Opposition to Fischer’s contention comes from both ends of the American political spectrum. Candace Chellew-Hodge speaks for progressive Christians when she criticizes Fischer for his lack of regard for context: “Romans 13 cannot properly be understood without reading Romans 12—and the rest of the book, for that matter.” Curiously devoid of contextual support, however, Chellew-Hodge concludes that the identification of the authorities in Romans 13 as “ministers” is more about the Roman rulers’ self-understanding as having been divinely-ordained, and was “most likely put in there to ingratiate Paul to those same-said authorities.”

Daryl G. Hart, currently a visiting professor of history at Hillsdale College, represents a more conservative strain of opposition to Fischer’s view, as he contends that ministry “invariably goes with ‘the word’ as in minister the word of God.” Hart points to “the neo-Calvinist/evangelical clutter of ‘every member ministry’” as a misunderstanding of the scriptural conception of ministry.

Now it is true that we can find Fischer’s assertion that public officials serve the common good of society, and are “ministers” in this sense, to be valid without following him in arguing that the qualifications for ordained ministries elsewhere in the New Testament must apply to such public ministers. On this point, Hart’s criticism certainly rings true: There is a critical difference between the ordained ministries of “special grace,” or ministries of the Word and Sacrament, and what might be called “common grace ministries,” including political service.

But the understanding of political power as a form of God-ordained ministry or service is longstanding within the Reformed tradition. As the Italian reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli writes of Romans 13:6, the Greek terms translated as ministers “pertain not (as some think) to holy services only,” but indeed, “those words properly signify public offices and functions.” Likewise in a prefatory letter to the king of France to his Institutes in 1536, John Calvin contends, “The characteristic of a true sovereign is to acknowledge that, in the administration of his kingdom, he is a minister of God.”

Although these reformers would include some element of responsibility for religious expression as legitimately within the scope of the ruler’s mandate, it is also clear from Paul’s original context that even in times and places where the ruling authorities are not Christian (as in Rome) or there is a structural division between church and state (as in America), such magistrates still act as means of God’s common grace, preserving and maintaining civil order. And as Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, has written eloquently, the implications for such common grace ministries are manifold. Indeed, writes Mouw, “common grace ministries are not restricted to the political realm.”

The ministries of common grace are in fact as numerous as the forms that grace takes in human life, and the implication for the Christian life is clear. “We should also think about the ways in which we ourselves, in performing righteous acts that affect the lives of unbelievers, can promote the gifts of common grace,” says Mouw. Another scriptural term, that of stewardship, can helpfully describe the pluriformity of God’s grace, both special and common: “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:10 NIV).

Better attention to the overlap and varieties of these biblical terms would help us avoid a couple of errors. On the one hand, recognizing that ministry can have both a narrower and a broader meaning would help us avoid conflating or equating the kinds of service performed by ordained pastors and elected politicians. On the other hand, recognizing the validity of callings to all areas of life, including politics and business, would help us see how service in such realms can be truly other-directed and God glorifying.

In the case of the food industry, these kinds of fights are increasingly occurring between brick-and-mortar restaurants and mobile food trucks. Earlier this year Entrepreneur magazine observed the spread of a “food-truck craze” across the country, which includes new startups as well as interest from already-established franchises like Taco Bell, Qdoba, and Subway. There’s perhaps no more basic way to serve another person than to provide them with food, as Lester DeKoster has noted in his book, Work: The Meaning of Your Life—A Christian Perspective. With Jesus’ explanation of the parable in Matthew 25, DeKoster notes that Jesus “waits in the hungry man or woman or child, longing to be served,” and that “God himself, hungering in the hungry, is served” by all those people who work in food-related industries. The barriers to entry for a food truck are far lower than for a traditional restaurant, and these enterprises can be a wonderful opportunity for culinary entrepreneurs to start their own small businesses and find God “hungering in the hungry.”

