The Economics of Faith

When it comes to economic and business news, one of the most perceptive pundits today is Lawrence Kudlow. He's become a media star, hosting his own popular program on CNBC and writing in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and National Review. He also helped shape economic and budget policy during the Reagan years before joining Bear Stearns. I met him when I worked in the Nixon White House and know him to be a keen thinker. Kudlow is coming to Colorado Springs in April to speak at our Wilberforce conference about "Christians in the Marketplace." What qualifies him to be there? We invited him because we knew something about his personal life. You see, despite all the attention lavished on this man as a media star, there's one fact reporters consistently ignore: Lawrence Kudlow has become a deeply devout Christian whom God rescued from a destructive lifestyle involving alcohol and cocaine abuse. As Kudlow told Crisis magazine a few years ago, the "hound of heaven" began chasing him in the winter of 1993. A close friend introduced him to Father John McCloskey, who came to visit Kudlow in his office. McCloskey said he had watched him on television over the years. "Lately, you have changed," he commented. "How so?" Kudlow asked. McCloskey said, "It appears you're looking for God." Kudlow -- a completely secularized, non-practicing Jew -- was startled and then broke into tears. Kudlow started reading the New Testament and began attending St. Thomas More Church in New York -- an experience he quickly learned to love. "As soon as I saw Christ on the cross, I felt at one with it," he recalls. But then Kudlow, who struggled with cocaine and alcohol addiction, succumbed to another round of substance abuse, forcing him to resign from Bear Stearns investment firm. Once sober again, he became the economics editor at National Review, where he was surrounded by Christian intellectuals and began to study the Christian faith seriously. Then came another relapse. This time, he entered a treatment center in Minnesota for five months -- an experience that "got me sober," Kudlow recalls. He attended church every Sunday, a habit he kept up following his release from the treatment center. By the fall of 1997, Kudlow felt a keen desire to convert. And on November 30, he was baptized at St. Thomas More. By then, as he explains, he understood the words of novelist Evelyn Waugh, who wrote that grace operates in our life even when we don't know it or want it to -- that grace overtakes us even as we run from God. Kudlow follows in a well-trod path of Jewish intellectuals who have embraced Christianity in recent decades, including journalist Michael Novak and the former abortionist Bernard Nathanson, trial lawyer Jay Sekulow and Professor Marvin Olasky. Yes, God is at work. At our conference in Colorado Springs, Kudlow will discuss how he views the world, economics, and public policy differently as a Christian. I hope you will consider attending. Call 1-888-672-0007 for information. You will learn, not only how we should live out a biblical worldview in the business world, but also what it was for this media figure to be overtaken by the grace of God -- even as he ran from Him. For further reading and information: Visit Kudlow & Company's website, and read Lawrence Kudlow's past columns on Jewish World Review's website and on National Review Online. Marcia Vickers, "Kudlow & Cramer's Odd Star Power," Business Week, 23 January 2003. Learn more about the upcoming conference, "Christians in the Marketplace," taking place April 4-6 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Early bird rate -- a savings of 20 percent -- ends February 7!) Michael Novak, Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life (Free Press, 1996). Roberto Rivera, "Coming Clean: Honesty and the Rules of the Marketplace," BreakPoint Online, 20 June 2002.

02/4/03