Theology Today

This article describes a burgeoning movement of believers in business who have tired of “the Sunday-Monday gap” and seek to integrate faith and work. The Faith at Work movement is comprised of businesspeople, professionals, and workers of all types who are gathering in significant numbers outside the church to discuss questions of meaning, purpose, calling, ethics, character, spiritual identity, and expression in the workplace. Abandoned by the church and influenced by various historical, theological, and social factors, the movement is largely lay-founded and lay-led, appealing to liberals and conservatives alike. The article concludes with prescriptive proposals, offering a new language and framework to facilitate theological reflection, practical application, and constructive discourse about faith and work.

During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, numerous Protestant pastors, professors, and editors discussed how scriptural teaching applied to the world of business and commerce. They criticized traditional economic theory and many practices of entrepreneurs, corporations, and trusts. They challenged both employers and employees to follow biblical principles, strove to improve relations between the two groups, and helped inspire some businessmen to base their enterprises on scriptural norms. Some of these Protestant leaders also supported various strategies workers used to improve their situation: unions, strikes, arbitration, profit-sharing, and industrial partnership.

Steven Reinemund, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, talks with David Miller about the role of religion in the workplace and of Christian faith in his own work life. Despite the antagonism often felt between business and religion, religion can play a positive role in the workplace when participation is voluntary. It can provide an alternative theological focus on work that offers ethical challenges to some of the values often prevalent in global capitalism. When positive religious values inform business decisions, business can fulfill its vital social role to serve as a force for good in the world.

The secular business world is an arena in which one can pursue the vocation of serving God. In order to be obedient to Jesus Christ, one need not leave the business world and matriculate at a theological seminary! Rather, according to John Calvin, one's vocation is to serve God in whatever job one pursues. What makes the work sacred is not the work itself—but the attitude with which one approaches it. George Herbert succinctly summarized this attitude: “Teach me my God and king / in all things Thee to see. / And what I do in anything / to do it as to Thee.”

The biblical foundation for business activity is rooted in the goodness of creation and in God's appointment of human beings as its agents of development. While the fall has severely damaged all human activity—including economic activity—the call into business offers restoration made possible through Christ's victory over sin. Given this hope, the church should take up the challenge to renew and deepen the vocation of its business members, sorting through several centuries of confusion and neglect regarding a calling into business. Over the last quarter-century, a renewed exploration of Christian callings within business life has provided the church with stronger resources for addressing these questions of business vocation. The opportunity for creative partnerships with its business members in serving the kingdom of God can and must be renewed in the twenty-first century.

This paper explores the range of problems facing contemporary “management.” The United States is now “managing” another country, and a large share of the world's oil supply. It is also the case that industrial engineering is on the brink of managing the biosphere more extensively than ever before. Yet, confidence in the human capacity to manage great, complex systems has been damaged by the recent series of management scandals. Certain relationships of managerial functions to both the values of democracy and the resources of theology and ethics are explored.

The case against advertising is easy to make. In 1994, the Vatican's Pontifical Council on Social Communications published a thoughtful, balanced document on “Ethics in Advertising,” presenting both positive and negative aspects of the practice. The Vatican focused on rational product selection based on a comparison of product qualities. The author, as a practitioner of advertising in the United States, offers an alternative view of advertising as a brand-building, relationship-building enterprise. Advertising can help initiate and sustain healthy commercial exchanges. A career in advertising can be pursued with good conscience when the good internal to the practice of advertising is creating these positive exchanges.

The book of Nehemiah provides a remarkable example of a servant leader motivated by, and acting for, God's ends: God's glory and the good of those served. It also provides an example of the use of godly means: the pursuit of excellence in leadership and management and a passionate focus upon achieving desirable results. These four objectives, both ends and means, offer us a sound approach for acting to glorify God in all leadership and management activities.