But as Jason Daley writes, the spread of the food-truck phenomenon is limited by local environments: “Varying laws have formed a mosaic of food-truck hot spots and not spots around the country.” Food trucks are embraced in cities like Los Angeles and New York. But Chicago has placed limits on what food can be prepared inside trucks. According to APM’s Marketplace, the Chicago regulations prohibit food trucks from being “licensed kitchens,” which means that all the food sold on the truck must be cooked and prepared elsewhere.

The challenge to established interests represented by food trucks is not merely the stuff of big cities, however. Grand Rapids, Michigan, has had its own food fight in recent weeks, as a food truck startup called “What the Truck” began with an agenda to change “the Grand Rapids culinary landscape one street at a time.” Food trucks saw some pushback from local restaurateurs as the Grand Rapids Planning Commission considered changes to ordinances that would allow food trucks more freedom to operate. According to the commission, “The consensus among those brick and mortar business owners was that temporary concession sales would undermine their businesses. A number of business owners have submitted letters stating their opposition to the amendment under consideration.”

This caused What the Truck to take the fight to Facebook, rallying supporters to appear at a recent commission meeting to lobby for a meeting earlier this month, where the commission decided to table a final decision about rewriting the zoning ordinances until the spring. In the meantime, one of the original opponents of changes to the food truck zoning, Tommy Brann, has changed his stance on the issue, citing the entrepreneurial examples of Rich DeVos and Steve Jobs, and how “free enterprise allowed them to become successful, just as a future brick & mortar restaurateur could get a start from a food truck.” Brann, one of the proprietors of the Grand Rapids-based Brann’s Steakhouse and Grill, recently held a rally for free enterprise in Grand Rapids, and it is apparent that in admitting the problems with his previous position he’s taken a position in favor of free enterprise and against special protection for established interests.

We can hope that Brann’s example will help show that food trucks represent a valid and valuable part of the culinary landscape of American cities, and that the “food-truck craze” will not be slowed down by intransigent city councils and planning commissions. And while the start-up costs for a food truck might well be lower than opening a sit-down establishment, the margins might be lower and less reliable as well. So as food truck startups find success, they might also realize that putting down roots in a community with a brick-and-mortar location can benefit both the community and the bottom line. This has already begun happening in places like New York City, where the food truck industry has been given a chance to grow and mature. As Tracey Samuelson reports, “while food trucks are often talked about as a new, disruptive business model, for most owners, they’re more like a cautious first step.”

Let’s hope this is a first step that America’s cities, entrepreneurs, and restaurateurs are increasingly ready to take.

But ever since the fall into sin work has been bittersweet. This negative aspect of work is communicated to us in the biblical narrative in the form of a curse. As God says to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:17-19 NIV). As fallen creatures we no longer relate to the world around us, whether the world of plants, animals, human beings, or spiritual truths, the way we did before.

So, on the one hand, work is a basic created good that God has given us to meet our temporal needs and fashion our souls in disciplined obedience. But, on the other hand, work often becomes toil—laborious, monotonous, repetitive, and unfulfilling. This dissatisfaction creates in us a deep and abiding sense that things are not the way they are supposed to be. As the book of Ecclesiastes reads, God has “set eternity in the human heart,” such that the things of this world often pale in comparison with our attraction to spiritual things (Ecc. 3:11 NIV). We imagine, we believe, we hope that there must be a better world to come.

We find this sense of brokenness in something as common as fishing. In a Michigan Radio story this past summer about the challenges facing the fishing industry in the state, veteran angler Ed Patnode mused that “we’d be rich if we could tap into the mind of a fish.” Sometimes the fish seem to like a particular color of lure, and if we could “just get that fish to talk and tell us why do you like pink, or can you tell us what days you’re going to bite pink on and what other factors are influencing your decision to bite this pink lure today,” says Patnode, fishing would be a great deal easier. Patnode’s notion that the challenges of fishing could be overcome if we could understand how fish “think” seems to point toward the possibility that human beings once did, and perhaps will again, relate to the rest of the world in a way that perceives how things really work.

