What are you Reading? Part 3

In anticipation of summertime reading, we recently asked our faculty to tell us what they have been reading and the answers may surprise you! Throughout March and April we will be sharing their book recommendations on the seminary's blog.

This week's entry comes from Angela Cowser, Assistant Professor, The Sociology of Religion, and Director, The Center for the Church and the Black Experience (CBE)

Dr. Angela Cowser
Assistant Professor, The Sociology of Religion and Director, The Center for the Church and the Black Experience (CBE)

The book I’ve just finished reading is entitled How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about it) by John C. Knapp.  Dr. Knapp is a former president of a corporate communication consulting firm and serves currently as University Professor and founding director of the Frances Marlin Mann Center for Ethics and Leadership at Samford University.

The Problem

In this book, Knapp argues that the church has [through omission] largely failed Christians who struggle daily to live out their faith commitments in the workplace.  After interviewing 230 people nationwide [corporate CEOs and elected officials, barbers and bookkeepers, Catholics and Protestants, male and female] about how they experience work and church, two conclusions emerged:

• Those interviewed had little difficulty recalling ethical challenges encountered in their work lives
• An overwhelming majority of respondents reported that the church had done little or nothing to equip them for faithful living at work.

Knapp argues that church priorities in the US and other Western countries emphasize private faith and shy away from ministries that equip congregants for a robust public faith.  To wit, crucial questions about vocation and money are met, in many churches, with indifference, confusion, or even hostility [Knapp, 2012, xiii].  Believers confront a workplace moral terrain defined mostly by law and economics rather than theology, which leaves people to grapple with an uninspired ethical pragmatism that asks not what is pleasing to God but rather what will make financial gain possible.

The ways in which we dichotomize occupations into sacred and secular means that in congregations, people are presented with a hierarchy of occupations, with clergy and missionaries at the top, social workers, nurses and others in the helping professions in the middle, and the majority of Christians [everybody else] at the bottom.  While the callings of clergy folk are celebrated by the church, postal workers and salespersons’ callings, for example, are not.  Knapp argues that this theology elevates an  ecclesiastical elite while subtly devaluing the rest of the body [Knapp, 27].  Further, theological education typically does not equip students with a perspective on business and economics which in turn means that most pastors fail to more intentionally connect the dots between theology and the public lives of their members [Knapp, 38].

Because of the church’s implicit hierarchy of occupations, Christians are seldom encouraged to think of “secular” work as truly important to God.  And yet, the Reformers remind us that God places great value on work, not necessarily because it yields individual wealth or happiness, but because work (should) nourish life and prevent suffering [2 Thess. 3: 10-11]. For Calvin, work is not merely a means to survival but is a service to God in the ongoing process of creating and ordering the world.

Some Answers

The practical application of Micah 6:8 can powerfully shape individual workplace practice.  To do justice in the workplace, Christians should be challenged “to ask questions about the human impact of their actions as workers, managers, consumers, and owners on their fellows” [Camenisch in Knapp, 103].  To love kindness means to emulate God by intervening on behalf of another, by loving kindness, by raising uncomfortable questions, and by embodying a workplace ethic that is generous, patient, and compassionate.  A humble spirit seeks wisdom and admits shortcomings, welcoming constructive input from others.

Many successful lay-led workplace ministries, born out of frustration with the church and its failure to respond to obvious need, have been created.  For example, Christian-based companies [e.g., Interstate Batteries, Allied Systems Holding, Covenant Transport], BAM-business as mission companies, workplace chaplains, and pastors meeting parishioners at their workplaces to learn more about their daily lives, are examples of a new movement forward.

Knapp ends his book with a powerful story.  In Topeka, Kansas, the Rev. Charles Sheldon [Central Congregational Church] preached a series of sermons that were published in 1896 as a novel [In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do?].  What Pastor Sheldon and his congregation did was undertake a 1-year experiment to apply Christ’s teachings to everything they did, especially at work. Sheldon devoted 12 weeks to “practical sociological studies”, spending a week with a homeless person looking for work, attending classes at the community college, visiting the homes of African-Americans, living with railroad workers, and accompanying doctors on their rounds, among many other activities.  Sheldon emerged from his experiences “less inclined to judge men [sic] harshly or hastily.  I find myself constantly putting myself in the other man’s place, and the effect is to quicken my sensitiveness to the man’s actual needs” [Knapp, 148].  Sheldon learned valuable things and conveyed a sincere interest in his parishoners’ whole lives.  His preaching, teaching, and outreach changed, and his congregation grew.

But wait.  The impact of those 12 weeks of learning and accompaniment yielded greatly beyond anything Sheldon could even ask or imagine.  Upon learning that black children were behind their white peers in academic achievement, Sheldon established the first African American kindergarten west of the Mississippi in order to provide early childhood care and better education.  One graduate, Elisha Scott, went on to law school. Scott’s son, Charles Sheldon Scott, became a lawyer, who in 1954, was one of many attorneys who successfully argued the Brown vs. Board of Education case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Knapp ends by arguing that the faith community should foster discernment to understand our situations, to seek God’s will, and to take the best action; promote discourse about the difficult issues of work life; exert influence to bring about positive change on behalf of people harmed or neglected by the system; offer encouragement to beleaguered workers; and be an example of justice, love and humility so that the church itself models responsible workplace and financial practices.

Knapp's excellent scholarship has inspired me to draft a course outline on Radical Discipleship, perhaps create a team-taught course with a Kellogg School of Management professor, and help organize a wide-ranging Christian Vocations Fair here at Garrett-Evangelical.