On Moral Business: Classical and Contemporary Resources for Ethics in Economic Life

By Max L. Stackhouse, Dennis P. McCann and Shirley J. Roels

This broad-ranging reader collects key biblical, classical, cross-cultural, and contemporary texts on how faith, especially Christianity, has shaped economic life in the past and how it can continue to do so in our emerging global civilization. The readings assembled here -- drawn from historical, theological, and social-theory resources -- provide a massive array of materials unprecedented in a single volume. Drawing from sources as diverse as the Bible, the great philosophers, and today's ethically committed business leaders, On Moral Business is ideal for helping tomorrow's leaders understand better how to put our economic life on a sure moral foundation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Sep 5, 1995
• ISBN: 9781467420006

Book preview

Praise for On Moral Business

Awesome! The diversity and scope of sources and topics in this volume are incredible. This book is an essential resource for students and faculty of business and economics. It will also be highly appreciated by businesspersons who draw upon biblical, philosophical, and ethical wisdom to guide their business decisions.

— JOHN W. EBY

Coauthor of Business through the Eyes of Faith

In this one volume we have all the voices of our current debates on ethical issues in economics and business life. It represents a veritable communion of saints of ethical conversation. . . . This volume will be an indispensable addition to every course exploring Christian ethics and economics. Teachers outside the theological world can find no better way to expand the horizons of their students than to use this foundational reader.

— WILLIAM JOHNSON EVERETT

Andover Newton Theological School

A ground-breaking event that meets an urgent need of our time. This volume will contribute significantly to the exploration of the empirical nature of ecumenical theology.

— KOSUKE KOYAMA

Union Theological Seminary, New York

This book is the most comprehensive attempt to date to examine business ethics from a theological perspective. It is long overdue.

— THOMAS DONALDSON

Georgetown University

There is no other volume in business ethics that even begins to rival this one in terms of comprehensive scope, timely relevance, and judicious selection of material. It advances an integrated vision of business, morality, and religion in a way needed both by those who insulate business practices from religious ethics and by those who engage in ethical analysis apart from the realities of business life.

— DOUGLAS J. SCHUURMAN

St. Olaf College

An exemplary collection of readings edited by a group of America’s most distinguished Christian ethicists. I recommend it without reservation.

— EDMUND LEITES

Queens College, The City University of New York

The most comprehensive set of materials on business ethics ever assembled. . . . A gold mine of riches for both scholars and business practitioners.

— DAVID A. KRUEGER

Baldwin Wallace College

An amazing collection of texts dealing with almost every conceivable ethical and theological question related to business, markets, and corporate life on a global scale. The fact that this volume has been put together by Christians who are serious about both business and the Bible, about both human vocations and divine callings, is a tribute to the earthly vitality and spiritual strength of Christianity in this day of cynicism and confusion on so many fronts.

— JAMES W. SKILLEN

Executive Director, The Center for Public Justice

On Moral Business

Classical and Contemporary Resources for Ethics in Economic Life

Edited by

Max L. Stackhouse, Dennis P. McCann, and Shirley J. Roels

with

Preston Williams

WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN

Collection © 1995 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

On moral business: classical and contemporary resources for ethics in economic life / edited by Max L. Stackhouse . . . [et al.].

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN 978-1-4674-2000-6

ISBN 978-0-8028-0626-0 (pbk.)

1. Business ethics.

2. Christian ethics.

3. Economics — Religious aspects — Christianity.

4. Business — Biblical teaching.

I. Stackhouse, Max L.

HF5387.O53 1995

174′.4 — dc20 94-21941

CIP

Scripture quotations designated NRSV are from the New Revised Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and used by permission.

Scripture quotations designated RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted 1946, 1952 © 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and used by permission.

Scripture quotations designated NIV are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright © 1978 by the New York International Bible Society.

The editors and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint materials granted by the individuals and institutions listed on pp. 962-968.

Contents

A Word to the Reader

Dennis P. McCann

Introduction: Foundations and Purposes

Max L. Stackhouse

Part A: Classical Resources

1. The Hebrew Scriptures

Biblical Principles for Economic Theory and Practice

George Monsma

Creation and Fall

Genesis 1:1–4:1; 4:17-26

Scarcity, Faith, and Wisdom

Barry Gordon

Exodus and Covenant

Exodus 6:2-10; 15:19-21

The Birth of the Covenant

Paul D. Hanson

The Ten Commandments: Economic Implications

Max L. Stackhouse

Prophecy and Wisdom

Deuteronomy 15:1-23

Sirach 26:29–27:4; 29:8-17; 31:1-11; 38:24-34

Property and Riches in the Old Testament and Judaism

Martin Hengel

2. The New Testament

The Use of the New Testament in Social Ethics

Stephen Charles Mott

Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount

Matthew 5–7

Ethical Implications of the Sermon on the Mount

Lisa Sowle Cahill

Matthew’s Parables

Matthew 25:1-46

Work as Stewardship

Leland Ryken

Luke’s Poor

Wealth and Poverty in the New Testament World

Bruce J. Malina

Paul and the Letters

From the Jesus Movement to the Urban Christians

Justo Gonzalez

The Study of the New Testament Household

Christian Mission, Patriarchal Order and the Household

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

Toward a Summary of Implications

What Then Shall We Do? On Using Scripture in Economic Ethics

Max L. Stackhouse

3. Ancient Philosophers

Plato

On the Myth of the Ring and the Economics of the City

Plato

Aristotle

On the Management of the Household and the Perils of Trade

Aristotle

Cicero

On Justice, Law, and Nature

Cicero

Plotinus

On True Happiness

Plotinus

4. The Catholic Theological Traditions

Clement of Alexandria

Who Is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved?

