How can cHristians and tHe market best relate to each other today? Christian History spoke to two researchers who are concerned with these questions. denise daniels is Hudson t. Harrison Professor of entrepreneurship at wheaton college (following over two decades as a professor of management at seattle Pacific University) and coauthor of Working in the Presence of God (2019).
Christian history: How have you explored the relationship between faith and work in your own calling?
Denise Daniels: As a professor I teach people how
to use their work to serve God and to understand the breadth of work that can contribute to God’s kingdom on earth. In my years at SPU, I helped students identify their personal vocations and develop a global vision for what business can be. I’ve also conducted research to identify what people of faith are doing to live their faith out in their work. Finally, I’ve helped create the film series Faith & co. (www.faithand.co), which profiles people intentional about living out their faith in business, trying to portray that in a beautiful and winsome way on both the individual and systemic level.
Ch: what do you say to people who ask if business is legitimate? DD: I ask: “Why do you ask that? Is it because you don’t like capitalism? Or do you think that people who work in business are sullied because they are not doing church work?” Depending on the concern, I
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my father’s house Christ cleansing the temple (c. 1912 by Johann Thorn Prikker) and the Genesis mandate to be fruitful both inform our ideas on the use of money.
have a different response. I think a marketplace career is one of the best ways to serve God because business as an institution is so impactful in the world, and we need Christians in it serving God. The last thing we need is Christians abdicating that responsibility. We did a summer seminar with business and economics faculty at SPU and asked: What is unique about business? What makes it something that contributes to human flourishing? Business certainly has flaws. But everything has flaws—we live in a fallen world. What if we think about business as an institution that God has ordained, and we look at it from this perspective? What does God want business to accomplish in the world? We agreed as a faculty on two things. 1) Business is designed to provide goods and services that contribute to human flourishing. It is productive. The Genesis mandate to be fruitful and multiply has implications for lots of domains and lots of institutions, not just procreation in the context of family. Successful business takes raw materials combined with creativity and ingenuity, and grows them into something new. 2) Business provides employment: opportunities for people to live out their vocation. Work is embedded in creation, it reflects the character of God, reflects God’s nature. One of the
Christian History
Johann Thorn Prikker, CasTing ouT The MoneyChangers froM The TeMPle, C. 1912 , sTained glass—gerManisChes naTionalMuseuM, nureMberg, gerMany—daderoT / [PubliC doMain] WikiMedia
God’s kingdom
