Believing at Work

Stefan G. Lanfer

Three Models for Integrating Religious Faith and Business

The term “professional” originally referred to those who had “professed” faith in God. Yet people today often view the spiritual life as distinct from, or even antithetical to, the life of business or other “secular” professions. In their 2005 book, Presence, Peter Senge and his colleagues describe interviews with scientists who have serious spiritual practices but who were uncomfortable talking about them. “In our present culture,” the authors write, “we rarely give ourselves permission to talk about connections between the spiritual and the professional.” This forced segregation is a tragedy, they argue, because “it obscures the creative process [these scientists] have lived and limits future generations of students from their own creative work.” Albert Einstein touched on this same limitation in his famous words, “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”

The parallels in the business world are clear. People in the modern era have placed great stress on what the U.S. Declaration of Independence calls “the pursuit of happiness.” Throughout the developed world, we have extended this concept to corporations, replacing self-centered “happiness” with bottom-line-centered “profitability”—typically giving them great leeway in this pursuit, particularly in such flush times as the pre-depression 1920s or the pre-recession 1990s.

But when fortunes turn, the unqualified pursuit of happiness—or profit—is called into question. In truth, these questions are ever-present. In economically rosy times, they are easily drowned out by offhand references to Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”—presuming that somehow by selfish pursuit of individual gain, society will benefit. Yet today both professionals and their firms are finding such questions increasingly difficult to ignore. The resulting debates have focused fresh attention on business ethics and corporate social responsibility, and to a lesser extent on the proper role of faith at work.

Os Guinness, in The Call, suggests that the professional wall between personal faith and public work is the result of two “grand distortions”: the “Catholic Distortion,” which “elevates the spiritual at the expense of the secular,” and the “Protestant Distortion,” or the elevation of the secular at the expense of the sacred. Simultaneously avoiding both distortions requires a successful integration of faith and work, including an ability to acknowledge and draw insights from the very real tensions between the two. Those who fail at this integration leave value on the table, for religious faith—with its emphasis on other-focus, self-sacrifice, and justice—can be a unique and powerful source of marketplace advantage.

Given this, what are appropriate models for integration of business and faith? What barriers do people face as they attempt to live out their faith in a professional setting? In my recent graduate work, I hypothesized three models, or mental modes, of faith-work integration—low, moderate, and high—and tested them in interviews against the perspectives of contemporary professionals. Their rich experiences validated the model and also suggest that a higher degree of integrated faith can trigger a shift from self-focus to other-focus that in turn shifts one’s professional goals, with significant results. This essay summarizes my findings.

Models of Low Integration

“In terms of its impact on my work, I can honestly say I don’t see much intersection.”

When faith-work integration is low (or absent), emphasizing one tends to downplay the other. People in this category tend to operate under the assumption that religious faith has no place in work and that authentic faith demands retreat from business. In time, such people come to focus almost exclusively on faith or on work, but not both. This pattern often continues until the neglected, and diminishing variable (be it faith or work) reaches a point so low that an individual reacts in drastic measure—abdicating wealth for the sake of faith, or vice versa.

In interviews, quite a few professionals held these views. Some experienced the tension between faith and business so severely they felt compelled to leave the corporate world entirely. One interviewee had enjoyed a very successful career with General Electric. Over time, however, she became disenchanted with the firm, disappointed with her colleagues, and embarrassed about her extravagant lifestyle. Tensions with her Catholic faith and values became so great that she embraced what she called “downward mobility,” moving with her daughters to a smaller home in a more modest neighborhood. Professionally, she transitioned into the medical field, then social services and, finally, became a resident at Boston’s Haley House, which serves Boston’s poor, unemployed, and homeless populations. In her words:

For me, combining faith and leadership is not possible in business. It comes down to this: business is about making money; gospel-based faith is about making relationships and justice. The two are oil and water.

A Jewish man shared a similar story:

I spent eighteen years as an investment banker . . . a very successful career, but one that left me feeling very unsatisfied . . . I found my way to the Jewish community, and through them, started getting into intensive Torah and Talmud study. The more I studied, the more I felt a disconnect between what I was doing, what I wanted to be doing, and what I came to see I should be doing. That pressure weighed heavily on me. Eventually, I quit my job. I took some time off. And at the end of it, I found myself running a nonprofit agency serving the homeless.

In such cases, the work-faith tension cannot be alleviated so long as one remains in business.