And so while we live an existence marred by the curse, we still live. We still can work, even if that work is more troublesome and difficult than it would have otherwise been. The Dutch theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper describes this dynamic between things being imperfect and yet still good in his doctrine of “common grace,” an idea enjoying renewed attention with the publication in English of portions of his magnum opus on the subject. In Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, Kuyper writes that, after the fall, “we can arrive at the knowledge of things only by observation and analysis. But that is not how it was in paradise.” Before the fall we read that Adam “named” the animals, by which we should understand that “Adam immediately perceived the nature of each animal, and expressed his insight into the animal’s nature by giving it a name corresponding to its nature.”

Things are far different today, however, as we see in the case of Ed Patnode and other fisherman, or any professional who deals daily with the natural world. Kuyper writes, “If we want to learn to understand a plant or an animal, then we must observe that animal and that plant carefully for a long time, and from what we observe gradually draw conclusions about their nature. This occurs apart from us ever learning to understand their essence.” Indeed, says Kuyper, “Even their instincts still remain a completely unsolved riddle for us,” to the extent that we do not really know what causes lake trout to prefer pink lures to green or orange on any given day.

In this way the daily routine of work reminds us both of what we have lost and how we are still blessed. It reminds us that amidst the brokenness and blindness of sin, God has not abandoned this world. And so we are called, in our own limited and often wayward way: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (Ecc. 9:10 NIV). This is the nature of our “lot in life” and our “toilsome labor under the sun” until such time as we “shall know fully” (1 Co. 13:12) the extent of God’s redeeming grace.

We have seen this kind of commodification at work most recently in debates about the federal budget, where campaigns like “What Would Jesus Cut?” decry proposals to lower government spending on social programs. As Jim Wallis puts it, “the moral test of any society is how it treats its poorest and most vulnerable citizens,” but on this view a particular level of government expenditures is equated with that moral test. This kind of logic is also at work with efforts like The ONE Campaign, which takes its name for the proposed amount that should be devoted by governments to foreign aid programs.

The problem with this perspective isn’t that it views material reality as important and instructive. The Lord himself spoke to the relationship between physical goods and spiritual orientation: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34 NIV). The problem is, rather, that the material becomes the primary, even sole, focus when making moral judgments. In this way campaigns that commodify compassion judge morality purely in quantitative terms. If we spend more on social concerns, we are deemed to be more compassionate, more just.

But this kind of moral calculus fails precisely because it doesn’t account for the qualitative differences in various kinds of responses. Other things matter, such as the “who” and “why” of charitable assistance. An EBT card issued by a government official shouldn’t be judged to be the same as a “cup of cold water” given by a Christian in the name of Jesus Christ.

The difference between the quantitative and the qualitative views of compassion are illustrated well in the case of “The Widow’s Offering” (Luke 21:1-4 NIV). In this encounter, Jesus watches as wealthy people come to offer their gifts to the temple. He singles out a poor widow, however, for particular praise when she places two very small coins (essentially pennies) as an offering. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

Jesus’ words upset our merely material paradigms for evaluating compassion. On the quantitative level, they require us to look not simply at the amount of a donation, but also at the proportion of that donation. The two pennies the widow gave represented a larger portion of her property than the comparably vast sums given by the wealthy. But this deepening of our quantitative judgments leads us into the spiritual realm, where the quality of the gifts might also be recognized. The widow’s offering isn’t judged to be greater simply because it represents a proportionally greater material offering. No, this proportionally greater giving also is evidence of a different spiritual motivation. When she is said to give “out of her poverty,” Jesus points to more than her material status. This woman lives by faith, knowing that human beings live on “more than bread alone” and out of her spiritual, as well as material, poverty she puts in “more than all the others.”

We cannot truly measure compassion merely by looking at the level of government expenditures or the amount of money given, as easy and as tempting as that might be. These material concerns are important, but not all-important, factors in coming to grips with the complex realities of charitable activity. So just as we shouldn’t define the meaning of life in terms of income or GDP, neither should we commodify compassion by ignoring the spiritual realities of charity.

The similarities in the stories are, in fact, quite striking, and as biblical scholars note, well worth attending to. But amid the important similarities of the stories, there are also significant differences that provide some important insights into the biblical vision of human stewardship, particularly our interaction with the material world, animal life, and other people.

