Christianity has come to Silicon Valley, according to\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0(February 11, 2025) and this publication (Summer 2025), thanks in part to local churches teaching how a high-tech profession is a vocation from God. The last two decades have seen a surge of books, conferences, institutes, parachurch ministries, and Bible studies on the connections between Christianity and the workplace. The so-called Faith and Work Movement has become a major strain in contemporary evangelicalism.<\/p>\n
Saving the Protestant Ethic: Creative Class Evangelicalism and the Crisis of Work<\/u><\/em><\/a>\u00a0by sociologist Andrew Lynn is an illuminating study of this movement. But it is also a critique of same that gets tangled up in the obligatory left-wing economics of his profession.<\/p>\n
As Lynn shows, from its very beginning Protestantism promoted a positive relationship between faith and work. Luther\u2019s doctrine of vocation taught that God calls all Christians, not just members of religious orders, to productive labor and relationships through which God works to sustain His creation and in which Christians can live out their faith in love and service to their neighbors. Whereas Luther stressed the multiple vocations that Christians have, not just in the workplace but also in the family, the society, and the church, Calvin focused on economic callings. Calvin\u2019s emphasis on the character-forming disciplines of hard work, thrift, and pursuit of the common good inspired generations of industrious, energetic Puritans whose \u201cProtestant work ethic\u201d would turn former peasants into prosperous members of the middle class and contribute to the rise of capitalism.<\/p>\n
But what happened to the Reformation doctrine of vocation and the Protestant work ethic? In the late 19th and most of the 20th century, those topics largely disappeared from the sermons and writings of conservative American Protestants.<\/p>\n
\n\nHere Lynn makes an important contribution by identifying what he calls the \u201cFundamentalist Work Ethic.\u201d With the Second Great Awakening came Methodist perfectionism, the \u201cdeeper Christian life\u201d of the U.K.\u2019s Keswick theology, the dispensationalism of the Scofield Bible, and the premillennial conviction that Christ\u2019s second coming is imminent. All these emphasized the inner spiritual life and explicitly played down the significance of our physical existence in \u201cthe world\u201d\u2014which would soon pass away. Lynn marshals evidence from the religious writings of the time that warn against the spiritual dangers of money-making, materialism, and \u201cworldly\u201d ambition.<\/p>\n
This \u201cnew clericalism,\u201d as Lynn calls it, influenced the way laypeople saw their work. In their ordinary jobs on the farm, the factory, and the office, laypeople could earn money by which they could support mission work, whether by their local congregations, individual missionaries, or large-scale mission organizations. In that way, ordinary work could help spread the gospel.<\/p>\n
Then laypeople realized that their own workplaces were also mission fields! Secular employment was seen as a way to reach people who might never visit a church. Sharing the gospel on the job became paramount. In fact, the first half of the 20th century saw a number of businessmen\u2019s organizations crop up\u2014such as the Gideons and the Full Gospel Business Men\u2019s Fellowship\u2014with the purpose of evangelizing in the business world. A number of books by successful Christian businessmen made the case that God\u2019s work could be carried out in the business world.<\/p>\n
According to Lynn, much of 20th-century evangelicalism\u2014including the \u201cneo-evangelicalism\u201d of Billy Graham and the parachurch ministries he inspired\u2014approached work in terms of some version of the Fundamentalist Work Ethic, either saying little about it or valuing it for instrumental purposes, such as evangelism or carrying out other functions of the church.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s Faith and Work Movement, however, emerged out of fresh Christian attempts to engage with culture, associated with American evangelicals\u2019 discovery of the neo-Calvinism of Abraham Kuyper as popularized by Francis Schaeffer. This approach values work\u00a0in itself\u00a0<\/em>as a participation in God\u2019s creation. Lynn describes an \u201cexplosion\u201d of books on this topic over the last two decades, averaging 185 every year since 2000. (Full disclosure: I have written three of them, on Luther\u2019s doctrine of vocation and its applications. I honestly did not realize I was part of a movement.)<\/p>\n
[Keep reading. . .]<\/a><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
Illustration:<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0A Mural from the Works Progress Administration<\/a> by Charles Klauder (ca. 1940) via Matthew Klint, \u201cThe Privilege and Blessing of Work,\u201d Live and Let\u2019s Fly,\u00a0CC by NC 4.0<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FREE POST: A new book on the Faith & Work movement–from a sociological, not theological perspective–tells what happened historically to the doctrine of vocation. But it then applies critical theory to claim that today’s Faith and Work Movement is tainted by whiteness, elitism, and capitalism. My review of the book for “Religion & Liberty.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":86645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13,20,42,47,48],"tags":[4037,3214,11851,3774,2818,4359],"class_list":["post-86546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church","category-economics","category-history","category-social-science","category-theology","category-vocation","tag-critical-theory","tag-faith-and-work-movement","tag-free","tag-fundamentalism","tag-sociology","tag-vocation"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nWhen I wrote my book God at Work<\/a> on Luther\u2019s doctrine of vocation in 2011, little did I know that it would be part of a huge \u201cmovement\u201d of Christians who seek to relate their faith to their work.<\/p>\n One would think that this \u201cFaith and Work Movement\u201d would be seen as a positive development, an effort to relate Christianity to every day life that is beneficial to both the church and the workplace.\u00a0 But in some circles, it has become controversial.\u00a0 As has the doctrine of vocation among both fundamentalists and progressives.<\/p>\n A new book on the subject\u2013from a sociological, not theological perspective\u2013tells what happened historically to the doctrine of vocation, which is very helpful. But then, as is obligatory for today\u2019s sociologists, applies critical theory to claim that today\u2019s Faith and Work Movement is tainted by whiteness, elitism, and capitalism.<\/p>\n I was asked to review the book for the Acton Institute\u2019s\u00a0 Religion & Liberty<\/a> journal.\u00a0 I think you\u2019ll appreciate how I defend Luther\u2019s doctrine of vocation (not necessarily other theologians\u2019 doctrines of vocation) and, especially, my takedown of critical theory applied to this topic.<\/p>\n So here is my review.\u00a0 I post here the first part of it, which I hope will make you want to click the link to read the rest of it.<\/p>\nInterrogating the Faith & Work Movement<\/a><\/h4>\n