We plead with thee, O God, for our brothers who are pressed by the cares and beset by the temptations of business life.
We acknowledge before thee our common guilt for the hardness and deceitfulness of industry and trade which lead us all into temptation and cause even the righteous to slip and fall. As long as man is set against man in a struggle for wealth, help the men in business to make their contest, as far as may be, a test of excellence, by which even the defeated may be spurred to better work. If any man is pitted against those who have forgotten fairness and honesty, help him to put his trust resolutely in the profitableness of sincerity and uprightness, and, if need be, to accept loss rather than follow on crooked paths.
Establish in unshaken fidelity all who hold in trust the savings of others. Since the wealth and welfare of our nation are controlled by our business men, cause them to realize that they serve not themselves alone, but hold high public functions, and do thou save them from betraying the interests of the many for their own enrichment, lest a new tyranny grow up in a land that is dedicated to freedom. Grant them farsighted patriotism to subordinate their profits to the public weal, and a steadfast determination to transform the disorder of the present into the nobler and freer harmony of the future.
May thy Spirit, O God, which is ceaselessly pleading within us, prevail at last to bring our business life under Christ’s law of service, so that all who share in the processes of factory and trade may grow up into that high consciousness of a divine calling which blesses those who are the free servants of God and the people and who consciously devote their strength to the common good.
— Walter Rauschenbusch, in Prayers of the Social Awakening, 1910
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