It's Wednesday, April 20, 2022.

I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

As you think in moral terms we often talk about moral agency that is the capacity of

making moral decisions and thus the responsibility for making moral decisions.

But we also talk about moral actors.

You are looking at a cow, you say with a cow, it's not really a moral actor, no one's going

to arrest a cow.

If that cow trespasses, it's going to be a problem for the cow's owner, not for the cow.

The cow is not understood to have moral agency. The cow is not a moral actor.

Now a cattle rustler on the other hand he is a moral agent and he is a

moral actor. Moral agency is why we hold him responsible for his crime. You don't

arrest a cow, you do arrest the cattle hustler. But as we think about

moral agency and moral actors, it's really important to recognize that an entire new world

of moral agency and of moral actors has appeared on the scene.

Now we're talking about American corporations and global or international corporations,

transnational corporations as they are sometimes known. But let's just think about corporations in the United States, in the main.

Let's just think of those corporations as now increasingly being identified by their position on moral issues.

Now the time was in a not too distant past that when you bought say a box of

laundry detergent or you went and bought an insurance policy or for that matter you walked into an appliance store

and bought a washer and a dryer you were not intending to make a major moral

statement. Furthermore the department store that sold you the washer and dryer

and the insurance agency that sold you the washer and dryer and the insurance

...