By now it is almost a truism that the faith and work movement struggles with reaching blue collar workers. A number of very smart people have tried to do something about that. More than any I have seen so far, W. David Buschart and Ryan Tafilowski have succeeded with their new book Worth Doing: Fallenness, Finitude, and Work in the…
Author: Jennifer Woodruff Tait
J. Fletcher Lowe (1932-2021), Faith and Work Leader
In 2016, Fletcher Lowe emailed me out of the blue. He wanted to meet Episcopalians who were going to be at the 2016 Faith and Work Summit in Dallas, and a chain of emails had led him to me and Will Messenger at the Theology of Work Project. (Will and I are both Episcopal priests, as was Fletcher.) We exchanged…
Merchants and Ministers: A Review
Schmiesing, Kevin. Merchants and Ministers: A History of Businesspeople and Clergy in the United States. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. 248 pp. $105.00. The story this book tells will be unfamiliar to many readers. The role of business in the development of American history is a contested one, and robber barons and Wall Street tycoons often feature as villains. This…
Finding God’s Purpose: Review of An Uncommon Guide to Retirement by Jeff Haanen
Earlier this summer, I joined the launch team for Jeff Haanen’s An Uncommon Guide to Retirement with the goal of getting a review out to you all on this blog as part of the book’s launch. Unfortunately I then broke my nose, which is not a recommended productivity technique – so now I am late to the party. Sorry, Jeff! If you…
Book Review: The Artist and the Trinity
On any list of my favorite authors, Dorothy Sayers is near the top. I’ve been a fan, especially of Lord Peter and Harriet Vane, for years. I still remember walking into a used book store Before the Internet to see if they had any more copies of her mysteries. When I told the proprietor what I was searching for, he…
Joy to the Work! Merry Christmas!
It’s my annual posting of my favorite song about Christ’s first advent, his second advent, and the transformation of our work now and always. Sing along!
From Dominion to Communion, With a Panda Hat: Dispatches from the Chicago Faith at Work Summit
Usually on this blog we try to spread the love around, with a variety of posts in any one week—from interviews to book reviews to op-eds to reprints of cool stuff you might have missed elsewhere. If you get our posts by email (and if you don’t, you should) you may have noticed that I broke that rule this week,…
Labour of Love: Work in First and Second Thessalonians (Reviewing Work, Part 3)
If there’s any Bible portion that gets overused in the faith and work movement more than Genesis 1-2, it might be 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “ For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” It even rears its head outside the movement in political debates. It seems right, then, that the…
Work as a Blessed Gift in the Prophets and Writings: Reviewing Work, Part 2
Second in a series. Not all that long ago, as I was preparing sets of sermon notes for the Theology of Work Project, it dawned on me how many faith and work sermons there were on Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22. I think the movement’s claim that preachers have tended to ignore these topics in the past is true. And it…
The Creation Narratives and the Original Unity of Work and Worship (Reviewing “Work,” Part 1)
A few weeks ago, I reported in on my failure to attend #Acton U and to blog about talks there which centered around the book Work: Theological Foundations and Practical Implications. While I can’t go back in time and travel to Grand Rapids for the conviviality and thoughtful reflection and beautiful views of the river and amazing quantity of men in…
The Green Room 