later, in 1820, early on in the Industrial Age, GWP per capita had barely budged to $950. Then it exploded. GWP per capita is now $9500, while the US docks in at $42,000”— Forbes, 10/2/06 (America’s problem is not “the economy stupid!”)
  • “The richest share of Americans sharply increased their share of total income in 2004, though it remained below the high-water mark of 2000. IRS data also show that the average tax rate for Americans as a whole remained near its lowest in 20 years and has fallen most sharply for the best-off. The share of all income earned by the top 1% of taxpayers rose to 19% in 2004 from 16.8% in 2003”—WSJ, 9/23/06
  • “China’s poor grew poorer at a time the country was growing wealthier, an analysis by the World Bank has found. The real income of the poorest 10% of China’s 1.3 billion people fell by 2.4% in the two years to 2003, a period when the economy was growing by 10% a year”—FT, 11/22/06
  • “A recent calculation by the American Enterprise Institute shows that foreign storage claims of U.S. assets are $13.5 trillion. However, the U.S. also invests abroad and now holds about $11 trillion in foreign assets. That leaves net foreign claims on U.S. assets of about $2.5 trillion. Moreover, while wealth stored in the U.S. is mostly in short-term assets, American wealth stored abroad is chiefly in long-term assets, and those will grow in value—and grow faster—than wealth stored in the U.S. The fact is, in the international economy, there is no such thing as absolute borrowing and absolute lending; they are intertwined”—Paul Johnson, Forbes, 10/9/06
  • “Citigroup will today announce plans to lend an initial $100 million to microfinance institutions in the developing world, underlining the increasing interest in microfinance by mainstream business”—FT, 9/22/06
  • “Federal revenues in fiscal 2005 were 18.4% of GDP, higher than the 18.2% post-1965 average. The federal deficit for fiscal 2006 was only 1.9% of GDP, which is lower than all but eight years since 1975. Add in the budget surpluses at the state level, and the overall U.S. fiscal ‘deficit’ is economically trivial”—WSJ, 11/14.06
  • “Norway gives its citizens the best chance of a long, prosperous and fulfilled life, according to this year’s human development index. The index blends measures of material prosperity, longevity and schooling. For example, Australia’s annual income per head adjusted for purchasing power is $9,000 lower than America’s (ranked 8th); nonetheless it ranks five places above America because Australians are better educated and live longer”—Economist, 11/11/06.
  • “Luxembourg is the richest economy regularly tracked by The Economist. According to the IMF, its income per head will be $72,855 this year.” (The US is third at $43,000, just behind Norway.)—The Economist, 11/4/06
  • “Strains of Sleaze: Transparency International’s annual corruption index ranks governments around the world for their honesty or lack of it. The most corrupt countries are the poorest and the cleanest are the richest. Finland, Iceland, and New Zealand are plausible candidates for the top. Those who know Haiti do not doubt that it deserves to be somewhere near the bottom. For America, which is now no cleaner than Chile, this years ranking [20th] was a fresh embarrassment”—The Economist, 11/11/06
  • “A rise in immigration could increase the supply of labor, particularly since the proportion of immigrants who work is higher than that of native-born Americans. As the labor shortage begins to bite, the demand for immigrants should rise. But the politics of the issue argue against a big rise in the next few years. It seems very likely, then, that America’s labor supply will grow more slowly. And if that happens, potential output growth will too”—The Economist, 10/28/06
  • “Warren Buffett calls for crackdown on unethical acts: ‘The five most dangerous words in business may be ‘everybody else is doing it,’ wrote Mr. Buffett, who has long been skeptical of stock options to remunerate executives. ‘A lot of banks and insurance companies have suffered earnings disasters after relying on that rationale. Even worse have been the consequences from using that phrase to justify the morality of proposed actions’”—FT, 10/10/06
  • “A study portrays today’s business students as ethically minded and concerned about issues of corporate social responsibility. Students surveyed by Net Impact overwhelmingly said that they believed corporate profits and social responsibility could co-exist. About 81 percent said companies should try to work ‘toward the betterment of society,’ while 18 percent thought most of them were already seeking that goal. About 78 percent believed classes in corporate social responsibility should be part of the core curriculum of MBA programs”— FT, 10/15/06
  • “US equity investors moved a record proportion of their funds into foreign share markets this year as investors chased returns from overseas and emerging markets that have been outstripping those on Wall Street. Of the $4,900 billion in equity held by US mutual fund investors, 17% sit in funds containing foreign companies”—FT, 10/11/06

According to the November 6th edition of The Wall Street Journal, through the third quarter of 2006, mutual funds investing in “core” or blue-chip US stocks are up 9.99% year to date on average; those investing in core small company stocks are up 11.44%; those investing globally are up 13.12%; and those investing in Europe are up 24.27%.

