St. Maximos' Hut

A trivial example: I got an XM Satellite Radio, which is an impressive market response to the poverty of broadcast radio. One of the channels I like the best is The Joint, which plays reggae. Beyond Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Burning Spear and a few others, I don't know enough about reggae to know what I like and don't like. Through XM I am learning. (For example, I don't much care for Johnny Nash's Guava Jam, which The Joint plays far too often.)

One of the things I heard on The Joint was Buju Banton's version of the 23rd Psalm. Based on that, I bought his CD Unchained Spirit.

So the marketplace led me to listen to the 23rd Psalm as a regular part of my day. Pretty neat.

A number of us are attending a small conference on Christianity and Economics. I suggested to several of us that we might use this site to post some initial reflections on the readings in advance of the conference and a few folks have accepted the invitation.

One participant who hasn't been a full fledged member is also joining us - Fr. Gregory Jensen. I'll let him introduce himself.

Christianity Today has a nice new (to me, anyway) email newsletter and a recent one by Philip Yancy discussed A Tale of Five Herods. The whole thing is good but here's the punch line:

Reading these various accounts, I thought of how some Christian leaders long for access to political power and collect trips to the White House like badges of achievement. I know the temptation, for I, too, was once invited there with a group of Christians. Mark Noll, the distinguished church historian, responded first to the question we were all asked, "If you had five minutes with the President of the United States, what would you say?"

We were sitting around a table with both the President and the Vice President. The scholarly Noll began, "As an evangelical, I would say the same thing to you as I would to fellow academics and ordinary people: Put your faith in Christ and follow the Lord with all your hearts."

Many more things were said that morning by very impressive people. But I cannot help thinking, after reflecting on the Herodian encounters with John, Jesus, and Paul, that Mark Noll said the wisest thing of all.

This seems like a good corrective to me - my first thought about my contribution in 5 minutes was about gasoline markets (the subject of a current article). Wrong answer