Clement of Alexandria

Cyprian

On Works and Alms

Cyprian

Augustine

On Good and Evil

Augustine

Benedict

The Rule of Saint Benedict

Benedict

Thomas Aquinas

Of Justice, and Of Cheating

Thomas Aquinas

5. The Reformation Traditions

Martin Luther

Trade and Usury

Martin Luther

John Calvin

The Moral Law and the Christian Life

John Calvin

Radical Reformers: Stadler and Winstanley

The True Community of the Saints

Ulrich Stadler

The True Leveller’s Standard Advanced

Gerrard Winstanley and others

John Wesley

The Use of Money

John Wesley

Part B: Modern Debates

6. Enlightenment Theories

John Locke

Of Property

John Locke

Adam Smith

Of the Causes of Improvement

Adam Smith

John Stuart Mill

Private Property and Its Critics

John Stuart Mill

Immanuel Kant

The Principles of the External Mine and Thine

Immanuel Kant

Two Principles of Justice

John Rawls

G. W. F. Hegel

Introduction to the Philosophy of History

G. W. F. Hegel

Karl Marx

The Manifesto of the Communist Party

Karl Marx (with Friedrich Engels)

7. Religion and Modernization

On the Protestant Ethic

Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism

Max Weber

On Time

Of Time: Work, Prayer, and Monks

David Landes

On Law

Theological Sources of the Western Legal Tradition

Harold J. Berman

On Usury

On the Taking of Interest

Benjamin N. Nelson

On Technology

Puritanism, Pietism, and Science

Robert Merton

On Differentiation

Christianity and Society

Talcott Parsons

8. Socialism, Capitalism, and Christianity

Charles C. West

Marxism and Christianity

Charles C. West

Andrew Carnegie

The Administration of Wealth

Andrew Carnegie

John A. Ryan

The Church and the Workingman

John A. Ryan

Reinhold Niebuhr

Marx, Barth, and Israel’s Prophets

Reinhold Niebuhr

James W. Skillen

Human Freedom, Social Justice, and Marxism: A Biblical Response

James W. Skillen

Peter J. Parish

Slavery, Capitalism, and Religion

Peter J. Parish

Janet Thomas

Women and Capitalism: Oppression or Emancipation?

Janet Thomas

Gustavo Gutiérrez

Liberation and Development

Gustavo Gutiérrez

David Martin

Religion and Economic Culture

David Martin

Peter L. Berger

Social Ethics in a Post-Socialist World

Peter L. Berger

9. Economics around the World

Islam

Surahs from the Qurʾan

Dealings

Mahmud Shaltaut

Islam and the Spirit of Capitalism

Robert Hefner

Islamic Banking: Faith and Creativity

Ken Brown

Hinduism

Artha Śhāstra

Kauṭilīya

Tirukkural

Tiruvalluvar

Indian Socialism

Jawaharlal Nehru

The Hindu Ethic and Development: Western Views

Max L. Stackhouse

Buddhism, Asceticism, and Wealth

Teachings from the Suttas

Buddhist Attitudes toward Poverty and Wealth

Phra Rajavaramuni

Zen and the Economic Animal

Yamamoto Shichihei

Buddhist Economics

E. F. Schumacher

The Chinese Philosophy

Sayings of Confucius

Neo-Confucian Teachings of Ch’eng Hao

The Dialectical Outlook

Mao Tse-Tung

Is Confucianism Part of the Capitalist Ethic?

Wei-ming Tu

African Traditions and Developments

Wisdom from African Traditions

On the Division between Rich and Poor

Julius K. Nyerere

A Surprising Silent Majority in South Africa

Bill Keller

10. Recent Church Documents

Lutheran Statement

Economic Justice: Stewardship of Creation in Human Community

The Lutheran Church in America

The U.S. Bishops’ Pastoral Letter

Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy

National Conference of Catholic Bishops

A Mainline Protestant Position

Christian Faith and Economic Life

United Church of Christ

Conservative and Evangelical Statements

The Villars Statement on Relief and Development

The Oxford Declaration on Christian Faith and Economics

A Papal Encyclical

Centesimus annus

John Paul II

Part C: Contemporary Developments

11. The Changing Corporation

(1) Moral Significance and Corporate Organization

Spirituality and the Corporation

Max L. Stackhouse

Management as a Social Practice: Rethinking Business Ethics after MacIntyre

Dennis P. McCann and M. L. Brownsberger

The Potential for Building Covenants in Business Corporations

Stewart W. Herman

Three Images of Corporate Leadership and Their Implications for Social Justice

Donald W. Shriver, Jr.

(2) Structuring Organizations for Accountability

Ethics and Management in the Corporate Arena

Michael R. Rion

Creating Ethical Corporate Structures

Patrick E. Murphy

Corporate Accountability: The Board of Directors

Harold M. Williams

(3) Democratizing the Corporation

Is Mondragon the Way?

John C. Cort

Evangelical Christians and Economic Democracy

Shirley J. Roels

Theory Fastball

Max De Pree

Corporate Democracy and the Legacy of the South African Divestment Movement

Robert Kinloch Massie

12. Ethics in Specializations of Business

(1) Marketing

Business Ethics: On Getting to the Heart of the Matter

Paul F. Camenisch

Challenging a Commodity Culture

John Kavanaugh

Capitalism and Commutative Justice

Jon P. Gunnemann

Ethics, Price Fixing, and the Management of Price Strategy

William J. Kehoe

(2) Finance

Have Ethics Disappeared from Wall Street?

Robert S. Bachelder

The Church and Wall Street

Dennis P. McCann

Theology and Money

Paul Hessert

(3) Accounting

Accounting and Accountability: Double Entry, Double Nature, Double Identity

I. C. Stewart

Accounting and Sentiment

Philip M. Piaker

Meeting the Financial Reporting Needs of the Future: A Public Commitment from the Public Accounting Profession

Board of Directors of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants

(4) Human Resources

Shaping Our Economic Future: Dignity in the Work Place

Elmer W. Johnson

Learning to Manage a Multicultural Workforce

Lennie Copeland

Occupational Stress Is a Moral Issue: Lessons in Front of a VDT

Barbara Hilkert Andolsen

13. Moral Business Leadership: Origins and Outcomes

(1) Personal Moral Vision and the Calling to Business

Christian Faith and Business: A Story

M. L. Brownsberger

The Christian Vocation of a Business Leader

Joseph P. Sullivan

Women in the Workplace

Penelope Washbourn

The Protestant Work Ethic: Attitude and Application Give It Meaning

Fred Catherwood

Affections and Business

John C. Haughey, S.J.

(2) When Personal Calling Meets Corporate culture

The Virtues of the Business Leader

William F. May

Minerva’s Owl: Building a Corporate Value System

William L. Weiss

How Religious Commitments Shape Corporate Decisions

J. Irwin Miller

Values Don’t Work in Business

Dennis Bakke

(3) Putting Faith to the Test

Christian Ethics and the Business Ethos

Larry L. McSwain

When a Boss Asks for Something Unethical

Richard Chewning

Does Big Business Have a Big Heart?

