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Proudfully, I'll point out that I often speak of having balance in your life.
...would do well to target the lack of "godly balance"
Is the work ethic worn out?
Churches let up on praise of labor's virtues
10:31 AM CDT on Saturday, September 2, 2006
By MARY A. JACOBS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
If you don't like the work ethic, blame the Protestants.
As the theory goes, Protestant ministers greased the wheels of the Industrial Revolution, preaching hard work as a path to salvation, thus priming the masses to toil away in hopeless jobs. This, in turn, put money in the pockets of greedy bosses. Calvinist notions of "salvation through hard work" turned the church into the ultimate capitalist tool.
But you can't blame the church anymore. As we celebrate another Labor Day, Americans may be working harder than ever – but almost nobody, it seems, preaches about the work ethic these days.
"I have yet to hear a sermon on the virtues of hard work," said Eugene McCarraher, a Villanova University professor of humanities. Even though he wrote an article this summer for Christianity Today titled "The False Gospel of Work," he admits he's arguing against an idea that isn't coming from most pulpits.
One of the few religious settings where you're likely to hear the work ethic preached is in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons offer sermons on "the blessing of work." These can sound almost quaint to modern ears: "Let us realize that the privilege to work is a gift, that power to work is a blessing, and that love of work is success." (It's no accident that the Utah state emblem is the beehive, a symbol of industry and cooperation.)
So whatever happened to the Protestant work ethic?
"The nature and meaning of work are grossly under-discussed in our society these days," said the Rev. John Wimberly Jr., senior pastor of Western Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. "I think it's one of those classic overreactions."
What Christian ministers might be "overreacting" to are the ideas of writers like Max Weber, whose book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was popular in academic circles in the 1960s. Weber, one of the founders of modern sociology, argued that certain strains of Protestantism, in particular Calvinism, provided spiritual and moral rationales for the pursuit of economic gain. This struck him as paradoxical, given that so much religious teaching involves rejection of mundane, material goals.
"The Bible says we're created to work. That's how we glorify God," said Dennis W. Bakke, a former corporate CEO and the author of Joy at Work . "But that got lost with the Industrial Revolution, which turned workers into machines."
When managers talk about people as "human resources" or "assets," he said, that's a mistake that doesn't square with biblical teaching. "That implies that we can use people and throw them away when they're used up."
Dr. Wimberly thinks ministers fear that if they preach on work, worshippers will think they've been co-opted by capitalist values. Some, he said, are reluctant to extol the virtues of hard work because jobs too often define people in our culture, and ministers "don't want to play into that."
The Rev. James Howell, senior minister of Myers Park United Methodist Church in Charlotte, N.C., agreed.
"Society says work is about accumulating things for yourself," he said. Ministers, he added, are hesitant to praise hard work because "too many people are already too addicted to their work."
Dr. McCarraher wants the church to put to rest once and for all the notion that hard work is good and godly. "The Work Ethic, together with its minions 'productivity' and 'efficiency,' sponsors a massive assault on the integrity and dignity of the human person," he wrote.
He claims that modern management has replaced the value of creativity in pre-industrial artisans and craftsmen with "the assembly line, the speed-up, the office cubicle, the mandated smile, and overtime."
At the heart of the debate is the question, "Who benefits when a person works hard?" And how you answer that probably points to your opinion on the work ethic.
Roger B. Hill, an associate professor in the University of Georgia's workforce education program, said common assumptions about "who benefits" from work may become outdated in the new, digital economy.
Some ministers have been cautious about extolling the virtue of work, he said, "because they didn't want their parishioners taken advantage of by corporate giants." But as more people shift from corporate jobs to self-employment, he added, hard work may yield more rewards for the worker.
According to Dr. Wimberly, the Presbyterian pastor, John Calvin's true message was not the one that Weber so forcefully criticized, that is, the notion that God rewards ambition and relentless toil. Hard work as a ticket to heaven doesn't square with Calvin's teachings about grace, the pastor said.