So the stories should be read together, and understood as Jesus’ answers to the complaint of the Pharisees that he “welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2 NIV). In each story the one who has lost something is understood as filling the role of God, who has “lost” something dear to him. The sheep, the coin, and the son represent God’s people who have gone astray. These lost ones are the “sinners” whom Jesus welcomes. While those who lose things in these stories primarily represent God, the actions of these characters also shed light on how human beings are to conduct themselves as God’s image-bearers.

In one story (which actually is the second parable of the three), Jesus describes a case in which a woman loses one of her ten silver coins. She takes quick action, lighting a lamp, sweeping the house and searching “carefully until she finds it” (Luke 15:8 NIV). In this case, that which is lost is a “coin,” a Greek drachma worth about one day’s wages. The woman is the one who “loses” the coin. There is no sense of agency imparted to the coin in this story; the coin, as a material object, is impersonal and inanimate. The coin is passive, receiving the action of the story. The woman loses the coin, lights a lamp, sweeps the house, searches carefully and finds the coin; the coin is lost and found.

In another story (which Jesus tells first), a shepherd “has a hundred sheep and loses one of them” (Luke 15:4 NIV). Again we see the focus of the action on the shepherd (whom Jesus identifies directly with his listeners: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep…”). The sheep presumably wandered off, but it is after all only an animal, and so is impersonal. Even though animals are to be understood as active in some sense, it is an impersonal sense of agency, so that the action is ultimately attributed to the shepherd. The shepherd loses one of the sheep, leaves the ninety-nine, goes after the lost sheep, finds it, and puts it on his shoulders and goes home.

But the final story, that of the Prodigal Son (or even better to draw the connection with the other stories, “The Lost Son”), is much more complex than the other two. There are more characters. The action is dispersed, in the sense that agency is not simply attributed to the one who has lost something. In fact, in contrast to the other two stories, the one who drives the action in the story is the son rather than the father. Whereas the woman loses the coin and the shepherd loses the sheep, in this final story the son “got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living” (Luke 15:13 NIV). To be sure, the son is lost to the father. But the focus here is on the personal agency of the son rather than that of the father.

We can imagine what this would have been like for the father. We can assume that he raised his son up in the fear of the Lord, that he trained his child “in the way he should go,” with the hope that “when he is old he will not turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6 NIV). But when his son demands his inheritance and leaves home, the father seems to do nothing. He neither refuses to give his son what he asks nor prevents him from leaving. The text does not say so explicitly, but we can again presume that while the son is out in the world living wildly, the father is at home, attending to his household, and praying diligently for the son to return. We know the father has this hope because once the son decides to return home, “while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him” (Luke 15:20 NIV). Once the son takes the initiative (getting up and going to his father), the father finally has some sense of agency: he runs to the son, embraces him, kisses him, and orders a celebration.

The contrast between the story of the Lost Son and the parables of the Lost Sheep and Lost Coin are striking on this level. In the case of human relationship to material objects, like coins, and impersonal agents, like animals, the stories account the moral agency completely to the human actors in the story. The woman and the shepherd lose their possessions and work diligently to find them again. But when the story involves human interrelations, there is an emphasis on the moral agency of every person in the story (including the elder son, who is often overlooked and cannot be treated adequately here). The father definitely loses his son, but his diligence in finding him again is limited to means other than actively working to find him; he must instead diligently pray and watch.

Reading these three stories together teaches us many things about the nature of God’s love for us, such that when we were lost, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8 NIV). But the stories also provide models for how we should relate to the different aspects of God’s created order, from the material, to the animal, to the human. In each kind of relationship, humans have a definite role to play. In some cases we are called to work actively to achieve God’s purposes in the world. In other cases, out of respect for human freedom and individual sovereignty, we have to engage in active searching for the lost things of this world by less direct means.