Claudia McDonnell

The Path to Social Responsibility

Joseph Nolan and David Nolan

14. The Global Economy

(1) Challenges in Emerging Global Markets

The Gross National Product and the Gods: The Idea of Economic Culture

Peter L. Berger

The Asian Systems

George Lodge

Korean Economy: A Model Case of a Miraculous Growth?

Sang-Goog Cho

Guiding Principles

Arun Katiyar and Shefali Rekhi

The New Poland: Major Problems for Ethical Business

Leo V. Ryan

Reconstituting Civic Societies: An Afro-American View

Preston N. Williams

(2) Multinational Corporations

Toward a Theology of the Corporation

Michael Novak

Developmental Responsibility

Lee A. Tavis

Global Ethics: Wrestling with the Corporate Conscience

Gene R. Laczniak and Jacob Naor

(3) Third World Development

The People of God and the Development of Peoples

Cardinal Maurice Roy

A Biblical Perspective on Stewardship

Ronald J. Sider

The Political Task of the Christian Church

Cornel West

The Churches and Third World Poverty

Mark R. Amstutz

(4) The Economy and the Global Environment

Two Economies

Wendell Berry

Unoriginal Sin: The Judeo-Christian Roots of Ecotheology

Robert H. Nelson

Ecological Integrity and Christian Political Responsibility

James A. Nash

How Green Is Our Gospel?

Andrew Steer

15. The Ongoing Discussion

(1) Challenges for the Church Community

The Righteous and the Powerful: Differing Paths to Social Goals

S. Prakash Sethi

The Ethical Premise for Social Activism

J. Philip Wogaman

The Blue-Collar Worker and the Church

Steve Boint

The New Agenda of the Black Church: Economic Development for Black America

Lloyd Gite

Connecting Ministry with the Corporate World

David A. Krueger

(2) Challenges for the Business Community

The Moral Muteness of Managers

Frederick B. Bird and James A. Waters

Ethics and Accountability: The Rising Power of Stakeholder Capitalism

J. Richard Finlay

The Lay Task of Co-Creation

Michael Novak

Business Goals and Processes

Shirley J. Roels

(3) The Call for New Christian Paradigms

The Great Refusal and My Discontent

Robert Benne

Christians and Economic Development

Amy L. Sherman

The Four Problems of Economic Life

Daniel Rush Finn

Ethics, Economics, and Free Trade

John B. Cobb, Jr.

Liberating Thoughts about the Ethics of Exchange and Trade

Robin Klay

A Postcommunist Manifesto: Public Theology after the Collapse of Socialism

Max L. Stackhouse and Dennis P. McCann

Epilogue

Where Do We Go from Here? Some Thoughts on Geoeconomics

Dennis P. McCann

Acknowledgments

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

A Word to the Reader

Dennis P. McCann

My fellow editors and our publisher asked me to address a few words of encouragement to you the reader to show how one can use this anthology creatively in a variety of settings both inside and outside the classroom. The volume is large but need not be daunting if the reader understands the various and flexible ways it can be used. We have offered a collection of this size and scope because we want to provide readers with a broad array of material from which to choose selections for study and because we hope to advance the study of business ethics and economics on several fronts at once. We wanted to put together an anthology that (1) could serve simultaneously as the basis for courses in M.B.A. programs and in seminaries and divinity schools; that (2) is both a standard reference work in the history of Christian economic ethics and a timely introduction to contemporary discussions of the moral and religious significance of the modern business corporation; and that (3) faithfully surveys the range of contemporary Christian attitudes toward commerce and capitalism, while also clearing a space for interreligious dialogue about the role of multinational corporations in the global economy of the twenty-first century. We thought that such an anthology was worth presenting in a single volume because it might stimulate some mutual learning that otherwise might not occur for lack of a common ground.

Who’s This Book For?

Our hope is to invite at least five different audiences to interactive conversation on this common ground. Three of these emerge from the editors’ teaching experiences with diverse groups of students: (1) the ecumenical world of the modern seminary or divinity school, where most students seek professional training in Christian ministry; (2) the increasingly secular world of the business schools — even those in universities claiming religious sponsorship — where students concentrate on technical training in various aspects of business management; and (3) the mostly undergraduate Christian colleges, where business students, like all other students, are encouraged to integrate their career expectations within an explicitly theological perspective on Christian vocation. You may find yourself already participating in any one of these three groups or, perhaps, thinking of joining one of them. We realize that each group has different needs, though we also hope that at some point your studies and your professional interests will converge.

Let me illustrate one way to respect the diversity of our audiences from what I’ve learned while test-teaching this anthology in the classrooms of DePaul University. Though the book is divided into fifteen chapters (plus preliminaries and an epilogue) and therefore could conceivably be read at the rate of a chapter a week for a single semester’s course, I cannot teach it that way. For one thing, DePaul is on the quarter system, and so classes meet usually for only ten weeks in any given quarter. In my graduate course on Ethics and Economics, for example, I once used the material in this anthology to construct a syllabus concentrating on Part C, and prefaced this with selections from the chapter in Part B on Recent Church Documents. For that group of mostly M.B.A. students, I wanted to emphasize how business ethics is discussed in the business community as it seeks to respond to external stakeholders, including the churches. But on another occasion, when the class was mostly M.A.L.S. students seeking a historical perspective on Christian ethical concern, I concentrated the class discussion on readings from Parts A and B, with independent research projects based on the materials in Part C. (The collection is designed to provide the student with ample material for independent study and thus may be the only book necessary for a given course.) Given the comparative nature of DePaul’s program in religious studies, students have in both cases used the chapters on Economics around the World and The Global Economy to explore the university’s broadly institutional commitments to multiculturalism and internationalization.

It is impossible, of course, for us to address the students’ needs without our first becoming conversation partners with their teachers. This anthology, therefore, is meant to stimulate fresh inquiry among persons in a fourth group, namely, our professional peers, those of you who labor with us in the academic fields of business ethics, practical theology, and Christian social ethics generally. You will determine whether what we think we have learned with our students is also relevant for rethinking the curricula that your own students follow. What we hope to have offered you — beyond assistance in curriculum planning — is a rich and versatile benchmark text that may stimulate your own research projects in these fields. If you, like us, have been frustrated by the ignorance of Christian ethics all too often advertised as an intellectual virtue among moral philosophers currently studying business ethics and economics, here is an alternative map of the Western intellectual tradition that will allow you to place contemporary discussions of business ethics on an entirely different footing.

