Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Christian Austrians

It took me close to eleven months to muddle through Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State. In March, I received an alert from the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, AL that its spring catalog contained a misprint: the scholar’s edition of Mises’ Human Action was listed for only $20 (it was supposed to list for $40). I couldn’t resist. My copy arrived three weeks ago and I’m already two-thirds of the way through it. It is proving to be much more a page-turner.

Another book I’m eager to get a hold of is Foundations of Economics: A Christian View, by Shawn Ritenour, a professor of economics at Grove City College in Pennsylvania (my Plymouth Brethren friends will recognize GCC as the location of one of their annual Bible conferences). Ritenour is both a biblically conservative Christian and an Austrian school economist. In an earlier post I erroneously insinuated that Austrian economics and Christianity are strange bedfellows; actually, that is not the case. A number of prominent Austrians are believers: Robert Murphy, William Anderson, Art Carden, historian Thomas E. Woods, and Jeffrey Tucker, to name a few. Dr. Ritenour recently gave an interview to Julie Roys of Moody (Bible Institute) Radio about his new book, which can be heard here.

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