Religious Liberty Derives from Property Rights

摘要

Many christians, while they cherish religious liberty, seem to believe that property rights, and the commerce that arises from the establishment of property rights, are somehow un-Christian. At the same time, a lot of free marketers seem to think that all we need are property rights and the rest will take care of itself. Neither of these views is correct, and I will explain why with reference to Pres. James Madison and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Pope Francis is one who sometimes seems to be an example of the Christian who reads the New Testament as pointing in the direction of socialism. Commerce appears, in some of his writings and speeches, to be a grubby business purely based on self-interest-maybe even on exploitation, the opposite of charity. This reading of the New Testament-which I think flawed, by the way-is why Karl Marx, although he famously was an atheist and mili-tantly opposed to Christianity, praised Christianity in one respect: that it declaimed against private property in the name of an otherworldly denial of self.