Last month the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment conducted a program for seminary professors and religious leaders on “Our Environment: Economics, Ecology, and Ethics.” The conference was designed to further FREE’s mission, which is to “assist judges, religious leaders and other community leaders and scholars by conducting seminars that provide tools and insights to help them achieve their goals.”

The participants were a varied group. They included several seminary professors; Eastern Orthodox priests; Protestant ministers heading social justice, alliance for environmental stewardship, and outreach to immigrants programs; and Catholic religious sisters involved in interfaith fellowships and in religious publications and law. Also among our number were the director of communications for a prominent religious-based education group and several pastors.

We at FREE believe programs for religious leaders are of great importance for three reasons. First, the teachings of religious organizations and media are extremely influential in shaping public opinion and, consequently, in shaping the actions of governments, non-profit institutions, and business organizations. Furthermore, religious organizations embody good will and a genuine desire to serve their communities. Finally, their desire to benefit the spiritual and materials conditions of their congregants and society often is coupled with a lack of information about how these goals might be achieved. Without the tools to evaluate proposed courses of action, religious leaders and media can, and often do, take positions and advocate programs that result in unintended harmful consequences that are counterproductive to their goals.

Every major faith tradition preaches that increasing the well being of persons is beneficial, and that it is natural and wholesome to approach this goal through social cooperation. However, a “social cooperation” approach often is treated as the opposite of a market approach. This is consistent with the notion that economics is about money and that market interactions take the shape of a tournament, whereby some take wherewithal from others through competition metaphorically embodying the law of tooth and claw.

Since most material needs no longer can be met through individual and family production, the misapprehension that markets are destructive to religious values and individual freedom leaves only government as a mechanism for achieving cooperation. Even legitimate and modest governments claim obedience from those subject to them. As we have learned through bitter experience, however, government can prove malignant rather than beneficent. Lord Acton’s dictum retains its full force. Likewise, government regulations necessarily are general in nature, and thus too coarse-grained to truly take into account the needs and circumstances of individuals.

Since FREE was established in 1985, its mission has been to help decision makers use economic tools to help solve problems they define as important. While basic and intermediate economics textbooks could supply the requisite knowledge base for improved decision-making, we understand the mere distribution of tomes is woefully incapable of changing minds when preconceptions interfere with gaining and assimilating knowledge.

Over the years, FREE’s programs have featured presentations by six winners of Nobel Prizes in Economic Science. Our other presenters are noted for outstanding achievements in academia and business. But possessing great knowledge does not suffice to convey that knowledge to those who are not yet receptive. FREE’s expertise is not in broadcasting knowledge of economic principles as such, but rather in understanding the importance of nurturing receptivity to that knowledge as a tool in achieving the goals of participants.

An important aspect of this approach is that we do not present economic tools in a vacuum. We do so only in contexts that are useful to particular decision makers. Even more subtle, we understand that participants will not care what we know until they know that we care. In the case of our programs for federal judges, for instance, this has meant that we demonstrate respect for judges’ need for objective and nonpartisan analysis of topics particularly relevant to their work. In the case of our programs for religious leaders, this means that we demonstrate respect for their belief systems and religiously based goals.

This is the fourth year we have been offering programs for religious leaders. The starting point for each of these programs has been demonstrated deep respect for the participants’ faith traditions. Religious leaders often have experienced academics and others with technical knowledge indicating disrespect for their values. That does not occur at our programs. By the same token, we respect that FREE must act only within our own sphere of competence. We are not sectarian, and, as last month’s conference demonstrates, our participants come from many faiths. We do not instruct in religious belief, practice, or goals. Rather, we make clear that our job is to provide insights into how participants can more effectively achieve the religious goals that they, themselves, establish.

Our programs are designed to dispel two myths: That economics is about money rather than mutually satisfying exchanges, and that economics is about competition rather than coordination. We achieve this by offering economic insights grounded in sound principles and illustrated by accounts from both everyday life and pressing national and world concerns.

Our conferences for religious leaders have been organized starting with a welcoming session the first evening, and continuing with ten substantive sessions during the ensuing three days. Each 90-minute session has been divided equally between a presentation and discussion among the participants. The programs have included a first session on Stewardship and Liberty, two sessions on economic principles and their general application, one or two sessions on public choice economics and the real meaning of the “tragedy of the commons,” and a concluding session reprising principles of human cooperation. Last month’s program also included sessions on topics such as “Climate Change for Nuclear Power,” “Greener Pastures through Entrepreneurship,” and “Property Rights and Ethical Sharing of Economic Burdens.”

An important aspect of our programs is our nurturing of informal discussion among speakers and other participants. Speakers are obligated to be present during the entire conference. The attractive, but isolated, nature of the conference venue also is conducive to interaction, as is the arrangement of meals, breaks, and recreational activity.

We have been very encouraged by the warm letters FREE has received from religious leaders who have found our conferences to be helpful. We look forward to continuing them next summer and for many more thereafter.