Faith and Finances: Working From the Soul

A spiritual movement is under way in corporate America. Across the nation, business people are looking for meaning in their lives and their work. It’s an effort to bridge the traditional divide between capitalism and Christianity, business and Buddhism, shareholders and spirituality.

“All of life comes down to God and money, in that order,” said Stephen Graves. “God is the currency you have to live your life around. But, after God, money is the currency of the world.”

In 1997, Graves and Thomas Addington founded The Life@Work Journal, an international Christian business magazine based in Fayetteville. Although they recently sold the magazine to Franklin Publishing Group of Nashville, Tenn., its editorial offices will still be housed in Fayetteville. Graves attends Fellowship Bible Church, a non-denominational church in Lowell.

The Bible contains 30 verses on baptism, 225 on prayer, 300 on faith and 700 on love. But the book upon which the Western world bases its faith has more than 2,350 verses on money, finances and material possessions.

The United States appears to be the most devout nation in the Western Hemisphere with about 95 percent of Americans saying they believe in a God. That compares with about 50 percent in some countries of Western Europe. Of some 200 million adult Americans, 168 million claim affiliation with a religious group, all but 10 million of those with a Christian church.

Searching

But apparently Americans are searching.

Responding to a Gallup Poll in 1999, 78 percent of Americans said they need to experience spiritual growth. That’s up from 20 percent in 1994.

Sales of religious books — from the Bible to the Koran — are growing faster than any other category, with the market expanding from $1.69 billion to about $2.24 billion in the past five years.

There has traditionally been a chasm between business and the church. Many business people are challenging the notion that business is an inherently impure pursuit and that corporate America is a spiritual wasteland.

“There clearly has been this schizophrenic view that over here is the sacred and over here is the secular,” Graves said, while placing his hands on opposite sides of his desk to show the perceived separation.

The key, he said, is to live a holistic life. People need money, Graves said, but it becomes a problem if they live for the money instead of God. Many people are taught by their parents and school teachers to work hard and make as much money as possible for security on earth, but sometimes the spiritual life is not so emphasized. Graves described it as a “wrestling in the soul of corporate America.”

“You’ve got to learn how to live with money correctly,” he said. “Money in itself is not a nasty thing. It’s a tool, but it has some sharp edges to it … It’s seductive.”

The spirituality-in-business movement has become so widespread that Fortune magazine devoted a cover story to “God & Business” in its July 9 issue.

The message, Fortune’s writer Marc Gunther discovered, is “Work from your soul.” Business leaders today want more than a dull, mundane, meaningless job. For many people, this means working fewer hours. For others, it could mean a job or career change.

“Most of us spend so much time working, it would be a shame if we couldn’t find God there,” Gregory F.A. Pearce, a publishing executive and author of a new book called “Spirituality@Work,” told Fortune.

Marathon Man

John Phillips became a follower of Jesus Christ a decade ago. But his spiritual side didn’t become the primary focus of his life until after he subscribed to Life@Work magazine. Phillips said he couldn’t wait for each issue and read each one from cover to cover.

“That was the time I realized I needed to have more help in my life,” he said.

Phillips sold his chain of 30 Food-4-Less supermarkets to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in 1991. He now owns Marathon Alliance of Rogers, which consists of three businesses that do everything from wine importing to home decorating.

Since his recent transformation, Phillips said, he has relaxed and changed the way he treats his 50 employees.

“I feel at peace,” he said. “It has toned me down a lot. One of the biggest things about it is forgiveness and not holding grudges. … I think it just kind of rubs off. [Employees] can see that sparkle in your eye. They can tell if you’ve got the Spirit in your life.”

By the Book

Graves admits that the Scriptures can be confusing. He notes that Timothy 6:10 says “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,” not “the root of all evil” as the verse is often misquoted.

But what is perhaps the best known Biblical verse about money, Matthew 19:24, seems to leave little room for an interpretation that would comfort the wealthy.

The verse states: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Many fundamentalists argue that the “eye of a needle” refers to a narrow gate entering Jerusalem. Others say the verse means exactly what it says.

Graves doesn’t argue about interpretations here. He said there are plenty of other verses in the Bible that appear to contradict Matthew 19:24 and provide the wealthy with just as much heavenly opportunity as everybody else.

“What [Matthew 19:24] is saying is it’s a very difficult assignment for men and women of wealth to be able to, over time, handle and treat their wealth correctly,” Graves said.

In other words, wealthy people often think they don’t need God because they have money, he said. But they are mistaken.

Religious Freedom

The recent popularity of evangelical Christianity — particularly among Southern politicians — has been called a return to traditional American values. Jimmy Carter started it, referring to himself as a “born again” Christian. Bill Clinton, Al Gore and George W. Bush have all publicly touted their conservative Christian beliefs, and it apparently has been popular with voters.

But those values may be newer than most Americans think. By eschewing “religious” labels for a “spiritual” quest, business people may in fact be returning to traditional American values.

America was founded on religious freedom. Several of our founding fathers — including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — were deists, “pagans of the Enlightenment,” as H.W. Brands referred to them in an article in the March/April 2000 issue of Oxford American.

Deists believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion like a gigantic watch and kicked back to see what happens. They thought Jesus Christ was not the son of God but an entirely human teacher who had been misrepresented by his followers.

The founding fathers used the word “God” in an open-minded way, that is, not denoting a particular god. That way, Americans would be free to worship the God they believed in.

But some of the founding fathers couldn’t even go that far.

Our first president found it difficult to utter the word “God” in public. In his first inaugural address, Washington mentioned the “Almighty Being who rules over the universe,” the “Great Author,” the “Invisible Hand,” the “benign Parent of the Human Race” and “heaven,” but never God or Jesus Christ.

In 1796, Washington declared, “The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,” according to Brands.

Thomas Jefferson was even more fervent in his belief in the separation of church and state. Jefferson referred to “Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence. Brands wrote that Jefferson called Christianity “the most perverted system that ever shone on man.”

Politicians aside, it appears business people are becoming part of a nationwide trend toward things spiritual.

According to one study, 60 percent of executives surveyed had positive feelings about “spirituality” but negative feelings about “religion.” The word “spirituality” can be used in the workplace and encompass a wide range of religious beliefs. It doesn’t carry the stigma of the word “religion.”

“Right now, people are much more open to broad-based discussion of spirituality than they are a narrow definition of religion,” Graves said. “[For businesses], it’s about money, but it’s not just about money and returns. That’s critical, but there’s a tie with the way you treat people.”

Graves said the nationwide movement away from the rigidity of particular denominations is also being seen in Northwest Arkansas. Although the new Church at Pinnacle Hills in Rogers is a division of First Baptist Church of Springdale, church leaders chose not to specify the denomination in the church’s name, Graves said.

“Right now, all the trends and all the research says people are much more open to going to a church that doesn’t have a denominational connection,” he said.