Business Types not Welcome

I'm just finishing David W. Miller's God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement. I expect to review this book later, but I wanted to share the first five paragraphs of Chapter 1. This eloquent statement and acknowledgment are like a cool rain on parched ground.

They might as well have just posted a sign outside the church: “Corporate types not welcome to worship here.” My friend Steve, the chairman and chief executive officer of a large multinational company, tells the story of being excluded – indeed, derided – within his own congregation, not because of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, or doctrinal disputes, but because of his work. Sitting in an adult education class one Sunday morning he listened to the pastor berate “the greed of all multinationals” and the “self-serving nature of their executives.” The apex of the pastor’s scolding message left this question hanging in the air: “How could a Christian work at this company?” My friend, a committed and thoughtful Christian, was the head of that company.

Steve is not alone. Hundreds of thousands of women and men around the country have come to feel an urgent need to integrate their faith and their work and, at the same time, have found the church to be of little help. Their stories, which make up the Faith at Work movement, have emerged both within and in response to the dramatically changing social, economic, technological, geopolitical, and ecclesiastical conditions that began in the 1980s and continue today. During that time, the conditions surrounding work, the employee, and the workplace have changed significantly as a result of several factors. These include large-scale corporate mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, layoffs, plant closures and the resulting relocation of factories to low-cost overseas manufacturing sites, advances in technology and telecommunications, mobile capital, lower global transportation costs, and reduced trade barriers.

In the midst of these changes, many people report feeling that they live increasingly bifurcated lives, where faith and work seldom connect. Many who are Christians complain of a “Sunday-Monday gap,” where their Sunday worship hour bears little to no relevance to the issues they face in their Monday workplace hours. Though notable exceptions exist, sermon topics, liturgical content, prayers, and pastoral care rarely address – much less recognize – the spiritual questions, pastoral needs, ethical challenges, and vocational possibilities faced by those who work in the marketplace and world of business.

When speaking to clergy gatherings of a variety of denominations around the country, I often ask this question: “Who here prays for and commissions your teenagers as they go off on a mission trip?” Invariably, all hands go up. Then I ask: “Who here prays for and commissions your Sunday school teachers each September as the new church year starts?” Most of the hands go up again. Finally, I ask: “Who here prays for all the certified public accountants in your congregation around April 15, and who here prays for all the salespeople and those working on commission at the end of the month and end of the year, when quotas are due?” Silence. Eyes drop to the ground usually, not a single hand is raised.

Whether conscious or unintended, the pulpit all too frequently sends the signal that work in the church matters but work in the world does not. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that workers, businesspeople, and other professionals often feel unsupported by the Sunday church in the Monday marketplace vocations. Increasingly, businesspeople – whether correctly or incorrectly – perceive the clergy’s lack of interest in, unawareness of, and general pejorative view of the business world and, by association, of those who work in it. Of course, responsible theological and ethical criticism of immoral business structures, practices, and people is certainly in order. But the often presumptive and pervasive suspicion shown by religious professionals blocks consideration of the theological and practical possibility that there could be redemptive, creative, productive, ministerial, and transformative possibilities in the world of business, and in the lives of those called to live out their Christian vocation in the marketplace and other workplaces.

Comments

[Dana Ames]

Yes, and we the church need some theological undergirding (a la "Other Six Days") in order to be able to have some kind of framework within which to do this. This is merely another example of how thin our theology has become.

The other thing that must be faced is that all we hear about are the instances of greed and rapaciousness and "bottom line" thinking/acting wrt business, and particularly corporations. As I told you, I'm convinced that "capitalism" is not the problem. However, I wonder where the voices are in the "corporate world" that would call for overall ethical dealing, for economic empowering of people in the developing world rather than taking advantage of them (this from a friend of mine who is a missionary in Uganda: http://jbburnett.com/blogs/blogafrica.html), and for reducing the stratospheric disparity (in this country) between compensation for corporate executives and that of their employees.

The lack of these voices (or, if they are there, the lack of hearing about them through news outlets) is very disturbing. It also leaves a very bad taste in the mouths of non-Christians who are truly concerned about the good of humanity. Our local public radio station runs a weekly show called "Corporations and Democracy". As I was listening to the radio while driving around town to do errands a few months ago, someone on the show made a comment to the effect of "Concentrated wealth is the greatest enemy of democracy." I was not able to hear the rest of the show, but that's only one of many things I commonly hear from concerned people, some of whom, it seems to me, are actually not ignorant about economics- unlike most people who call themselves Christians.

This is what you're up against, my friend.

Dana

[nate]

Mike,

A great an interesting paragraph. I would suggest that part of this has to do with a huge class of clergy that have never worked outside the church. The separation of clergy from laity has something to do with the problem.

I also think you are dead on that part of earning the right to offer critque of specific practices inside the system is supporting people that work there. In our church we had to deal with some of that as we realized that some of the employees of Enron were longtime members, one of them has been the children's choir director for a long time.

Let me ask this then, what if that pastor was right? What if it would be hard for a Christian to support the actions of that particular multinational? Is there any way that the pastor could have asked that question w/o leaving the CEO feeling unsupported?

[Michael W. Kruse]

Of course we are hearing Miller's recounting of the story. It would seem to me if you have the CEO right there that maybe you assume that he is a Christian with integrity and invite him to having a conversation so you can learn from him. Why do we presume the pastor is authority on how to apply ethics in the workplace particularly when pastors have had zero training in business/economics and most have never had to confront such situations?