We also anticipate interactive conversation with a fifth audience, made up of both business professionals, on the one hand, and practicing clergy, on the other, who have discovered their own need for continuing education. Some of you may encounter this text first in an academic setting, as returning students about to complete a postponed degree program or to enter upon a new one. But many, we hope, will simply chance upon it while browsing in a bookstore, or will have it recommended to them by a friend, say, at a clergy conference or a business roundtable group. We have designed the introductory materials to the various sections of each chapter to facilitate an unguided reading of the texts, set at your own pace, with your own interests in mind. Especially in Part C, we have included a number of essays written by people like you, giving expression to their own adult moral concerns, unencumbered by professional training in ethics. You are our heroes, and we mean to support your efforts in any way we can. We also hope the anthology will stimulate the efforts of various organizations, both inside and outside the churches, to form communities of moral discourse in which all of you, lay business professionals but perhaps clergy as well, can cultivate mutual understanding and assist one another in your common struggle to balance moral leadership and institutional responsibility.

What Made Us Do a Book Like This?

One-dimensional thinking — that’s the demon we are seeking to exorcise from the study of business ethics. The editors, each in his or her own way, had often been frustrated trying to help themselves as well as their students overcome compartmentalized thinking about business, ethics, and economics. When we began this project more than five years ago, the reigning academic orthodoxies were still largely governed by the spurious ideal of value neutrality. The distortions inherent in this pose had for a time threatened further progress in the reigning paradigms of neoclassical economics, applied moral philosophy, and the various disciplines of management. Fortunately, revisionist trends are now working in each of these fields to dispel the myth of value neutrality, and these are likely to succeed without much encouragement from us. Our task, however, is to chart the theological implications of these paradigm shifts in order to recover the significance of Christian faith for business, ethics, and economics.

The fragmentation of public discourse about economics and business has, of course, many symptoms. But our own frustrations were provoked by the stunning silence about the religious values operative in various models of economics and business management. Though Max Weber’s celebrated thesis on the Protestant ethic and the development of modern capitalism had already suggested — for us, as for many others — an alternative path of integrated religious and ethical reflection, we knew from experience that Weber’s work had virtually no impact on how neoclassical economics analysed the actual workings of the capitalist system, how the various disciplines of management understood business corporations, or how business ethics defined the moral challenges involved in working for these corporations. We felt that our students — be they aspiring M.B.A.’s or candidates for some form of Christian ministry — were singularly unprepared to deal with the challenges of the global economy unless they were better informed about these values.

This is especially true for students preparing for careers with an international focus. If you plan to work for a multinational corporation, for example, you are likely to encounter a multiculturalism that raises theological issues heretofore reserved only for high-level interreligious dialogue. The religious terrain upon which multinational corporations operate is no longer the Protestant franchise that Weber described, nor even the American ecumenical establishment that Will Herberg celebrated in Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1960). The increasingly prominent multinationals based in East Asia are based on neo-Confucian values, and working in these corporations may often involve participating in Buddhist meditation practices and Shinto rituals. How can Americans evaluate the corporate culture in such firms without understanding the religious values operative in them? Conversely, how can American firms compete with them without understanding their own, still largely unacknowledged, religious assumptions?

The same point could be made about careers in Christian ministry. The pastoral care of laypersons whose working lives are played out in a multinational setting can no longer be understood as a form of prophetic witness against an essentially secular world. What philosopher Richard T. DeGeorge called the myth of amoral business has been unmasked as a peculiar artifact of the fleeting U.S. hegemony in international business. In the global economy, personal integrity increasingly will depend not on coping with secularism but on establishing continuity between one’s own faith journey and the pluralism of religious and moral values likely to be embedded in the corporate culture. Pastors will not be in a position to assist the laity if they do not understand the spiritual environment in which the laity routinely operate.

While I could go on to suggest a similar lesson for those preparing to serve in the churches’ increasingly global ministries, I am concerned here only to explain why On Moral Business turned out the way it did, and what’s in it for you. It turned out the way it did because it is animated by a vision of the challenges of the global economy. We believe that in order to meet those challenges those concerned with business must have (1) a strong grounding in the history of Christian ethical reflection on economic questions, (2) at least a passing familiarity with the way these same questions are formulated in the world’s other major religious traditions, and (3) some appreciation of how the various answers to these questions continue to have significant impact on the ways in which professionals — Christian ethicists, public policy analysts, and business practitioners — understand the morality of business and economics. The organization of this anthology reflects these concerns, more or less in that order.

What’s the Book About?

If one purpose of this anthology is to educate both clergy and lay professionals to the religious and moral significance of business and economics, another purpose is to establish an agenda for research and constructive theological reflection. Though these converging purposes, for the reasons just given, require an extended anthology, we also recognize that general readers and instructors will want to make their own selections. In order to facilitate your own choices, we have divided the anthology into three parts: Part A, Classical Resources; Part B, Modern Debates; and Part C, Contemporary Developments. Parts A and B, roughly the first half of the anthology, survey the history of Christian ethics focused on the general question of economic justice; Part C places the discussion of specifically business ethics in the context of an emerging global economy. Each part, as I suggested earlier, could be made the central focus for a course, supplemented with selections from the other two, depending on the needs and interests of the instructor and students. Though an M.B.A. course, for example, might be organized from Part C, and an M.Div. course from Parts A and B, we believe that the most effective use of this anthology would offer selections from all three parts in an effort to stretch both instructors and students beyond their previous attitudes toward business, ethics, and economics.

