A Reading List on Faith and Business

Reading listStefan G. Lanfer

This reading list is from Stefan Lanfer’s bibliography for his 2006 MBA thesis, “Believing at Work,” which is summarized here.

  • Addington, Thomas, and Stephen R. Graves, Editors, Life@Work On Leadership: Enduring Insights for Men and Women of Faith, Jossey-Bass: 2002
  • Bakke, Dennis W., Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job, PVG, Seattle: 2005
  • Baumol, William, Perfect Markets and Easy Virtue, Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, MA: 1991
  • Bianco, Anthony, “Faith and Fortune,” BusinessWeek, January 20, 1997,
  • Berger, Peter L. Ed. The Capitalist Spirit: Toward a Religious Ethic of Wealth Creation, ICS Press, San Francisco: 1990
  • Burkett, Larry, Business by the Book, Nelson Business, Nashville: 1998
  • Carder, Kenneth L, Bishop, “A Wesleyan Perspective on Christian Stewardship,” United Methodist Summit on Christian Stewardship, Feb 4-6, 2003, http://www.umcfoundation.org/article3.shtml
  • Eldridge, J.E.T., Editor, Max Weber: The Interpretation of Social Reality, Michael Joseph, London: 1970
  • Elkington, John, Cannibals with Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business, New Society Publishers, Stony Creek, CT: 1998
  • Friedman, Milton, Capitalism and Freedom, University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 2002
  • Galbraith, John Kenneth, The Great Crash: 1929, Mariner Books, Boston: 1997
  • Gruber, Jonathan and Hungerman, Daniel M., “Faith-Based Charity and Crowd Out During the Great Depression” (May 2005). NBER Working Paper No. W11332.
  • Guinness, Os, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, W Publishing Group, Nashville: 1998
  • Küng, Hans, “Declaration of the Religions for a Global Ethic,” 2000
  • Johnson, Alex, “The faith-at-work movement finds a home: Building a Silicon Valley of the soul in Northwest Arkansas,” MSNBC.Com, March 21, 2005
  • Jones, Laurie Beth, Jesus CEO: Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership, Hyperion, New York: 1995
  • Nash, Laura, Believers in Business, Thomas Nelson, Atlanta: 1994
  • Nash, Laura, Church on Sunday, Work on Monday, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco: 2001
  • O’Donnell, Jayne and Greg Farrell, “Business scandals prompt look into personal lives,” USA TODAY, November 5, 2004
  • Redding, Gordon, S., The Spirit of Chinese Capitalism, Walter de Gruyter, New York: 1990
  • Sellers, Jeff M, “Deliver Us from Wal-Mart? Christians are among those sounding the alarm about the ethics of this retail giant. Are the worries justified?” Christianity Today, April 22, 2005,
  • Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of a Learning Organization, Currency/Doubleday, New York: 1994
  • Senge, Peter et. al, Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society, Doubleday, New York: 2004
  • Shriver, Donald W., “What Business Managers Need to Know About the Clergy” from Business, Religion, and Ethics: Inquiry and Encounter, Donald G. Jones, Editor, Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain: Cambridge, MA: 1982
  • Shy, Oz, “Dynamic Models of Religious Conformity and Conversion: Theory and Calibrations” (August 2005). WZB Markets and Political Economy Working Paper No. SP II 2005-12
  • Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Modern Library, New York: 1985
  • Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Augustus M. Kelley, New York: 1966
  • Smith, Phillip Hartley, Quaker Business Ethics: A Plumb Line Guide to Practical Applications in Business and Industry, Diamond Library, Wilton: 2001
  • Thompson, Scott, “Habits of Spiritually Grounded Leaders: It takes discipline and persistence to exercise these practices of mind,” The School Administrator, November 2005
  • U. S. Catholic Bishops, 1986, Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy, A Pastoral Message
  • Wesley, John, Sermon 50: The Use of Money (Text from the 1872 Edition),

Lists, Business, Meaning and Calling, Mon 09 Jul 2007

Commenting is not available in this section entry.