Thank You Jesus: The Riches of a More Holistic America

“A new generation of evangelicals is pressing beyond the religious right of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, trying to broaden the movement’s focus from the familiar wars about sex to include issues of social and economic justice”—Newsweek, November 13, 2006

In our last newsletter, I tried to relate how judgment in the Enron-economy of the late nineties began in the house of God, as ministers and their followers thought they could earn money in virtually any manner as long as they gave some of it away. Today, I’ll explore how I believe the judgment of the recent election had roots in the same cultural church.

Let me begin by reiterating what The Economist said above: “The religious right’s biggest problem however is not scandal: it is the movement’s addiction to overreach.” The election made it quite clear that “overreach” was also a major problem with the current administration. It’s a shame that many congressmen and senators had to pay for that. But it’s even more of a shame that many of us conservative and even evangelical Christians who have long disagreed with the overreach of religious right leaders have paid an even higher price as people have made choices between Kingdom and culture.

Many who had concerns about our strategies in Iraq have had their patriotism challenged, even when our own security agencies and commanders had long expressed similar concerns. Similarly, I have been called everything including “a tool of Satan” when sharing facts about the economy and the worldviews of top Christian and conservative financial professionals. Ironically, typical Christians confused about why the economy hasn’t collapsed as prophesied by media elites have found those facts and concepts most enlightening and enriching. It was only a matter of time until the average Christian determined that the true experts may know more than the celebrities the Christians have been listening to. The same reality had to hit voters sooner or later as the average Christian is a key voter. That reality came home to roost during the election.

Disagreements make the market. So I should be happy that religious media celebrities have disagreed with the true experts. After all, the smart money could not make as much as it does if there wasn’t so much dumb money around. That’s why there are so very few truly educational efforts on Wall Street. So in a way, this investment advisor should be grateful that tens of millions of the religious right left so much money on the table due to religious celebrities falsely predicting Armageddon over Desert Storm, the federal debt, Y2K, and the end times. But I don’t consider myself to primarily be an investment advisor. My heart is in ministry. And it is therefore quite painful to me when any of God’s children live less than a spiritually and financially abundant life. So it’s always frustrated me to high heaven that these religious celebrities have been unwilling to “listen” to true experts, even when those opinions come from highly successful businesspeople that the celebrities constantly approach for funding! The parallels to the current administration are painfully clear.

“Certainly of belief” may be popular theology, even if Jesus cautioned that those who have refused to listen will belatedly say “Lord, Lord” on judgment day. And it’s almost as dangerous in mundane matters such as politics, economics, and personal finance. For example, some of the celebrities on the religious right have long judged Sir John Templeton as less than a true Christian, even though John chaired the board of the Princeton Theological Seminary for years and is more devoted to “love without exception” than anyone I know. Jesus himself said we would know his disciples by their love, rather than their politics. Yet they refused to listen to John fifteen years ago when he predicted the world was about to experience great prosperity and soaring markets. They preferred Pat Robertson and company’s worldview that the world was about to end economically due to political incorrectness. Similarly, the same celebrities largely ignored John’s caution about the U.S. stock market in 1999 and relied on the prayer of Jabez to make their tech stocks go up in value. We now know that listening to media elites rather than a Rhodes Scholar in economics who was most respected as the dean of global investing was rather nuts, to use a word that offends leaders of the right but is nevertheless quite correct in my view.

I’ve also found no joy in sharing the skeptical manner in which the financial media, and therefore its readers, usually see those of us who let our certainty of belief over mundane matters grow too “excessive.” While I don’t always agree with the clips I include here, I do so as I know precious few evangelical leaders read The Economist, The Financial Times, and so on. They usually read only conservative Christian publications. And they take a far more graceful view of the sins of our own leaders than they do of the sins of political and corporate leaders. (If you doubt it, compare their graceful pleas for us to understand the humanity of Ted Haggard, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, when he allegedly had an extra-marital affair with a male prostitute and lied about it, with the right’s reaction to Bill Clinton, the President of the United States, having an extra-marital heterosexual affair with a female intern and lying about it. After Catholic priests, our faith may never be able to credibly speak to this generation about human sexuality again. But a worldview in which political leaders can do no right and evangelical leaders can do no wrong keeps many from seeing that hard reality.)