As its title suggests, Part A, Classical Resources, explores biblical attitudes toward wealth and poverty, work, stewardship, and money, along with the reflections of Hellenistic philosophers, medieval Catholic theologians, and key figures in shaping the traditions of the Reformation. The organization of Part A testifies to our view that Christian moral wisdom, though rooted in the Bible, is hardly exhausted by it. Prior to the advent of modernity, Christian understandings of economics were significantly shaped by both biblical and Hellenistic values and then rethought in light of the new patterns of urban development that emerged in the high Middle Ages. How the entire premodern period, roughly coextensive with the history of Christendom, is to be interpreted will depend upon the reader’s prior orientation to the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian New Testament. Unlike subsequent chapters, which feature primary sources, the first two chapters in Part A exhibit a diverse range of contemporary biblical scholarship. We deliberately chose to model a pluralism of interpretation at the beginning of this anthology so that readers may feel free to develop their own insights into the relative significance of the historical materials. Though we believe that Christian ethics inevitably develops along the lines of a quadrilateral bounded by Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, we do not mean to preempt your own effort to define an appropriate hermeneutic circle.

Part B continues, for the most part, the historical sequence established in Part A. Now, however, the focus shifts to the challenge of modernity, a challenge that eventually resulted in the dissolution of Christendom. The Christian tradition of social ethics emerges in this period as one participant among others in Modern Debates about morality and the marketplace. Thus we begin with Christendom’s stepchild, the secular Enlightenment, here represented by some of the Worldly Philosophers — as Robert Heilbroner aptly named them — whose theories helped to differentiate economics from the matrix of social institutions in which it had been embedded and to make it central to our understanding of society. As the chapter on the Enlightenment unfolds, readers are invited to reconstruct the moral logic of an autonomous marketplace. The next chapter explores the processes of modernization in a variety of institutions, particularly those that are essential for supporting the marketplace’s own emergent sense of morality. This is followed by a chapter on Socialism, Capitalism, and Christianity, which charts the ways in which the Christian communities of faith tried to influence the outcome of the twentieth century’s great economic debate, in order to make the economy once more amenable to religious and moral values.

Now that the emergence of a global economy seems to have eclipsed the debate over the relative merits of socialism versus capitalism, the comparative study of world religions has become an indispensable resource in the search for a new paradigm. The next chapter, Economics around the World, offers a brief introduction to the interplay between tradition and modernity with reference to business and economic development in cultures beyond the historic influence of Christendom. We believe that the study of how other religions have regarded business and economics will tend to confirm the universality of many of the ethical concerns that surfaced in the history of Christian tradition. Christians are not alone, for example, in discerning the presence of the sacred in the ongoing struggle for economic justice.

The final chapter to Part B, Recent Church Documents, features selections from the many official pronouncements on ethics and economics authorized by various Christian denominations over the past decade. Here, too, despite the historic diversity of various denominational traditions in Christian ethics, the theological perspectives and ethical priorities tend to converge in a variety of ways. We feel that these statements make a fitting conclusion to our survey of the history of Christian thought on economics and business, for, though very recent in origin, they cite as authoritative many of the points first made by texts presented in the previous chapters. Each statement thus provides a framework of interpretation, a perspectival reading of the quadrilateral of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience that may be tested against both the preceding texts and the new challenges outlined in the next section of the anthology.

Contemporary Developments, as Part C is labeled, is distinguished from Parts A and B by its intensive focus on the internal dynamics of the business corporation considered as a field of operations in which growing numbers of lay Christians exercise their vocations. But we also mean it to convey our sense that the emergence of the global economy is an epoch-making historical event whose moral challenges and opportunities may be without parallel in the previous history of Christian ethics. As Peter F. Drucker recently pointed out, the global economy is just as aptly characterized as Post-Capitalist as it is Post-Communist. This should convince us, as we hope to convince our readers, that the dramatic end to the Cold War should not become a pretext for celebrating the triumph of a capitalism that no longer exists. Instead, we need to focus not only upon the public policy implications of the global marketplace but also upon the ways in which new forms of economic competition are transforming the cultures of business corporations, both here and abroad. Try to understand the nature of these changes first, if you mean to exercise your vocation by institutionalizing moral business practices within the global economy.

We believe that the ethical challenge cannot be reduced to the simplicities of making a decision either for or against socialism or capitalism as such; nor should it be regarded as simply an extension of Christianity’s historic ambivalence toward modernity. Instead, Christians find themselves involved in economic struggles that cannot be resolved simply within the conventional categories of public policy analysis. Part C, Contemporary Developments, thus is meant to chart possible new approaches, based on the realization that the perennial concerns of Christian social ethics must now be addressed in a context whose development has outrun the capacities of any existing political system for controlling it. If basic Christian commitments to the common good, and to social justice for all, are to have a role in shaping the global economy, Christians will have to rediscover that, beyond the external threat of political coercion, corporate accountability, in business as in any other institutional setting, is based on the internalization of moral vision and values.

We begin Part C, therefore, with a chapter outlining the moral significance of The Changing Corporation. As in the chapters to follow, this one is meant to provide a mix of interpretations, so that the actualities of moral discourse within business organizations can be compared with similar efforts within religious institutions. The focus of this chapter is upon the possibilities for structural transformation. It means to illustrate recent trends in business management that have strengthened the structures for enhanced ethical accountability. It also shows how the efforts of Christian social activists in, for example, the movement for corporate social responsibility actually do play a role in developing these structures. And finally, it invites us to ponder the significance of recent discussions of economic democracy among Christian ethicists and business practitioners: Should economic democracy be seen as an alternative model for business organization or as itself indicative of the possibilities already operative in contemporary business practice?

The next chapter, Ethics in Specializations of Business, seeks to demonstrate how Christian ethicists can contribute to the development of moral discourse in specialized business disciplines — in, for example, marketing, finance, accounting, and human resource management. In each of the subsections of the chapter, we’ve emphasized theological reflection wherever possible, not from any apologetic need to argue the superiority of Christian ethics, but in order to establish a common ground of shared moral concern and promising convergences in the articulation of ethical priorities and principles. Moral consensus, however extensive, does not make religious perspectives redundant in business ethics. On the contrary, such religious perspectives are often closer to the actual concerns of managers, stakeholders, and business theorists, because as a matter of fact these perspectives are more alert to the moral significance of institutional settings than the perspectives of applied moral philosophy generally have proven to be. Nevertheless, since for most of this century Christian social ethics has tended to focus, as we’ve seen in Part B, on the politics of economic justice at the national and international levels, this comparative advantage has yet to be fully developed. The Christian ethicists featured in this chapter must truly be regarded as pioneers.

