Kurt Schaefer April 24, 2009
Noon - 1 pm in the Federal Room (IU room
25)
(located in the lower
level of the Illini Union on the north side)
(Bring a lunch or purchase from adjacent restaurants in the Union
lower level)
LISTEN TO THIS TALK
ONLINE.
Title: Slave, Master, Husband, Wife,
Child, Parent:
The Economic Context of the New Testament Household
Codes
Abstract: The New Testament’s “household
codes”--passages dealing with household relationships among
husband, wife, slaves and children--are all references to the
default economics text of first-century Mediterranean culture, the
household codes that derive from Aristotle and the Stoics. The
household (oikos/oikia)
was taken to be the
natural basic element of the economy, and its proper ordering was a
fundamental economic issue. By reading the New Testament documents
in this cultural context, I hope to offer something fresh to
discussions about gender and race that have deeply divided the
Christian community and separated it from other people of good
will.
Kurt C. Schaefer
(Ph.D., Economics, University of
Michigan, 1984) has taught at Calvin College since 1987, after
teaching at Hamilton College (Clinton, New York). His publications
have considered the uses and misuses of data and modeling in
analyzing human affairs, with article-length considerations of
third-world development programs, the effects of the U.S. welfare
programs on illegitimacy and work effort, the study of workplace
discrimination, benchmarking academic publication productivity,
adolescent alcohol and drug use, the dynamics of religious
congregations, and the use of economic models in international
economic analysis.
Schaefer has directed (2004-2007) Calvin’s Center for Social
Research, with an annual portfolio of six dozen grant- and
contract-funded research projects from across the social sciences.
He has been called on for expert legal testimony in a half-dozen
cases involving mathematical modeling of financial losses, and has
directed Calvin’s semester-abroad programs in Hungary and Britain.
He received (with John Mason) the 1991 Christian Scholars Award
given by the Christian Scholars
Review. Schaefer serves as
Secretary/Treasurer of the Association of Christian Economists
(USA) and managing editor of Faith and
Economics.
He has served as an elder and musician in his church (Church of the
Servant Christian Reformed Church), and is a Master of Theological
Studies student at Calvin Theological Seminary. He lives in Grand
Rapids, Michigan with his wife Anne and their two children.
Kurt and his wife Anne were involved in InterVarsity as
undergraduates at Bradley University and Kurt also as a graduate
student at the University of Michigan.
The photo above is Kurt driving "Stars and Stripes" in San Diego
harbor.
See his Calvin College faculty bio page.