These leaders are supposed to believe that evangelizing others is the highest form of Christian service. So all evangelicals should clearly understand that the businesspeople The Financial Seminary ministers to do not read Christian publications and listen to Christian radio. They read the financial media and watch CNBC. And they know that, for example, Islam cares little whether a few of our gays marry but it cares deeply that we have exported a capitalism to even China that too often further comforts the comfortable and further afflicts the afflicted. It makes our job at the Seminary infinitely more difficult when everything those businesspeople read and hear seems to indicate that all Christians are nuts. It has therefore simply been the intention of this old farm boy to occasionally pull those tall weeds that threaten to go to seed in our mission field; or to challenge those leaders who mislead the average Christian into ways of thinking and acting that reflect less than the love of God and the mind of Christ.

Religious celebrities should know better, even if political expediency seems to produce small “wins” in the political arena on occasion. Jim Dobson has just told Larry King that he’s been politically successful as there are now two more conservative judges on the Supreme Court. It’s ironic that he’s celebrating judges who will interpret rather than make the law just as we’ve elected congressmen who will make liberal laws. If celebrities don’t want to think through the bigger and broader issues on a deeper level, they might just keep quiet; for “do no harm” is the first rule of Judeo-Christian ethics.

Yet it often seems media-based religion is so intent on loudly over-reacting to culture rather than quietly exploring the interior life that many can no longer discern political spin from true religion. And the ministry of Jesus, who told us to avoid straining gnats and swallowing camels, indicates there are only two kinds of religion: 1) the humble variety that expedites our entry into the Kingdom by our listening to prophets and/or God in prayer, and 2) the prideful variety where Pharisees take even longer than the prostitutes in entering as they pridefully do all the talking, to both men and God. Unfortunately, in our rapidly-changing media age that creates so much confusion and uncertainty, it is precisely those religious and political celebrities who can speak with absolute certainty as they’re unencumbered by any true knowledge of the issues that typically become leaders. They command attention as the media loves “excessive” and “overreaching” views on both ends of the spectrum as controversies keep us reading and listening. Even better for the media, polarized politicians then buy record amounts of ads to convince us that we should follow their leadership.

That cycle of illusion is why Christ, who never engaged directly in politics, cautioned us to “call no man leader.” The old mainline churches that adhere to liturgical readings are forced to deal with such truths that set men free of such illusions every few years. They did so the Sunday after the election when they read Jesus’ caution about religious types who always claim the head seats in public places, like the White House, Larry King, etc. He preferred the humble sinner in the back of the temple to the leaders up front and said those who “belong to the truth, listen to my voice” (John 18:37).

Yet humanism requires human leaders. And newer faith traditions do not follow the liturgical readings and can therefore choose isolated sections of the Bible that seem to serve their purposes; so millions of “Bible-believers” have placed their faith in political, corporate, and religious celebrities. It hasn’t worked too well, just as it didn’t in biblical times. But our faith is essentially the story of humanity being humbled over and over as it learns and forgets over and over that prideful humanism, whether secular or religious, does not lead to the truly abundant life. Now, what does all that preaching have to do with managing your portfolio?

Consider the mess that ignorance and pride have created in Iraq. It has grown clear that despite assurances we are in for a long, hard struggle, particularly as the Democrats will likely attempt even more secular and humanistic political solutions. We’ve been attempting to conduct this war on the cheap, in terms of both men and money. Unless my prayers are answered and we seek more spiritual solutions at home before attempting military solutions abroad, it’s about to get far more costly. That’s one reason for so many takeovers recently. Despite the recent rise in asset values, some very smart money is betting that the cost of assets and/or the cost of capital is about to get even more expensive due to inflation, or the drop in the value of the dollar that occurs due to the deficits caused by wars.

In short, we can “stay the course” as the world changes course as we were on the right course all along. And we were on that course as we tried to practice a more humble form of religion than many religious and political celebrities have advocated during recent years. We can only say, “Thank you Jesus.”

The political, religious, and ethical positions expressed by Gary Moore are not endorsed by National Planning Corporation (NPC).

Opinions voiced are not intended to provide specific investment advice and should not be construed as recommendations for any individual. To determine which investments or investment strategies may be appropriate for you, consult with your financial, tax, or legal professional. Please remember that investment decisions should be based on an individual's objectives, goals, time horizons, and tolerance for risk. Furthermore, any listing of a vendor or a product does not constitute an endorsement or warranty of the vendor or product by NPC. NPC is not to be held responsible for and may not be held liable for the adequacy of the information available. The Financial Seminary and NPC are separate and unrelated companies.