"What Calvin said was that work was a holy thing, whether you had a religious vocation or you were a street sweeper, and that it's through our work that God builds the kingdom of God on earth," he said. But that message got twisted into the notion that "if you're not working hard you're going to hell," an idea that no doubt helped ensure a steady supply of cheap factory labor during the Industrial Revolution.
But modern pastors' avoiding the subject entirely amounts to throwing out the baby with the bathwater, Dr. Wimberly said.
"Work is too big a part of life to just drop it out of the discussion," he said. "If John Calvin dropped into our U.S. culture in the 21st century, he would definitely wonder what has gone wrong."
John D. Beckett, chairman of R.W. Beckett Corp. agrees. An avowed Christian, he is the author of Mastering Monday: A Guide to Integrating Faith and Work. He said faith leaders stay out of worshippers' work lives because they try – mistakenly – to separate the sacred from the secular. Ministers would do well to target the lack of "godly balance" in American attitudes toward work, he said.
He cites the example of Enron executives, so consumed by career and money that they lost their moral compasses. Many others, he said, display a disregard for the value of honest work, pinning their hopes instead on gambling, get-rich-quick schemes and the like – what Gandhi called one of the "seven blunders" of modern life, "wealth without work."
Because many clergy members are isolated from the secular workplace, Mr. Beckett said, they assume that religious work and evangelism are the only kinds of work that "advance the kingdom." He'd like to see more ministers visit their worshippers' workplaces to see what that world involves. At the same time, he said, business leaders should help employees bring their faith to the workplace.
If many ministers are uncomfortable talking about the work ethic, they remain attached to the notion of "vocation" – the idea of finding one's calling, whether it's in the sacred or secular realm, and seeing work as holy.
"God values our work and wants us to value it likewise," said Mark Buchanan, a pastor and author of The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath. He noted that Paul was a tentmaker, and Jesus a carpenter.
"The fact is," said Dr. Hill, "most people are wired up in such a way that we feel better about ourselves if we've accomplished something."
Churches let up on praise of labor's virtues
10:31 AM CDT on Saturday, September 2, 2006
By MARY A. JACOBS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
If you don't like the work ethic, blame the Protestants.
As the theory goes, Protestant ministers greased the wheels of the Industrial Revolution, preaching hard work as a path to salvation, thus priming the masses to toil away in hopeless jobs. This, in turn, put money in the pockets of greedy bosses. Calvinist notions of "salvation through hard work" turned the church into the ultimate capitalist tool.
But you can't blame the church anymore. As we celebrate another Labor Day, Americans may be working harder than ever – but almost nobody, it seems, preaches about the work ethic these days.
"I have yet to hear a sermon on the virtues of hard work," said Eugene McCarraher, a Villanova University professor of humanities. Even though he wrote an article this summer for Christianity Today titled "The False Gospel of Work," he admits he's arguing against an idea that isn't coming from most pulpits.
One of the few religious settings where you're likely to hear the work ethic preached is in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons offer sermons on "the blessing of work." These can sound almost quaint to modern ears: "Let us realize that the privilege to work is a gift, that power to work is a blessing, and that love of work is success." (It's no accident that the Utah state emblem is the beehive, a symbol of industry and cooperation.)
So whatever happened to the Protestant work ethic?
"The nature and meaning of work are grossly under-discussed in our society these days," said the Rev. John Wimberly Jr., senior pastor of Western Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. "I think it's one of those classic overreactions."
What Christian ministers might be "overreacting" to are the ideas of writers like Max Weber, whose book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was popular in academic circles in the 1960s. Weber, one of the founders of modern sociology, argued that certain strains of Protestantism, in particular Calvinism, provided spiritual and moral rationales for the pursuit of economic gain. This struck him as paradoxical, given that so much religious teaching involves rejection of mundane, material goals.