In a short essay on the relationship between work and prayer, C. S. Lewis points to the remarkable continuity between the two, and how prayer is in its own way an appropriate form of active searching. As Lewis writes of work and prayer, God “gave us small creatures the dignity of being able to contribute to the course of events in two different ways.” With respect to primarily material reality, like coins and sheep, we can work, or “do things to it; that is why we can wash our own hands and feed or murder our fellow creatures.” But with respect to spiritual realities, we exercise a different kind of creaturely causality, that of prayer, whose results are not always as predictable as in the physical order: “This is not because prayer is a weaker kind of causality, but because it is a stronger kind. When it ‘works’ at all it works unlimited by space and time.”

In these parables of lost coins, sheep, and men, we see modeled in broad strokes the array of human causality, from work to prayer. These are, in fact, the two basic ways that God has instituted to accomplish his purposes in the world through human beings. In these stories, we find that the work and prayer of finding the lost things of the world are foundational for what it means to be a steward, an image-bearer, of God.

But other proposals at the various state levels are also worth serious consideration. A proper view of the relationship between the state and federal governments leaves significant areas of freedom and sovereignty for the individual states, providing our nation with varieties of approaches that can fit particular circumstances or compete with other proposals implemented in other states. This kind of policy experimentation can be particularly instructive in the case of economic policy, where hard numbers show the winners and losers.

Michigan, for instance, has long been the canary in the nation’s economic coalmine. Since the end of 2008, Michigan’s unemployment rate has been in double-digits, reaching a high of 14.9% this past January. During this time Michigan led the nation in unemployment (it was only in the last few months that Nevada replaced Michigan at the top of the list). This extended period of economic trouble in Michigan has rightly caused a period of self-reflection for the state’s policymakers and media analysts. The proposal to transition Michigan from a state dominated by government-supported labor unions into a right-to-work state is one of the most promising options currently being discussed.

In this context it is noteworthy that the Grand Rapids Press, the largest newspaper in West Michigan, has provided significant coverage of the debate over right-to-work in Michigan. The issue is part of its Michigan 10.0 series, focusing on ten major topics over ten months leading up to the election in November that have the potential to, as Press editor Paul Keep puts it, overcome “the key obstacles facing our state.”

The mere fact that the hegemony of labor unions in the state of Michigan is a serious topic of critical discussion is remarkable on its own. But the fact that the majority of Michigan residents might support the move to make Michigan a right-to-work state represents a watershed moment in the state’s history. This is, after all, a state known around the world for the Big Three, the Motor City, and the UAW. The Press commissioned a poll that asked voters the question, “Should Michigan pass a right-to-work law that means employees cannot be forced to join a labor union?” The results are surprising, to say the least. A slim majority of the respondents (51%) answered the question affirmatively, while only 27% opposed it. Now this is a single poll and a small sample size, but it does indicate the shift in public opinion about whether union membership ought to be a mandatory requirement for certain kinds of jobs.

But maybe this shift shouldn’t be all that surprising after all. Even the opponents of the right-to-work proposals admit that it has at least rhetorical appeal to the inherent rights and dignity of the worker. Where right-to-work is understood as a ban on “union shops,” in which “union dues and membership are a condition of employment,” the program resonates with basic understandings of freedom. The AP reports on the story of Peggy Mashke, who found herself one of 40,000 at-home childcare providers automatically and unknowingly enrolled as members of the UAW. Mashke and others are suing to break free from union membership, which includes mandatory contribution of union dues. As Mashke says, the fight is about the “principle” and her “constitutional rights.”

The key here is to understand that where union membership is compulsory and the unions themselves are supported by government subsidy, the rightful purpose of labor unions as recognized in Christian social thought (to protect the welfare of the workers and in so doing promote the common good) is undermined. Voluntary associations, including voluntary and free labor unions, have a critical role to play in a flourishing society. But under a mandatory system, where labor unions are free from competition and loss of potential members, it becomes too easy to subsume the promotion of worker welfare under the promotion of the welfare of the union itself. And in turn labor unions are free to promote partisan causes to an effectively captive audience and underwrite explicitly partisan political advertising. This kind of crony unionism, in which the government sanctions and promotes a compulsory union monopoly in exchange for political support, perverts both the government and the unions. Each institution has a positive role in promoting the common good, but when such economic and political interests are so intimately aligned, self-interest is substituted for the common good.