The next chapter in Part C, Moral Business Leadership: Origins and Outcomes, shifts the focus from corporate structure and social practice to character formation and the exercise of a Christian vocation in business. The chapter begins with a sample of religious narratives in which business people give an account of their vocations; it then moves on to discuss the positive role that corporate culture can have in helping to nurture a sense of vocation. We conclude the chapter with two different examples of how vocations may be tested in business: first, by facing the dreaded possibility of having to blow the whistle on business practices that are morally wrong; second, on a more positive note, by responding to the various demands that society makes upon business to exercise moral leadership, especially in the area of corporate philanthropy.

The Global Economy, our penultimate chapter, is meant to suggest the diversity of religious resources for conceptualizing the economic challenge that multinational corporations and their managers are likely to face. The opening section, Challenges in Emerging Global Markets, surveys a number of regional perspectives on corporate culture and economics. The impact of the world’s religious traditions is evident here, as economic development seems to have been stimulated globally by a variety of religious perspectives. While multinational managers thus cannot afford to remain monocultural on the subject of business ethics, we also need to acknowledge the ways in which Christian ethicists have debated the moral significance of multinational corporations, Third-World development, and the ecological environment. A separate section is devoted to each of these in order to reflect the richness of the ongoing debates among Christian ethicists in these areas.

The anthology’s final chapter, The Ongoing Discussion, seeks to integrate the twin purposes animating this anthology by showing how Christian activists in both ministry and management are changing the churches’ thinking about mission in the marketplace. The first section, Challenges for the Church Community, features proposals for new forms of ministry within the economy. While the pastoral strategies shown here have clearly shifted from confrontation to collaboration, the second section, Challenges for the Business Community, tries to steer the discussion to the actual experience of lay professionals in business. Breaking the inherited taboos forbidding direct expressions of moral concern in business helps to set the agenda for new forms of theological reflection. The final section, The Call for New Christian Paradigms, while more theoretical in orientation, features some of the perspectives that are emerging from the new economic activism. We have given ourselves the last word among these by reprinting A Postcommunist Manifesto, which Max Stackhouse and I published a few years ago in The Christian Century. In retrospect, the manifesto was a promissory note: now, however, the promissory note has come due. This anthology provides an inventory of resources necessary for making good, among other things, on the claims we made for a public theology after the collapse of socialism.

The anthology was designed to meet the needs emerging in a variety of personal and institutional settings. When the editors started working together on this project some five years ago, Eerdmans suggested that their recently published anthology On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics (1987), edited by Stephen E. Lammers and Allen Verhey, might be a suitable model for our efforts. But one look at On Moral Medicine convinced us that Christian ethicists had been far more active for many more years in the field of biomedical ethics than they had been in the field of business ethics and economics. We convinced Eerdmans to risk publication even at this early stage in the hope that this anthology might play a creative role in stimulating further research in Christian business ethics. We make no claim that any of our chapters or subsections are definitive on any given topic; but they represent, we hope, some of the best of what’s currently out there and thus will help to stimulate further inquiry.

How We Came to Work on It Together

We did not start out with a common project in mind. Though Max Stackhouse and I had known each other professionally for several years and had each become aware of Shirley Roels’s growing reputation among Christian teachers in the field of business ethics, it was Jon Pott, editor-in-chief at Eerdmans, who saw in our diverse backgrounds the potential for fruitful collaboration. Max’s book Public Theology and Political Economy, which Eerdmans had published in 1987, served as the basis for our working together, for both Shirley and I had read it and used it in our own teaching and research. I was attracted to Max’s perspective because it tries to define an open and yet constructively critical stance toward capitalism, avoiding, on the one hand, the abstract and ill-informed denunciations of capitalism and business enterprise so prevalent among self-consciously radical Christians, and, on the other hand, the glib assurances of neoconservatives who, in denouncing really existing socialism, seemed incapable of advancing the discussion of business ethics in the institutions of really existing capitalism. All three of us wanted to avoid the ideological polarizations that had dominated the 1980s, and we had all grown weary of generalized polemics on one side or another of the great economic debate.

Max’s career has been dedicated to serving those who seek professional training in the Christian ministry in those denominations representing mainline Protestantism. Recently appointed to the faculty at Princeton Theological Seminary after many years at Andover Newton, Max brought to the project his deep awareness that a massive new effort in Christian education will be necessary if Christian leadership, both clergy and laity, is to maintain an effectively pastoral stance toward business and the modern professions. He wanted to dispel the clergy’s virtually invincible ignorance of business practice and economic theory and the laity’s resulting inability to overcome an unnecessary and ultimately self-destructive separation of religious faith from their worldly occupations. Shirley and I share Max’s sense of mission, but we have tended to focus more on the training of lay professionals, who need, just as much as the clergy, an appropriate education in Christian ethics.

Shirley has carried out this mission through some fifteen years of undergraduate teaching in a variety of business subjects at Calvin College. As she once said to Max and me, You name it, I’ve taught it; her list includes marketing management, managerial accounting, human resource management, business policy and strategy, as well as management of not-for-profit organizations. Shirley has also directed Calvin College’s student internship program and helped to shape Calvin’s program on women in the workplace. More than either Max or myself, she is expert in the disciplines of business management and has exercised a key role in the Christian College Coalition’s attempt to develop a constructive approach to business ethics. Having already collaborated with Richard C. Chewning and John W. Eby in the Coalition’s seminal text Business Through the Eyes of Faith (1990), Shirley helped the team maintain an appropriately ecumenical balance so that On Moral Business remains as open to the insights of evangelical Christians as it is to those who represent liberal perspectives in Christian social ethics.

My own experience teaching business ethics at DePaul University is, I hope, complementary to that of Max and Shirley. Largely out of respect for its Roman Catholic identity, DePaul’s curriculum — a joint venture between commerce and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences — has been somewhat distinctive in its programmatic commitment to studying the religious dimensions of business ethics. Having helped to establish the goals of this interdisciplinary program at its inception in 1981, I have spent most of my time since trying to respond to the intellectual, as well as pedagogical, challenges they entail. These challenges converge in the never-ending search for suitable instructional materials. When I started out, Full Value: Cases in Christian Business Ethics (1978), the first fruits of an ongoing collaboration at the University of Notre Dame between Oliver F. Williams and John W. Houck, was very useful, not least because of its accessibility to undergraduates. When the U.S. Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (1986) became available, I used selections from it to similar effect. But no matter how pertinent the supplements chosen, students nevertheless got the impression that Christian perspectives were at best peripheral to the central concerns of business ethics.