"The Bible says we're created to work. That's how we glorify God," said Dennis W. Bakke, a former corporate CEO and the author of Joy at Work . "But that got lost with the Industrial Revolution, which turned workers into machines."
When managers talk about people as "human resources" or "assets," he said, that's a mistake that doesn't square with biblical teaching. "That implies that we can use people and throw them away when they're used up."
Dr. Wimberly thinks ministers fear that if they preach on work, worshippers will think they've been co-opted by capitalist values. Some, he said, are reluctant to extol the virtues of hard work because jobs too often define people in our culture, and ministers "don't want to play into that."
The Rev. James Howell, senior minister of Myers Park United Methodist Church in Charlotte, N.C., agreed.
"Society says work is about accumulating things for yourself," he said. Ministers, he added, are hesitant to praise hard work because "too many people are already too addicted to their work."
Dr. McCarraher wants the church to put to rest once and for all the notion that hard work is good and godly. "The Work Ethic, together with its minions 'productivity' and 'efficiency,' sponsors a massive assault on the integrity and dignity of the human person," he wrote.
He claims that modern management has replaced the value of creativity in pre-industrial artisans and craftsmen with "the assembly line, the speed-up, the office cubicle, the mandated smile, and overtime."
At the heart of the debate is the question, "Who benefits when a person works hard?" And how you answer that probably points to your opinion on the work ethic.
Roger B. Hill, an associate professor in the University of Georgia's workforce education program, said common assumptions about "who benefits" from work may become outdated in the new, digital economy.
Some ministers have been cautious about extolling the virtue of work, he said, "because they didn't want their parishioners taken advantage of by corporate giants." But as more people shift from corporate jobs to self-employment, he added, hard work may yield more rewards for the worker.
According to Dr. Wimberly, the Presbyterian pastor, John Calvin's true message was not the one that Weber so forcefully criticized, that is, the notion that God rewards ambition and relentless toil. Hard work as a ticket to heaven doesn't square with Calvin's teachings about grace, the pastor said.
"What Calvin said was that work was a holy thing, whether you had a religious vocation or you were a street sweeper, and that it's through our work that God builds the kingdom of God on earth," he said. But that message got twisted into the notion that "if you're not working hard you're going to hell," an idea that no doubt helped ensure a steady supply of cheap factory labor during the Industrial Revolution.
But modern pastors' avoiding the subject entirely amounts to throwing out the baby with the bathwater, Dr. Wimberly said.
"Work is too big a part of life to just drop it out of the discussion," he said. "If John Calvin dropped into our U.S. culture in the 21st century, he would definitely wonder what has gone wrong."
John D. Beckett, chairman of R.W. Beckett Corp. agrees. An avowed Christian, he is the author of Mastering Monday: A Guide to Integrating Faith and Work. He said faith leaders stay out of worshippers' work lives because they try – mistakenly – to separate the sacred from the secular. Ministers would do well to target the lack of "godly balance" in American attitudes toward work, he said.
He cites the example of Enron executives, so consumed by career and money that they lost their moral compasses. Many others, he said, display a disregard for the value of honest work, pinning their hopes instead on gambling, get-rich-quick schemes and the like – what Gandhi called one of the "seven blunders" of modern life, "wealth without work."
Because many clergy members are isolated from the secular workplace, Mr. Beckett said, they assume that religious work and evangelism are the only kinds of work that "advance the kingdom." He'd like to see more ministers visit their worshippers' workplaces to see what that world involves. At the same time, he said, business leaders should help employees bring their faith to the workplace.
If many ministers are uncomfortable talking about the work ethic, they remain attached to the notion of "vocation" – the idea of finding one's calling, whether it's in the sacred or secular realm, and seeing work as holy.
"God values our work and wants us to value it likewise," said Mark Buchanan, a pastor and author of The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath. He noted that Paul was a tentmaker, and Jesus a carpenter.
"The fact is," said Dr. Hill, "most people are wired up in such a way that we feel better about ourselves if we've accomplished something."
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