Some interviewees in the “Low Integration” category described integration of faith and work as a non-issue, since what truly mattered was found outside of work. A call center consultant from Salt Lake City put it this way:

Work can be a significant distraction from what we really should be doing. Some people have propensity to be workaholic. Me, I am there to do the job as quick as I can, so that I can get home to what I really care about.

For some, work is merely necessary to support one’s true callings, such as loving and spending time with family or serving among one’s faith community.

A final set of perspectives in the “Low Integration” category dismissed religious faith as interchangeable with any other social or career network that provides preferential opportunities to its members. One interviewee acknowledged that a colleague’s personal faith seemed valuable to him, yet felt any professional advantages could easily be replaced by memberships in secular networks:

[My colleague] is a strong Catholic. He’s been involved in Catholic Charities in many ways for many, many years. I know his faith has influenced him as a person, but, professionally, I think the main advantage is that he got into a network. But as far as I can tell, that network could have been the Boys and Girls Club, or the Rotary.

Others were resentful, even dismissive of any such advantage conferred on those on the “inside” of religion-based networks. An internet entrepreneur and former management consultant shared this account of a colleague who experienced the mixed blessing of his faith putting him on the fast track:

When I was consulting, I had a good a friend, a colleague, who was a Mormon. I liked him a lot. In my view, his faith helped and it hurt. When I was there, there was a general perception that the senior partners, many of whom were also Mormon, were looking out for their own, putting some on the fast track for promotion, maybe giving a little extra boost.

This happened to my friend. To many of our colleagues, who came in at the same time, it seemed he didn’t quite have to meet the same standards. This helped in that it advanced him in his career. At the same time, it hurt in our resenting him for it—and maybe he wasn’t as valued as he might have been. There was always a, “yeah, but . . .”

In summary, low-integration mental models lead to skepticism about faith’s value to business (or vice versa). Some concede that religious persons can gain leverage through religious affiliations, yet such “advantages” can squander one’s credibility with non-religious colleagues and leave one ill-prepared for job responsibilities that arrive too quickly. What’s more, the business environment itself can be seen as counterproductive, even destructive to the spiritual life. As a result, many in this category pursue faith or work, but not both.

Models of Moderate Integration

“If the religions fail to impact ethics, they are worthless.”

In most of the interviews I conducted, some level of integration between faith and work emerged as essential to the authentic application of faith to life. Many interviewees even considered it hypocritical to keep them separate. One posed this challenge to people who claim adherence to any faith tradition:

This is how I see my faith, my religion, these books, and prayer. It’s not, “Oh gee, this is something nice to think about and meditate on.” No, it is a call to action . . . You cannot just read, think, and talk about these texts. You say prayers in church or in a synagogue. This is not just a private conversation between you and God . . . These prayers are a calling upon you to do something when you leave—not just for you for while you’re there.

So what does that “something when you leave” look like? To many, the essential way to integrate faith and work is through ethical practice. In the words of a Buddhist interviewee, “If the religions fail to impact ethics, they are worthless.” What might this look like in the day-to-day of office life? A Christian telecommunications executive emphasized the need for ethics, calling attention to its marked absence in recent headlined events:

Ethics. Repetitive character. This is one of the things you hope to exhibit as a Christian. Just consider the non-Christian, the non-believer. Look at what these guys—Kozlowski, Skilling, and others actually did, and you see they lacked ethics, a basic moral compass.

Skilling left [Enron] before everything went down—ostensibly to work on his family situation. He went off to have an affair with a co-worker known as “Va Voom” around the office. [WorldCom’s] Bernie Ebbers’ current wife was a sales rep he was courting while married to his first wife. If these men are corrupt in their personal lives, what can we expect from their business lives?

Others provided examples of common business opportunities to compromise ethics, and countercultural choices they made based on religious values. A Muslim consultant told this story:

My first job at MCI, I worked in payroll. We all received a one-time bonus, and by some mistake, I got it a second time. I went to Operations and reported it. The person I spoke with told me, “We are such a big firm. You could have kept this and no one would ever have found it. This will come back to you somehow.” That was supposed to be 3-month internship. They kept me on for over a year, even though I never told anyone else. My boss did not know. Honesty. God knows everything. And things do come back to you.

Ethics may also be challenged when considering new business opportunities. A Christian investment counselor told of one case:

I made some referrals to an attorney doing estate planning. At one point, he returned the favor by referring me to a porno shop owner. This guy was making a ton of cash. At first, I just let it go. But as I pondered it, I called the attorney back. Getting this guy to the place where he actually made a referral was hard. I figured if I didn’t take it, he would stop offering. Still, I called him back and told him, “You’re doing your job and representing this guy. His line of work is just too far from my value set.”