It’s one thing for a newspaper on the west side of the state, which although it has a history of organized labor movements does not have the same entrenched interests as the east side, to examine seriously the question of right-to-work. It’s quite another for the move to actually happen (neither of the leading gubernatorial candidates favor the move, and the Press editorialized in opposition to it as well).

But the discussion itself is an important one. As political commentator Rick Haglund observes, “Ending compulsory unionism has been whispered about for years. But it was rarely discussed in public forums until this year’s gubernatorial election campaign.” This discussion in Michigan signals a broader lesson about the upcoming elections across the country: the same old political and economic logic of the past is coming under increasing scrutiny. And come November it might just be time for the kind of “creative destruction” of outmoded policies and obsolete paradigms that have hampered our nation’s prosperity and flourishing.

Here’s what Brooks concludes: “Americans will not renounce the moral materialism at the core of their national identity. But the country is clearly redefining what sort of lifestyle is socially and morally acceptable and what is not. People like Platt are central to that process.”

It’s true that the call to follow Jesus is a radical call. But it is false to juxtapose that radicalism with a demarcation between those areas of life in which one can be faithful to him and not.

What we can really hope for is that each of us will be obedient to Christ in our own callings, whether in plenty or in want, in abundance or scarcity. In the realm of economics, for most people that will mean that they act responsibly with their money, avoiding the temptation to live in the midst of crippling debt and seeking meaning in buying and identity with what we purchase and consume. This is what I’ve called the “fourth” pillar of the new economy, “Spend all you can.”

But as Brooks points out, the pursuit of sustainable wealth and profit in the midst of responsible giving and saving isn’t at all a new idea. It’s only the excessive spending and unsustainable consumption of recent decades that make it seem new.

For ourselves, work helps give life meaning and purpose. Human beings are naturally productive, tending, when unimpeded, to use our minds and hands to make things, to be creative. The very term “manufacturing” comes from root words that mean “making by hand.” Indeed, God has set up the world in such a way that work is a blessing, the way he provides for us to provide for ourselves and our families. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in this context called work God’s “order of grace,” the regular means he has given to take care of our material needs. Anyone who has been out of work knows this to be true: having a job and receiving a paycheck is a great blessing.

But God has also given our work a spiritual meaning. The Apostle Paul exhorts us in this way: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.” That is, we are accountable to God for the opportunities he gives us to be productive, as well as for the energy and talents that we apply in our work. The first great commandment is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” We are to love God in all we do. This includes that portion of our day which we spend at work. We are, quite simply, to show our love of God in our work.

It is one thing, however, to say that we are to love God in our work. It is quite another to do so. What does loving God in our work really look like?

It is here that the second great commandment comes to the fore: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” As the Christian writer Lester DeKoster puts it, at its core “work is the form in which we make ourselves useful to others.” It is in putting ourselves in the service of others that our work also finds meaning. For in making ourselves useful to others, we do for them as we would have them do for us.

And this is, as DeKoster puts it, the great secret connecting work and the two great love commandments. For in making ourselves useful to others, we make ourselves useful to God. This is how we show our love for God: in serving others.

After all, that’s how he shows his love for us. The incarnation is God’s entrance into a life and death of service for human beings. The Apostle Paul makes this connection as he writes, “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” He says this just before he points to the example of Christ as the one who serves others, “taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” This is the good news of Jesus Christ, for our life and death, our rest and our work.

The great theologian Augustine says, “Every human being, precisely as human, is to be loved on God’s account.” For God loves us so much that he sent his only Son to die on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

So let us love one another, this week and always, not simply in our leisure, but also in our labor.

Glenn Reynolds linked to a video of a NYC cop who “threatens a man taking cell phone video with arrest.” This picks up the attention given here and here to the question of law enforcement and ‘citizen photojournalism.’

But what really struck me about this story was the threat attributed to the (apparent) cop, who said, “Guys in jail are going to rape you.”

This is beyond the pale in myriad ways. Reynolds points out in an update that “when you have a badge and a gun you should behave better than the average schmuck, rather than having a license to be a jerk.” Public persons, like law enforcement officials, have a higher standard of conduct than private individuals.