My own search for an alternative was stimulated by prolonged conversation with a few business executives in Chicago, who wanted to explore the relationship between Christian faith and business practice. Those who know the sociological data on American business corporations will not be surprised by this development, inasmuch as executives are unusually active in their local churches, with participation rates far higher than the strikingly robust statistics reported for the American population as a whole. Indeed, most U.S. executives who express a personal interest in business ethics are usually motivated by religious faith. One such person is M. L. Bud Brownsberger, whose story is included in this anthology. Bud collaborated with me in writing two papers that were presented at the annual meetings of the Society of Christian Ethics in 1988 and 1990. These papers outlined certain key features of a theocentric approach to business management. Like Max and Shirley, we hoped to show why and how religious and theological questions were central to any adequate understanding of the moral responsibilities of management.

Let me conclude these preliminary remarks by acknowledging the indispensable contribution of yet another member of our editorial team, Preston N. Williams. Preston’s various responsibilities at the Harvard Divinity School did not permit him to participate in the project at the same level as Max, Shirley, and I did. Nevertheless, Preston was generous in reading and criticizing various versions of the anthology and in suggesting specific selections that tended to make the collection more inclusive of the concerns of Christian women and minorities. As one of the invited critics of the Postcommunist Manifesto, Preston at that time declared not only his continued commitment to socialist ideals but also his pragmatism about economic progress, especially for the poor and the marginalized. We believe that, thanks to his advice and encouragement, we now have an opportunity to move Christian ethical thinking on business and economics toward a more constructive posture, without thereby confirming the suspicion that we are merely out to let business off the hook. We emphatically share with Preston the commitment to economic and social justice that is an indelible mark upon the soul of Christian social ethics, but we also are convinced — more so now than when we began this project — that such a commitment can find an authentic expression within business as it faces the unprecedented challenges of the global economy.

Whom We Must Thank

A project on this scale obviously would not have been possible without the encouragement and support of numerous colleagues in the various institutions where the editors normally work and our many friends scattered elsewhere who have helped us, if only by listening sympathetically, as we struggled to overcome one obstacle or another that stood in the way of its completion. We received significant secretarial and research support from Ms. Sheila Lloyd at Andover Newton, Mr. Lake Lambert III at Princeton Theological Seminary, Ms. Jen Candler at Calvin College, and Ms. Mary R. Garrison at DePaul University’s Center for the Study of Values. Our colleagues, the members of various faculties at Princeton Theological Seminary, the Department of Religion and Society at Andover Newton Theological School, DePaul University’s Department of Religious Studies, and Calvin College’s Department of Economics and Business, provided indispensable feedback on our initial attempts to conceptualize the project as a whole and timely response to inquiries regarding the merits of various selections and the overall design of the various chapters. Members of the Society of Christian Ethics, notably Prof. Jon Gunnemann at the Candler School of Theology and Prof. Bill Everett, formerly of Candler and now a member of the faculty at Andover Newton, volunteered to test all or some parts of the anthology in a classroom setting. Their help was inestimable in persuading us to keep the length of this project down to what we hope are manageable proportions.

Max and I were able to discuss the anthology as a work in progress before a gathering of scholars held at the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture at Boston University in May 1991. We are especially grateful for the opportunity the Institute’s director, Prof. Peter Berger, gave us to show where the project was headed in light of the Postcommunist Manifesto. The response we received from the scholars assembled by the Institute encouraged us to continue at a crucially formative stage in the project. Last year Max was able to make a similar presentation at a much more advanced stage in the project to the faculty of the joint colloquium of the Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Business School. We hope that our anthology will help to stimulate a proliferation of such interdisciplinary conversations at academic institutions throughout the country.

I personally wish to thank my collaborators in the business ethics program at DePaul University, starting with the former Dean of the College of Commerce, Bro. Leo V. Ryan, C.S.V., who organized the program that led to my coming to DePaul in 1981. My own Dean, Dr. Richard J. Meister, now Executive Vice-President for Academic Affairs, consistently supported this program as an essential component of the university’s claim to an urban, Catholic, Vincentian identity and developed an internal program of summer research grants and academic research leave that, among other things, allowed me to begin my work on the project and to make the initial survey of selections for Part C of this anthology. The College of Commerce’s Executive-in-Residence, Mr. Ron Nahser, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Frank C. Nahser Advertising, Inc., encouraged me to explore the spiritual dimensions of business ethics. Our countless conversations over the years about his business, my theology, and our common struggle with Catholic tradition were as constructive an introduction to the actual practice of business ethics as I can imagine. My debt to Ron is enormous, as it is to Bud Brownsberger, a former business executive who, during the course of our collaboration, accepted the call to ministry within the United Church of Christ. It was Bud who first had the idea of developing an anthology like this one and who worked with me on a number of preliminary sketches of it.

Max, Shirley, Preston, and I wish to thank all our colleagues who have given us permission to reprint their essays in this collection. They have accepted, usually without complaint, our editorial revisions and have helped us to understand what we were up to better than we would have had we been left to our own devices. Finally, we must thank our publishers, the team at Eerdmans. In addition to Jon Pott, without whom none of this would have come to pass, we have benefited significantly from the hospitality and the suggestions made by Reinder Van Til, Ina Vondiziano, Anne Salsich, Charles Van Hof, Jennifer Hoffman, and Klaas Wolterstorff. They kept faith with this imposing project over its many months of preparation.

Introduction: Foundations and Purposes

Max L. Stackhouse

The Challenge of Business Today

The fall of Rome, the demise of feudalism, the onset of the French Revolution, the defeat of fascism, and the overthrow of colonialism do not surpass in importance what has happened in the last decades of this century. Both traditional and socialist economies have collapsed. They have proven incapable of meeting basic human needs and of sustaining a humane society for the future. Neither primal communitarianism nor scientific socialism will provide the models for tomorrow.

It is not clear, however, exactly what has triumphed. Our present economy, variously called capitalism, a mixed economy, or free-market society, is changing also. No one familiar with it thinks it is perfect. Furthermore, no description of a situation can tell us how we ought to live or whether we ought to embrace or resist what is happening. The purpose of On Moral Business is to seek ethical guidelines for the emerging forms of economic life beyond traditionalism and socialism by studying the most profound resources we can find from the past, from around the world, and from current practices that bear on the future.

