The rise, sTruggles, and promise oF The FaiTh and work movemenT David W. Miller About A hundred yeArs Ago, a businessman and a pastor each blew the clarion call for integrating Sunday and Monday. The businessman was interested in what lessons he could find in his faith to help his work. The pastor was interested in what lessons he could find in his faith to help society. Bruce Barton (1886–1967), a successful New York advertising executive and later a US congressman, read the Bible for the first time and discovered that Jesus is not a mild, meek, domesticated God whose relevance is relegated to quiet once-a-week visits—but a strong, vibrant being who lived in the rough and tumble of daily life, assembled a management team made up of both winners and losers, and built an organization from scratch that has outlasted most other known businesses, governments, and societies. Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918), a theologian and pastor for years in New York’s “Hell’s Kitchen”—at that time a particularly dangerous slum—also looked at Jesus differently than did many of his day. (In fact
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some assembly required By the early 20th c., factories and mass-production assembly lines employed many, such as these Ford workers in 1913.
church leaders criticized his theology.) He, too, saw Jesus as vibrant, someone who made some rather specific demands of his followers in the here and now, asking them to exercise their faith as part of their work.
spiritual thirst The two men operated against a background of great social and economic change. Rauschenbusch’s efforts came first: he helped spark the Protestant “Social Gospel” movement, interested in Christian approaches to social concerns. Assembly lines had created a voracious appetite for low-cost labor in urban factories, often drawing women and children into dangerous, monotonous jobs with long hours. This demand caused huge social unrest in the cities where the factories were and in the rural towns the workers left behind.
Christian History
ARTICLE AdApTEd fRom fRom pp. 23 , 27 , 29 , 34 – 37 , 47 , 51 , 60 of God at Work: the history and Promise of the faith at Work movement by dAvId W. mILLER, 2006 , REpRoduCEd by pERmIssIon of oxfoRd unIvERsITy pREss, hTTps://gLobAL.oup.Com/ ACAdEmIC/pRoduCT/god-AT-WoRk- 9780195314809 maGneto assembly line at ford motor ComPany hiGhland Park Plant, 1913 — fRom ThE CoLLECTIons of ThE hEnRy foRd. gIfT of foRd moToR CompAny
What would Jesus do in business?