The entire object of true education is to make people not merely to do the right things, but enjoy them; not merely industrious, but to love industry; not merely learned, but to love knowledge; not merely pure, but to love purity; not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.

John Ruskin

Site Services

Search:

Advanced Search

Member Login

Join the Site

Forgotten your password?

Send this Article to a Friend

Print this Article

Print without Comments

Recent Articles

Lebanon on the Brink

A Cultural Manifesto and Showcase

Steep Trajectory

McClay at the White House

Johnston on Speaking of Faith

China, Tibet, and the Olympics

A Tale of Temptation for Our Times

A Brief Chat with Screwtape

Christ for Culture

Obama’s ‘Bitter’ Comments

Featured Trinity Forum Resource

The Oracle of the Dog by G. K. Chesterton, Foreword by P. Douglas Wilson.

A Father Brown mystery story that addresses themes of character, listening, and false assumptions.

Gleanings Quick Links

Orthodoxy: Georgetown’s Father Schall reviews G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy on its 100 year anniversary. “In coming to believe in Christianity, Chesterton, as he tells us, did not read a single Christian book in the process. Rather, he read book after book of those who maintained that Christianity could not possibly be true. After he had read many of these tractates, he suddenly realized that the intellectual opponents of Christianity were constantly contradicting themselves about what they were opposing. Chesterton, the most logical of men, figured that anything so odd as to be opposed for the exact opposite reasons must either be quite strange or, in fact, rather normal and true.” A helpful introduction to a lovely book. (James V. Schall, SJ, InsideCatholic.com , 2008 05 05)

Where Were Obama’s Friends?: Friendship under fire: “As for the supersized candidates, what strikes one most about them is their ‘aloneness.’ They look so solitary. Indeed, it is possible that the old and honorable notion of ‘standing with’ a candidate like Obama simply didn’t occur to his famous supporters this week. Everyone has become used to watching celebrity stars and athletes take it in the neck on their own. Even someone running for the nation’s presidency looks like just another personal crack-up.” Makes one pause.  (Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal , 2008 05 01)

There’s no way you’re going to convince me: Catholic professor Scott Carson covers the current debates on evil between N T Wright and Bart Ehrman on Beliefnet: “[H]aving had a look at this most recent exchange I have to say that it continues to astound me how simplistic and thoughtless the popular treatment of the problem has become. . . . It’s as if generations of sophisticated and complex theological and philosophical argument amount to nothing when compared to the emotional attitudes of a single individual living in a highly particularized time and place. . . . Just as atheists and agnostics are often—perhaps way too often—tempted to assume that believers only believe for emotional or psychological reasons, so too, it seems rather obvious to me, every non-believer almost certainly has emotional and psychological reasons for not believing that will trump any and every legitimate argument posed against them.” (extensive links from the article to the primary sources) (An Examined Life , 2008 04 27)

The Way We Weren’t: “The fifties really were a time when the culture broadly affirmed Christianity as a Good Thing. I was there. I saw it; I heard it. And yet some kind of demurral is strongly indicated: some sign of recognition that no human society, whatever its good intentions and methods, has lived unburdened, unencumbered by the crushing weight of human fallenness. Good as life may appear to have been in the cities and universities of France and Italy in the thirteenth century, or amid the sweaty fervor of the camp meetings in nineteenth-century America, or among the fierce faith of the emancipators, always human pride and general nuttiness were there to spoil the broth.” (William Murchison, in Touchstone , 2008 04 23)

• Not on Sale (2008 04 14)
• Seven New Deadly Sins, Suitably Updated (2008 04 10)
• The Pope Comes to America (2008 04 09)
• Both Read the Same Bible (2008 04 09)
• Muslims Outnumber World’s Catholics (2008 03 31)

more . . .