Some things are clear. The corporation, a social artifact with a long but fragile history, has become one of the strongest institutions of our day. Families split, but companies endure; governments fall, but firms expand. To be sure, businesses fail, companies fold, and corporations are bought out, but the society is preoccupied with plans for their growth. The steeples of the churches are dwarfed by the towers of industry. People say they learn more at work than they did at school. The corporation reaches across cultures; it transcends the boundaries of the nations; it serves as the predominant form of organization for nearly all social institutions; it is the primary center of production and applied technology; and it binds together people of diverse backgrounds in new global networks of interdependence and exchange. And it is changing its internal form to adapt to new global conditions. Instead of a dense, centrally controlled, hierarchical monolith serving a single country, it is becoming a network of ever-changing subunits, operating in many societies and cultures.¹

Modern corporations are guided by teams of coordinators — managers, planners, engineers, financial experts, lawyers, personnel specialists, and market researchers — who work with employees, suppliers, customers, owners, and host communities to see that some product or service desired by some segment of the population is produced and distributed peacefully, voluntarily, and cooperatively. All who participate gain from it, and more gain when more participate, although not all gain equally; there is some evidence that the inequalities are growing, and many do not participate.

With the triumph and changing structure of the corporation, the influence and institutional bases of the great alternatives have declined. The economic futures of the so-called Second World and Third World hold little promise except insofar as they adopt one or another version of modern business. The elders of these societies and those alienated from the institutions and values of the industrialized countries may resent the fact, but it is true nevertheless.² Fewer and fewer people want to live in traditional systems, even if ideals from and hopes for them are treasured.

It is now doubtful that either households (families, clans, villages, or manorial estates), which dominated traditional economies, or governments (feudal, royal, military, or people’s democratic), which dominated mercantilist and socialist national economies, can manage a modern complex economy. Of course, family firms continue to have a place in the whole economy, and families (which are themselves undergoing change) seek to form persons who are able to live responsibly in complex political economies. Governments also will continue to try to establish the conditions under which business can flourish: coining money, supporting education, preventing exploitation, protecting the environment, developing infrastructure, etc. In fact, family traditions will, in part, be evaluated according to their capacity to form people who are able to make their way in the world and contribute to the well-being of the commonwealth, while governments will be assessed according to their capacity to preserve a degree of law and order and to sustain a context in which business can flourish. But neither the traditional household nor the political program will be the center of the economic life of tomorrow — although new forms of Asian capital suggest new adaptations of both national and familistic corporate functioning.

But these are not all that have been removed from their positions of social centrality; the kind of capitalism that relied on unfettered laws of supply and demand to provide the world with all it needs has also been displaced. It turned out that it both led to depressions and fostered dehumanizing practices. It brought about an economic egocentricity with little place for generosity, compassion, or social justice; and, for that matter, it obscured the human capacity to betray interests for utterly irrational reasons. It is not accurate to say that capitalism has defeated the traditional, agricultural household economy and the industrial collectivism of socialism, if one has in mind the individualist capitalism made famous by Adam Smith. He wrote:

Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment of whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of society which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society. . . . Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. . . . [But he] neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. . . . He intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention. . . . By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.³

It is surely the case that many will try to live with the convenient confidence that the well-being of the whole comes automatically from one’s own self-interest. And those who are self-employed or form sole-proprietary corporations may well contribute to society. But they do so in institutions that ideas of radical individualism cannot sustain. People do not interact as isolated entities. They live in networks. We are related to others in a thousand ways, even if we are alone. We get our information from the mass media and are paid in currency whose value depends on national institutions and international exchange rates. We are a part of living units — cohorts, classes, cultural identity groups, political parties, clubs, friendship enclaves, and religious groups. People work in corporations or firms, large or small, and these interact with a constantly changing worldwide society that is both less atomistic than Smith thought and less collectivistic than his most ardent disciple and opponent, Karl Marx, thought. Something other than individualism has displaced traditionalism and solidarity. People, it turns out, are connected by new forms of chosen association as well as isolated by the demise of old communal solidarities.

Besides, if individual ownership of the means of production, individual initiative in business, and individual participation in a free market according to individual, rational calculations of cost and benefit are what is most natural to human beings, why are these not the case everywhere and always? In fact, the decisive kinds of individual personalities that are characteristic of modern economies and able to flourish in complex and dynamic systems arise only where certain ethical and social patterns of human interaction are present.

Those who are to manage the economies of tomorrow cannot rely on a few tired and doubtful slogans about these matters. They will have to develop a deeper sense of history and a larger regard for morality. They will have to gain a comprehension of the big picture, of major trends, of how parts relate to wholes, of how particular ends are influenced by multiple purposes. They will have to develop a view of higher principles, long-range purposes, and the character of modern changes, which alter what some thought was nature. They will have to ask whether present systems can sustain a civilization on which individuals, family life, governments, and corporations — as well as hospitals, schools, symphony orchestras, sports teams, and much more — depend. If present systems will not sustain them, they will have to learn how to change them. To do all this they will have to attend to the deepest, broadest, and most enduring source and norm of values that can be imagined. As we will see, they will have to become theological, and they will have to relate theology to business in the context of an understanding of how cultures work.

We are at a turning point in the history of civilizations; changes in the economic order are an indicator of this. Behind the divisions between liberals and conservatives, and deeper than the struggles against slavery and the robber barons in the nineteenth century or even against fascism and communism in the twentieth, is a transformation of even greater proportions. We face a number of structural changes that make society more directly dependent on the modern business corporation and its management.

(1) Population growth around the world demands that modern business must provide more jobs, goods, and services than ever before. As agribusiness takes over food and fiber production, the youth of the world flood to the cities, which swallow suburbs and exurbs and form links with other cosmopolitan centers around the globe. If business does not meet the needs of these vast new populations, we could face urban devastation and starvation that no social security system could contain. New forms of barbarism could again threaten civilization.

(2) New technologies make it possible for humans to cut more deeply into the fabric of the bio-physical universe than ever before. The most advanced forms of technology, outside of certain areas within specialized needs of the medical and military fields, are in the control of business