Lasting Success for the Christian in Business

In the early 1990s I began interviewing evangelical CEOs for my book Believers in Business (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1994).1 This was the first time I had researched religion and business ethics, and my question then was simple: "Is there a connection between evangelical belief and running a for-profit corporation? How does Christian faith influence busi ness leadership?" I recall that most academicians thought my question to be either a radical criticism or a totally clueless inquiry, on the identical assumption that the answer was already obvious: "not at all." The general thinking was that business had no ethics, or if it did, that modern economic life had secularized all that was once sacred in the business worldview and American culture. The latter view had, of course, been notably articulated by Harvey Cox in his book, The Secular City (New York: Macmillan, 1965), an assertion that had caused Time magazine to declare God was dead. In 1967 my colleague Peter Berger made the famous observation that the sacred canopy once protecting and governing American public life had been torn in two. The dominant modern worldview of sheer rationality had led to a "disenchantment of the world" (The Sacred Canopy, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967). Many managers and business professors felt that this was as it should be. Presumably, there would be less possibility of irrationality (read, unprofitability) or intolerance (read, end of Protestant establishment) in decision-making, which would presumably result in better economics and better ethics in business.