Diversity For Thee But Not For Me

Over the past few weeks, our adult education class at church has been discussing Michael Sandel's most recent book, "What Money Can't Buy." It's an excellent and thought-provoking book, in which Sandel argues (in a nutshell) that there are some goods that shouldn't be subjected to market forces because they (i.e., the market forces) crowd out the norms and values generally associated with that good (for a libertarian critique of Sandel's book, see Tom Parker's review at the Cato Institute's website).

For our final forum, we watched a video of Sandel speaking at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival ("Markets and Morals: What Money Can't Buy"). In it Sandel is engaging as always, and, true to form, he encourages discussion/debate on the topic among those who were present. He closes his talk with a question and answer period. Although it was hard to hear (but Sandel repeated the gist of the question), one woman asked Sandel if he thought we, as a society, would be better off if we got our news from various sources, in particular from those that challenge our assumptions. Given his belief that hearing and deliberating multiple sides of an issue is a good thing, it isn't surprising that Sandel agreed.

Now, I may be going out on a limb, but I'm betting that this woman had in mind political conservatives who only listen to FOX News. That is, she believes or at least hopes that if they got their news from somewhere else (e.g., NPR, Pacifica Radio, New York Times), they wouldn't hold such conservative beliefs.  That said, my guess is that she didn't see any immediate need for her to watch, read, or listen to something other than NPR or the NY Times, such as FOX News, since she probably wasn't interested in having her worldview challenged or changed.

But, then again, who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe she avidly reads the NY Times while watching FOX News. You never know. Thus, in the spirit of encouraging the reading of diverse resources, I offer this array of my favorite theological journals that I try to regularly read and consider (I currently subscribe to Books & Culture, The Christian Century, and First Things):

• Books and Culture (Moderate Evangelical)
• The Christian Century (Moderate to Liberal Mainline Protestant)
• Christianity Today (Conservative Evangelical)
• First Things (Conservative Roman Catholic)
• Sojourners (Liberal Evangelical)

Happy reading