The Religion of Business

As Christian America comes unglued, there are new possibilities for inter-religious dialogue with an unlikely religion.

In his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America Kevin Kruse tells a compelling story of how the National Association of Manufacturers and business allies helped create a powerful synthesis of American and Christian identity, or more properly politically conservative Christian identity, to try and both dismantle the New Deal of FDR and provide a bulwark against much feared socialism.

A side effect of this synthesis was the strengthening of conservative Christianity through the middle of the 20th century. So-called “liberal Christianity” declined in membership much earlier than evangelical Christianity in part because it didn’t have the fulsome backing of American industry.

Now, of course, religion in general is in decline in the US, as it has been in Europe for half a century. And I would suggest that this is in part because corporate American no longer has anything to gain by the support of the idea of a Christian America. The battle to prevent a socialist ideology from imbedding itself in the American political consciousness appears to be over. The labor movement is on the ropes. Even the much dreaded “Obamacare” has been a boon to insurance companies and large corporations who are quite ready to shed any obligation to fund or provide employee health care into the hands of the government.

Most importantly corporate America has disappeared into the world of global corporations; the so-called multi-nationals. These global corporations don’t need Christianity to defend their ideological interests, and in many cases it problematic for them, or their leaders, to closely identify with the religion of only a small share of their market. That a Chic Filet, or Hobby Lobby might still work the “Christian America” angle is understandable. But a GM or Apple or Google? And of course Toyota, Kia, and other Asian-origin American manufacturers gain nothing from the idea of a Christian America.

But it isn’t just that religion has been abandoned. Corporate America, as it has gone global, has created its own religion: consumerism. This religion is both more pervasive, more powerful, and has more places of worship than Christianity and all other religions combined. It’s priesthood is also better trained.

And it hasn’t really had to fight for a place on the American religious scene. To the contrary, it has insinuated itself very nicely into American Christianity. It isn’t just that the money changers are in the temple. Much of the time they are the high priests. Many mega-church pastors don’t live on salaries, they live on the sale of books, CD’s, and DVD’s. Even small churches are frequently a marketplace for a wide variety of vendors selling everything from consulting services on church growth, to pre-packaged mission trips, to youth resources, to turnkey contemporary worship packages, to feel-good charities that just happen to have a huge overhead, to dubious medical testing services, to sales reps for marginally “Christian” retirement homes. I’ve hardly visited a church that doesn’t have a branded coffee bar and some kind of gift shop selling religious gewgaws.

Now, I am not condemning American business for this. Business people pursue their own inner light in these matters. Any many feel (not without justification) that they are adding value to congregational life. They are fully realizing the values at their core. And after all, with the exception of loving only God, most of the commandments in the Bible are fully consonant with making a robust profit from the sale of things and services. You can make money without murder, lust, adultery, theft, and so on.

This doesn’t mean the businesses can’t be shortsighted with regard to their own interests. But that is true of everyone, not just people in business. Ultimately no thoughtful business person wants an environment completely free of government regulation. They know that when people die because they eat spoiled lettuce or bad eggs it kills the whole segment of industry, not merely the one perpetrator.

They also know that the American economy has changed and that it is bad business if a large majority of the population is working at a minimum wage. Home builders don’t profit off 800 square-foot cracker box houses nor do apartment owners make money on tenements. A thriving middle class is exactly what business needs. But business also needs niche markets in different places where different products can be sold. And this means gradiations in income from the bottom up through the middle-class and on to the upper 1%. If movement through the economic strata is possible this this stratification creates compelling reasons to work hard and thus to become more productive and consume more. Material contentment is the enemy of economic growth, as is the idea that a person can be happier if she or he works less.

Anyway, even liberal Christianity now preaches a work ethic that would have embarrassed the NAM in its heyday.  What pastor hasn’t berated his congregation members into using their measly two weeks of holiday to go on a mission trip or teach Vacation Bible School. Or hasn’t guilt tripped people already putting in 60 hours a week to give up a couple of more hours to the church to teach Sunday School? American labor fought hard for the two day weekend, and American Christianity is fighting just as hard to get back one of those days (or more) for its own “work.” And the leaders in the idea that people who have a chance to rest live healthier more productive lived? Entrepreneurial tech companies experimenting with flex time and longer paid maternity leave.

It appears to the casual observer that a century of American Christian syncretism, driven by the perceived needs of American corporations, is coming to an end. Because they don’t need us any more. Perhaps that opens up the possibility for a more healthy relationship between Christianity and corporate American based on a dialogue of mutual learning and shared interests. We have a common interest in the long term welfare of human persons and humanity as a whole. We are both in possession of wisdom gained from long experience, albeit in very different realms of social behavior. And we have something to say to business other than a critique of its practices and ideology. For human economic behavior is firmly structured by systems of more or less enduring values and meanings. Something whose origins and ends we Christians know well.