Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Plough Quarterly • Summer  faithful to one another, not only in terms of sexual relations but in terms of being attentive to your first responsibility to the person to whom you have pledged your life. Marriage gives witness to the same kind of faithfulness of Christ to his church. Part of this commit- ment includes hospitality to new life, which results from sexual relations. That is the sticking point I have toward gay marriage. Not every marriage between a man and a woman is necessarily procreative. But marriage as an institution of the church of Jesus Christ is only intelligible in terms of the Christian willingness to have a child. Community of Goods Now that we’ve covered politics and marriage, let’s talk about money– specifically, community of goods. What is the relevance of Acts 2 and 4 for the church today? I don’t know that the Bruderhof mode of com- munal sharing is the only way to go. Neither do we. Right. But there’s something to it. Years ago I was giving a lecture at Houston Baptist University at their new business school. At the dinner before the lecture, the associate dean of the school told me how her church grew between fifty and one hundred members every Sunday. My lecture was called “Why Business Ethics Is a Bad Idea.” When I finished the lecture, the dean said, “This just sounds so despairing. Isn’t there something we can do?” I said, “Yes, but it’s too late for your students. By the time they get to business school they’re too corrupt. However, I think before you let anyone join your church you ought to have them disclose how much they make. ‘I make $85,000 a year. I want to be a member of the church.’ ‘I make $150,000, I want to be a member.’” She said, “Well, we couldn’t do that. That’s private.” I said, “Where are the fundamentalists when you need them? God knocked off Sapphira and Ananias for not sharing what they made. Where did all this privacy stuff come from?” So when it comes to money, maybe we should begin by telling one another what we make. That would be a very small first step, but at least it’s a way to start. For instance, at my church the rector knows approximately what I make, which as a full-time professor at Duke is about $100,000 per year. The problem that you run into is that many congregation members don’t want to expose their income–not because they’re making so much, but because they’re Image from www.scrowing.org