On June 20 and 21, Ruth Institute President Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. spoke at Acton University, the annual gathering of the Acton Institute in
Grand Rapids, MI, attended by more than 1,000 from over 90 countries, including Catholics, evangelicals, Orthodox, and other faith communities.
Dr. Morse gave two speeches. One was a retrospective on her 2008 book, Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise A Village.
In this seminal work, Morse explained that economists had been taking the family for granted – largely ignoring an irreplaceable social institution.
Neither a series of social contracts among adults (which libertarians favor) nor a series of government programs (which so-called progressives
support) can take the place of the family, Morse argued. “I hope that everyone who values the personal over the political and the family over the
bureaucratic will take these arguments seriously.”
Morse also spoke on “Gender Ideology and the Future of Freedom,” which is based in part on her recent book, The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies are Destroying Lives and why the Church was Right all Along.
She described the gender ideology as the view that the human body, especially the fact of male and female, is unimportant. We can transcend and “move
beyond” male and female with enough social engineering, or more recently, with the help of law and technology. Dr. Morse explained that the gender
ideology threatens all the Acton Institute’s core values of a free and virtuous society, including fiscal responsibility, limited government, and
religious liberty.
Dr. Morse said, “I was especially gratified by the warm response my message received from many of the foreign participants. They were especially glad
when I apologized to them for the US government’s attempts to forcibly spread the sexual revolution around the world.”
Founded in 1990, The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty promotes “a free and virtuous society characterized
by religious liberty and sustained by religious principles.”
Earlier this year, Morse spoke at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. on her book, The Sexual State. Last year, she spoke at an
international conference on the 50th anniversary of the beginnings of the Sexual Revolution, at the University of Francisco de Vitoria
in Madrid.
The Ruth Institute is a global non-profit organization equipping Christians to defend the family in the public arena and build a Civilization of Love.
Jennifer Roback Morse has a Ph.D. in economics.
Find more information on Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village here.
Find more information on the Ruth Institute here.
To schedule an interview with Dr. Morse, contact media@ruthinstitute.org.
