Dear Cargo Carriers:

This morning, I found myself re-reading an article by Dr. Deirdre McCloskey, currently of the Cato Institute, on her critique of mathematics currently employed by economists (History of Economic Ideas XIII (3, 2005): 85-102). In her conclusion, McCloskey laments how economic statistical models had become, in effect, cargo cults, which took the shape of analysis but failed to provide useful explanations of how human systems function in the lived world. Her cargo-cult analogy got me thinking about the state of the 21st century church. I fear we too have become obsessed with the forms and objects of Christianity, but in the end, we may have emptied our faith of a truly enlivening spirit.

Perhaps the most notable example of a cargo cult was the Melanesian Islanders who during World War II had their lives upended by modern equipment and appliances