Other variations of moderate faith-work integration emphasize discipline surrounding religious practices, regardless of office norms—be it a Muslim letting his employers know he will take an extra hour on Fridays for prayers, or a Christian refusing to work on Sundays.

Others described integrating faith and work by evangelization of their colleagues. I consider this still to be a form of “moderate” integration, since in evangelization faith and work are linked circumstantially, but not fundamentally. Work is seen through a faith lens insofar as the workplace becomes a “personal mission field”—but not because God is advancing some specific design for improving the world through the work itself.  

At a similar level, many interviewees emphasized charitable giving. A Christian investment broker made this argument, with a notable caveat:

I know a guy at a high level with Focus on the Family. He talks about these successful guys who come in. They are making a bunch of dough, but they are worried about missing their calling. They ask him, “Can you use my skills? I just want to serve God.”

He tells them, “Sure, we can use you. But let’s think about this. You’re making a million dollars a year, and you want to work for us for fifty thousand. Look, we want you to be fulfilled, but there are also people God has called as money horses—people to whom He has given the ability to create wealth.”

That is ministry. But I say that with big caution, because to ask someone just to be a source of funds is demeaning. But what a big thing it is, if God has blessed you to be able to write that big check.

As we continue up the continuum, steadily increasing the integration level between faith and work, we move beyond the realm of private rituals and personal ethics to cases where business leaders draw upon their value systems to equip their employees, their organizations, and their customers to have positive effects on their world. Some create opportunities and systems to support employees taking part in community-service projects. MIT’s Buddhist chaplain shared an example of a family with a carpet business in Nepal. Recognizing the challenges of the labor-intensive work, the family built a day-care center, a school, and then an elderly-care facility. As a result, the company developed a strong sense of community, not to mention record yields, given employees’ deep investment in the firm.

The investment-banker-turned-nonprofit-executive shared this story about a real estate agent who transformed his agency into a partner in efforts to combat homelessness:

He’s got 1000 brokers out there, and he decided he was going to have them do more in the world than make money and sell real estate. He set up a partnership with [our non-profit], and now his entire sales force is talking about the homeless. On every sale, in the sale documents, their clients are given a choice to contribute $100 to someone who has no home. We’ll often get five or six of these a day, over $100,000 every year from those checks. That’s integration of faith and work. Not one thing at home and another at work. It’s integrated. True to what matters to you most.

Such examples make clear the potential for faith-driven leaders to have far-reaching impact. Rather than merely propelling individual success, faith can provide motivation to change the world for the better. An executive at Timberland put it this way:

This, to me, is the best crossroads of faith and business—when managers incentivize staff to do the right thing. If 10 percent of people will do the right thing no matter what, and another 10 percent will always bend the rules, you’re left with this huge chunk in the middle for whom the only compass is everyone around them. It is up to managers to put policies and procedures in place to build systems of control that promote justice, honesty, and accountability, and that lead people to act out of love, not harm.

Such perspectives suggest a more active mode of faith-work integration—actively working (and using one’s professional capacity, influence, and resources) to improve the world. In summary, examples of “moderate integration” provide two primary avenues for action. A first is to leave for-profit business entirely in order to pursue work that has an explicit social mission. A second is to create systems and structures within for-profit businesses that promote integrity and/or facilitate public service.

Models of High Integration

“It’s not faith and business, but faith and life.”
“I have grown in my faith through this work.”

People who live lives of “high integration” show virtually no partition between work and faith. Faith pervades all aspects of life, and work is integrated into one’s overall calling. The managing director of an international real estate firm described it this way:

My starting point is always that it’s not faith and business, but faith and life. Business is not some special category that has distinct dynamics. It may have unique distractions, challenges, and things to endure. But in many respects, it is no different than purpose or calling in any vein. Business is not some anomaly or special category.

Another interviewee made it clear that, for him, work was an integral part of God’s plan for his life:

When you let the power of God work through you, you are the job and the job is you. The Holy Spirit opens you up. You are no longer a professional. You are living God’s plan for your life. You are totally you. And somebody is paying you for it! And you will prosper at it. People spend their lives at work. But it isn’t just work. It is the Lord’s plan for your life.

