The title has to grab your attention. I read further to find out what, in the opinion of the authors, would make the world a happier place. What would you say? When are you most happy? If you could wave a wand over a nation–Libya or Liberia or Latvia–what would you change? Four things should do the trick on an international level. (I find the sequence as interesting as the list.)

1. End poverty by 2030.
2. Environmental sustainability.
3. Social inclusion.
4. Good governance.

I am actually impressed that they have honed the list to just four things. And, at a high level, their prescription looks laudatory. “Good news to the poor” must include getting a job, or starting a business. I would re-frame “environmental sustainability” with a broader measure of total asset stewardship, since I am a tad suspicious of the environment becoming its own agenda. Social inclusion: I like the idea of happiness not being the preserve of a dominant group.

Good governance is a must, but a challenge, since you don’t shift from bad to good without addressing corruption, greed and the abuse of power. This means heart surgery, but not of the human kind. Here the efforts of man without the participation of God fail. So we have to be careful not to simply plonk Millennium Development Goals or the newly proposed Sustainable Development Goals on the wistful pillars of human compassion and logic without a addressing the spiritual foundations of nations. On paper, the goals may look fine. In practice, we cannot transform society without addressing all spheres of society, and Religion–like business (poverty), government (governance)–has to be repurposed. Don’t get me wrong: God knows we don’t need more religion! Spiritual revival is no guarantee of societal transformation. But man is spiritual, and that spiritual DNA is present in families, corporations and nations. So any attempt to just do what is humanly possible will not yield the results hoped for. Transformation requires personal reformation somewhere in the journey, don’ t you think?

The Public Research Religion Institute (PRRI) has spoken: non-tea-party Americans think Capitalism is at odds with Christian values. What is not readily apparent is how one defines Capitalism. I have spent the last few years researching the topic of Faith-based Financing (FBF) to find out whether Capitalism springs from the mind of our Maker or the schemes of man. Do I agree that capitalism is at odds with Christian values? Not at all, IF one is talking about real Capitalism. In the US, however, what we have is a bad cocktail of Materialism and Interventionism, not Capitalism. Second, I suspect that when some people responded to this survey they heard “capitalism” and translated it to mean “materialism.” Had the question been, “Is Materialism at odds with Christian values?” I would have said, “Of course!”

My two cents is that this survey is not very helpful, except for a sentence or two at the bottom that says, “Americans across the political and religious landscape agree that the federal budget is a moral document that reflects our national priorities.” We can separate church and state, but we cannot strip economics of its foundations and hope to have a just, equitable, fair society. In my book, Repurposing Capital, I make the point that our modern economic systems have lost their moral moorings.

So, is this survey helpful? A USA Today article seems to be generating some discussion with polarized responses, perhaps reflecting the underlying confusion about the difference between capitalism and materialism. From a data perspective, I am not convinced the survey is useful; from the perspective of fostering the public discussion, I like it.