“It is those people”: Religious Scripts and Organizing Compassion

Abstract

The literature describes religious behavior as triggered by cognitive schemata, but we know little of how emotions and values influence organizational religious scripts. Drawing from an ethnographic and longitudinal qualitative case study in a faith-based institution, this paper analyzes how organizational religious scripts encode and enact compassionate activities. In this article, a process of acknowledging religious history, noticing pain, and living ethical spirituality is identified as forming compassionate behavior that enhances the script. The institutional context as well as the emotional experience of pain, suffering, and inequality can be a pervasive aspect of organizational spiritual life and frame organizational activities to reproduce and replicate organizational religious scripts and the moral engagement of reaching out to the sick and marginalized.