The sense that one’s work is a calling becomes clear to many when God seems to intervene, redirecting career paths from what they originally thought they should be doing. Several described arriving at this view only after pursuing what they thought was a “true” calling—full-time religious ministry. A former tax attorney described considering pastoral ministry only to discover his “calling” to bring tools of entrepreneurship to the poor:

I thought at first I had a calling to ministry. At the same time, I felt like, man, I don’t just have baggage—I have boxcars. I prayed about it. I told God, “God, I am a businessman. What do you want me to do?” He told me, “Be my businessman. Preach to the poor . . . Help them build businesses, to be prosperous, to send their kids to good schools, to be blessed, and to be the leaders I am calling them to be.” [So, now], I am an evangelist of economic empowerment.

A successful stockbroker carried a dream of becoming a missionary for over a decade:

Through it all, I have carried this headline in my mind, “Successful stockbroker quits career to become a missionary.” Then, after about ten years, I went up into the mountains for a time of prayer and fasting. I prayed, “OK, God, if you want me to be in business, all right. I’ll give up this stupid dream. Poof. It was gone . . . Finally, I really felt called to business.

For others, God seems to take a direct interest in the specifics of professional choices—not merely in deflecting them from entering full-time ministry.

If we accept that God actually calls people into business, how do they discern what God is saying? Some interviewees described an inner feeling of clarity that arose through private meditation, prayer, and reflection. Others said that the only way they could understand God’s plan for their lives was by looking at life in hindsight. “Where I am must be God’s plan for me,” such thinking goes, “because I am nowhere even close to where I planned to go myself.” One interviewee offered the following general framework for discerning one’s calling (emphasizing the distinction that getting it “right” is not, ultimately, very important):

This too is countercultural, especially among highly educated people—where it’s all about getting into the right college, and onto the right career path, or you’re lost. Part of this is a belief that the greatest crime, or shame in life, is not to fulfill your potential.

It is truly freeing to know that this aspect of my calling is less important. This doesn’t lead me to take work less seriously. But I do feel a sense of grace about it. How I live out my faith day-by-day is much more important than getting the right job tomorrow.

For those who exhibit a high degree of integration between faith and business the question, “How do your faith and your work come together?” is almost perplexing. For faith and work to “come together” implies that the two can be thought of separately. For the highly integrated, faith and work are inextricably linked.

Some conclusions

In between the two extremes of Guinness’s Protestant and Catholic distortions lie a range of models for integrating faith, work, and wealth. Some emphasize ethical behavior no matter the consequences. Some focus on work as a “mission field,” where one might earn opportunities to discuss faith with colleagues. Others prioritize faith-inspired motivations to advance justice in the world through their firm, their checkbook, or radical career changes.

In the low-integration mode, individuals pursue either faith or business, but not both. Religious-based networks may bring individuals short-term, preferential treatment, yet such benefits are easily replicated in non-religious affinity groups, and sometimes have dire side effects. Failure to understand the limitations of this way of thinking—combined with the failure of many clergy to articulate a more integrated model—leaves not a few professionals suspecting the only way to “truly” live out their faith is to leave business entirely.

In the moderate integration modes, we see a strong emphasis on ethical business practice and faithfulness to one’s religious traditions, even when these run counter to prevailing organizational or industry norms. In the high-integration mode, the line between faith and business blurs. Individuals see a career in business as legitimate a calling as direct service to the faith community.

As their approach to faith and work becomes more integrated, people often experience unique, crossover insights. A religious grounding provides perspective and calm in difficult marketplace situations. Likewise, enduring such trials can enhance one’s reliance upon God as well as one’s understanding of sacred texts through analogous real-life experiences.

In the latter cases, the ultimate goal, or “calling” is not merely to achieve personal happiness or corporate profit, but to advance justice in the world. We may think of this as an individual shift from superficial “happiness” to transcendent “fulfillment” or, in business terms, from marketplace “success” to worldly “significance.” It is in this shift that faith has the greatest potential to become a source of advantage in the marketplace—and beyond.  

Stefan Graves Lanfer lives in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood with his wife Ashley and 10-month-old son, James. He is a senior research analyst with the education and research team at Palladium Group, a professional services firm that helps organizations execute strategy. Prior to joining Palladium, Stefan worked with the nonprofit Project for School Innovation, helping Boston-area teachers share effective practices, and with professional theatres in Connecticut and Washington. Lanfer holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and a BA from Dartmouth College. He is also a playwright. A reading list based on Lanfer's bibliography is available here.

3 Responses (comments are closed) • Features, Business, Character and Ethics, Meaning and Calling, Tue 10 Jul 2007