This long-form essay is reprinted from The Rabbit Room. By Jennifer Trafton Let me say right off the bat that this post is full of spoilers. It oozes spoilers. Spoilaphobic reader, beware. I want to talk about La La Land and that perplexing, polarizing, absolutely perfect ending. To set the scene: I went into the movie cold, soon after it…
This post was originally a participation in the Patheos Book Club on David Dark’s Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious. Since one of the things we in the faith and work movement are always agonizing about is the sacred-secular divide, I thought it was worth reprinting here too for further pondering of the lessons the book teaches about…
Recently, The Green Room became aware of The Call to Work, a program being developed by Resource Global. We spoke with Tracy Mathews to get the inside story about her own faith journey and how this new program came to be. Tracy, how did you come to be involved with the faith and work movement? My faith has come alive…
In my last post, I talked about how many professionals, even Christian ones, define themselves in relation to the symbolic image of the Mercenary—a person who is oriented towards “apprehensive individualism.” What does that mean? Individualism isn’t simply self-centeredness; as many scholars such as Robert Bellah and Charles Taylor have pointed out, it can also be a moral vision. But…
[This post was originally delivered as a talk at the Faith@Work Summit in Dallas, TX. Read the first two posts in the series here and here.] There are things you can do at an individual level. Women often have a hard time being assertive or taking credit for their accomplishments. If you’re a woman you especially need to do this,…
By Greg Forster: part seven of a series. In my last post I talked about how the underlying theology of fortification paradigm churches leads to cultural puritanism. Here are three specific ways fortification paradigm churches can overcome this: The Past: Where dominance paradigm churches overestimate both the moral and religious integrity of the American experiment, fortification churches tend to underestimate…
Read part I of this interview here and part II here. David Gill: Tell us about the “Gotham Fellows”. Katherine Leary Alsdorf: The Gotham Fellowship grew out of our pilots of classes and discussion groups as a way to provide discipleship and public theology training at the same time giving an opportunity for the gospel to deeply change how people…
By Sarah Conrad Sours Professional integrity seems a straightforward matter, but it isn’t always. Many professions, organizations, and industries are currently in the midst of a period of–let us put it as mildly as possible–uncertainty. As a new administration attempts to seize the moment, enacting sweeping and sometimes confusing policies, people may suddenly find themselves confused about or needing to…
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis has been read and reviewed in countless outlets from Barnes and Noble to Hearts and Minds Books and the New York Times. There’s a reason why. It’s a well-written memoir describing the circumstances, deep challenges, victories, and struggles of a culture in crisis. This culture has been neglected in popular media…
While studying global corporate workplaces in India and the Middle East, I came across a peculiar set of ideals, norms, and expectations that were widely shared across companies. Together, these constitute a distinct “representative character” that (thanks to Ashwin, the IT professional I mentioned in my previous post) I call the Mercenary. What’s a representative character? It’s a recognizable symbolic…
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