I have personally been part of a “faith at work” movement since 1966 as a junior at the University of California at Berkeley when I began a lifelong quest to understand the relationship of God and my faith to the history I was studying and to the public school teaching I envisioned doing. I have sketched my personal journey in…
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…
Excerpt from Economic Wisdom for Churches. THESIS 50: Christians should be taught that if the pope knew about the exploitation practiced by the indulgence-preachers, he would burn the church of St. Peter to ashes rather than build it with the skin, flesh and bones of the sheep. Martin Luther, 95 Theses Jobs, poverty, globalization, environment, debt, racism, trade – does…
By Matt Rusten; reprinted from Made to Flourish. With each new day, we are inundated with frightening numbers. The pandemic has upended life as we know it. Pastors and churches are beginning to respond, as they demonstrate the love of Christ in tangible ways. In times like these, it is important to listen and learn from our sisters and brothers…
Reprinted from Workship. Photo by Kara Martin. A couple of weeks ago on Facebook, Nathan Campbell from Living Church in Brisbane explained that he was going to be preaching on the topic of work the coming Sunday. He posed the following question: “This week I’m preaching on work, like the stuff we do to bring order and beauty to the…
By Bill Peel. Reprinted from the LeTourneau Center for Faith and Work. Are you called to ministry? Okay, you probably realize that’s a trick question because we’re all called to ministry as Christ’s ambassadors of redemption. However, I spend a good deal of time talking to people who are well-establish in their work, but they want to leave their work and “go…
Fourth in a series. To quote G.K. Chesterton, “the following propositions have been urged”: That we lack an account of what makes a social space a “public” space That this gap helps explain our failure to theologize well the particular kinds of social spaces in which most people do most of their work (business, government, etc.) That it also helps explain…
Reprinted from the Salt & Light Australia Daily Devotional. I was teaching a unit on Workplace Ministry at a theological college and I asked the class of 24 students how many had been visited in their workplace, by their pastor. Two hands went up. The first student told us how he was a barista in a café, and the pastor…
Third in a series. I’ve made the case that we lack an account of what makes a social space a “public” space, and that this lacuna in our thinking helps explain two persistent problems that the faith and work movement has long wrestled with: failure to theologize well the particular kinds of social spaces in which most people do most of…
Second in a series. I have proposed that the faith and work movement is hindered by the church’s failure to theologize public spaces in the same way we theologize the church and the home. To flesh that out, let’s begin by defining our terms – in part because the Philosopher’s Guild will take my card away if I don’t. What is…
The Green Room 