Christianity Today: Scripture and The Wall Street Journal
David Miller is author of God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement (2006). He is executive director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School and assistant professor of business ethics. CT editor at large Collin Hansen spoke with Miller in New Haven, Connecticut.
How did your business experience help you conceive your book?
Business is my first language, because I was in banking and finance for 16 years. Then I discerned this call to study theology, which took me to Princeton Theological Seminary, where I studied first for an M.Div., and then for a Ph.D. in ethics. That's when I learned my second language, God talk.
Many business people are hungry to know how to integrate their faith into work. Unfortunately, most clergy don't know how to help those parishioners, and they often show benign neglect, or even outright hostility, toward the marketplace.
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We've lost a whole generation of people who either go through the motions when they go to church or just don't go to church anymore. My research shows that sermons seldom wrestle with biblical teachings and theologies of work, which is where most people in the pews are spending their time.
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There is also a lack of attentiveness in developing a robust theology of work. Many clergy have been trained by faculty who have drunk deeply out of the well of Christian socialism or the well of liberation theology. And often, the assumed conclusion of these teachings is that the world is divided into a set of oppressors and oppressees.
And guess who the oppressors are? They're the business people.
Realted: My review of Miller's book.
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