But this story also gets at the necessity of prison reform, and the importance of Christian engagement of the criminal justice system.

The term dehumanization gets used often to describe what happens to a victim, particularly of a violent crime. But it’s all often what happens in the realities of the American system of criminal justice.

Simply because people commit crimes, heinous, violent, or otherwise, it does not mean that they cease to be human persons.

No matter what someone has done there are simply things that are not to be done to them, and certainly not within the context of a legally-sanctioned system of justice. This moral reality is what stands behind a good deal of the principled Christian opposition to torture, for instance. And it’s also what lies behind the proscription of “cruel and unusual punishments.” There are just some things that you don’t do to human beings in any situation or context, merely by virtue of their status as human beings.

The prevalence of prison rape in particular is something that criminals should not be subjected to. Evangelicals have been particularly active on this issue, including groups like the NAE and Justice Fellowship.

Holding criminals accountable is part of what it means to treat them as human beings, as moral agents. But the dignity of human persons, in their victimhood as well as their victimization, also means that there are limits to forms of punishment or to acceptable contexts for incarceration. It also means that imprisonment is not the final word, even in cases of life sentences. Inmates are still people, and therefore need to be treated as such, with all the challenges and potential that face all human persons.

This has important implications for what prison and imprisonment look like. For instance, in the latest issue of Corrections Today, one of the “top nine” reasons to increase correctional education programs is that “From a humanistic viewpoint, education is the right thing to do.” The brief article (PDF) cites a UN statement:

Education should be aimed at the full development of the whole person requiring prisoner access to formal and informal education, literacy programs, basic education, vocational training, creative, religious and cultural activities, physical education and sport, social education, higher education and library facilities.

(Thanks to Dr. John Teevan, director of Grace College’s Prison Extension Program for pointing out that article).

My own view is that the broad realm of criminal justice, including various accounts of restorative justice and the relationship of Christians, both organically and institutionally, to the government system of punishment is especially ripe for fruitful engagement. And the issue of prison rape is a concrete instance of where Christian activism is of utmost importance.

Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs at Thomson Reuters, says, “Our data suggest that the leadership of health systems owned by churches may be the most active in aligning quality goals and monitoring achievement of mission across the system.”

It is certainly true that Christian engagement of issues surrounding health care are essential for renewing our system of care. Dr. Donald P. Condit makes this case in his book, A Prescription for Health Care Reform.

If the report accurately reflects the superiority of religious hospitals as opposed to “secular” counterparts, we might speculate a bit at the reasons behind this. It may well be due, in part at least, to the comprehensive view of the human person informed by a religious, and specifically Christian, anthropology.

That is, we are not simply physical beings, but exist with both material and spiritual aspects, body and soul.

Here’s a link to the study in PDF.

Below the break is the story from ENI/RNS.

US study says religious hospitals more efficient, provide better care
By Daniel Burke

New York, 17 August (ENI/RNS)—Roman Catholic and other church-run health care systems in the U.S. are more efficient and provide higher quality care than their secular counterparts, according to a new Thomson Reuters study.

The study looked at 255 health care systems and found that Catholic and other church-owned systems are “significantly more likely to provide higher quality care and efficiency” than both investor-owned and nonprofit health systems, Religion News Service reports.

There was no statistical difference between Catholic and other church-run health systems, according to the study, which built on information gleaned from Reuters’ “Top 100 Hospitals” report.

“Our data suggest that the leadership teams … of health systems owned by churches may be the most active in aligning quality goals and monitoring achievement across the system,” the report stated.

The report was short on specific reasons for religious hospitals’ success, saying that further study will be required to understand the differences. The performance measures included mortality rates, the number of medical complications, readmission rates, lengths of stay, profitability, and other factors.

The Catholic Church in the United States runs 624 hospitals and 499 long-term health care facilities, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“When your mission is rooted in Jesus who healed the sick, only top quality care will do,” said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokesperson for the U.S. bishops. “This study confirms what many take for granted. The church leads in providing quality health care efficiently.”

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