Coram Deo ~

Looking at contemporary culture from a Christian worldview

Working for Better BOOK CLUB

Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work by Elaine Howard Ecklund and Denise Daniels 
Please join us in reading this book on faith and work.

From the Amazon description:
“In a world where workplaces are becoming increasingly diverse, Working for Better by Elaine Howard Ecklund and Denise Daniels offers a timely guide for Christians navigating the modern faith-at-work landscape. Drawing from over twenty years of research and personal insights, Working for Better presents a groundbreaking exploration of how to express Christian faith in professional settings without compromising beliefs or alienating others.
Through detailed studies involving focus groups, surveys of more than 15,000 workers, and interviews with over 300 individuals, Ecklund and Daniels identify five key tensions in the faith-at-work movement. With compelling stories and practical applications, Working for Better addresses the need for Christian workers and leaders to adapt to cultural shifts, offering guidance for a more redemptive presence at work. Each chapter concludes with thought-provoking questions for individual reflection or group discussion, making this book an essential resource for anyone seeking to integrate faith with their professional life. Whether you’re a Christian worker, workplace leader, or pastor guiding others, Working for Better invites you to consider how to flourish in a rapidly changing world.
As workplaces continue to evolve, the ability to maintain one’s spiritual values while contributing positively to the organizational culture becomes ever more crucial. Working for Better not only equips readers with the wisdom and tools needed to face such challenges but also inspires them to become agents of change, promoting a more inclusive and harmonious work environment.”

This week, we look at the Preface: Why This Book? Here are a few helpful quotes from the chapter:

  • One of the best ways we can live out our calling as Christians in the workplace is to radically embrace those who are different from ourselves.
  • That is what you will find in this book: a research-based examination of how religion and spirituality enter the workplace, how American workers see the connections between faith and work, and how organizational leaders can understand and lead religiously diverse, faith-friendly workplaces.
  • At the end of each chapter, we have provided some reflection questions. These questions will be useful to individuals or groups.
  • In most chapters we also include questions that are designated for faith communities.

Chapter 1: A Look at How the World is Changing

  • At all levels of business in the United States, employees no longer want to leave their faith behind when they go to work. As workers increasingly bring their faith to work, it creates new challenges for leaders in handling religion in the workplace.
  • Organizational leaders need tools for how to foster respectful expression rather than suppress religious identity.
  • We conducted a first-of-its-kind set of research projects to form a data-driven approach to identifying and proposing solutions for the challenge of fostering faith at work.
  • Rather than concentrating solely on the kind of employee we are, our own expressions of faith at work, and our personal responsibility and morality, we can examine the values of the workplace as a whole and work to advance justice, fairness, human flourishing, and the common good.
  • When we put our research alongside the traditional understandings and approaches that have characterized the Christian faith-at-work movement, five key tensions emerged that show where the gaps are between assumptions and realities. We explore each of these tensions across a pair of chapters describing the pressures building and suggesting how they might be resolved.
  • We make the case that the exclusive claims of Christianity actually demand an embrace of others in the workplace, regardless of their faith commitments, belief systems, or worldviews.
  • We are arguing for the equivalent value and dignity of each person and for an approach to Christianity in the workplace that recognizes and centers on such.
  • Using compelling real-world stories, research insights, and practical applications, we hope to provide new information, ideas, and guidance for Christian workers, Christian workplace leaders, and pastors and church leaders who want to see all people flourish at work.
  • Our primary goal is to help those in the Christian faith community consider how to adapt their approach to a changing world in which older ways can get in the way and newer ways open the way.

Chapter 2: Secular Work

  • In spite of all of the efforts of the faith-at-work movement, the most common opinion is still that faith belongs in sacred settings, such as church and Bible study groups, but has very little to do with the daily activities of work.
  • The large majority of workers do not see their jobs as a calling.
  • Our research shows that those who agree that the primary reason they work is to make money are less likely to feel a sense of calling in their work
  • The closer the work is to a caring profession, or the more relational it is, the easier it is for Christians to see how that work could be a manifestation of Christian convictions.
  • Among those Christians we interviewed, there was a consistent lack of imagination for how their jobs could be viewed as in any way connected to their faith.
  • Our research shows that the experience of calling is often perceived to be a privilege of the privileged.
  • People at the top of their organizations are more likely to agree that their work is a spiritual calling than those at the bottom of their organizations
  • Those who see their work as a calling also tend to feel their work is important beyond making money—thinking more about achieving personal fulfillment and making a difference in the world through their work.

Chapter 3: Sacred Work

  • One of the ways we can engage God’s purposes in our work is to recognize the ways that the work we do is meaningful.
  • Any work that enhances human dignity, gives people autonomy, exercises creativity, results in useful and needed goods and services, contributes to healthy relationships, or provides healthy rhythms of work and rest can be redemptive work.
  • God can use our work to shape our own character and soul.
  • Working hard and acting with integrity at work were frequently mentioned as ways people could be mindful of the sacred in their work.
  • Workers explained that their Christian beliefs influenced the ways they saw others and interacted with them at work.
  • Toil, while unpleasant and difficult to go through, can ultimately lead to a redemptive experience of resiliency and thriving at work.

Chapter 4: Protecting Ourselves

  • Our studies show that a large number of Christians feel a sense of mistreatment at work due to their faith.
  • Where a Christian works can significantly shape whether or how they experience religious discrimination or marginalization.

Chapter 5: Protecting Others

  • We think that faithfulness in our current moment may require less attention to ourselves as Christians and more attention to others.
  • Christians, especially those in positions of power and leadership (which is many of us!), have a specific faith-based responsibility to fight for those who are othered, which in the majority of workplaces is not Christians.
  • Workplace leaders rarely openly discuss religious discrimination, how it relates to other kinds of discrimination, or what can be done to rectify it or, better yet, prevent it in the first place.
  • Part of being a faithful Christian at work is your awareness of and concern for those who are not Christians.
  • There are many things that we as Christians can do—and even have a responsibility to do—to protect the rights of non-Christians in the workplace, born out of a radical commitment to the imago Dei.

Chapter 6: Focusing on Individual Responsibility

  • What do Christians mean when they talk about the importance of personal responsibility for ethical behavior at work? In our interviews with Christians from a variety of workplaces, they tended to talk about it in two main ways: avoiding what is wrong and doing what is right.
  • It was common to talk with Christian workers who had never thought about ways their faith might play a role at work.
  • Christian workers we interviewed want to hear their pastors and other faith leaders talk more about how Christians should act at work and how they can develop a personal ethical approach that is consistent with their faith.
  • Pastors could prioritize reaching out to congregants whose jobs they are least familiar with to learn about what these workers experience on a regular basis. They could also ask congregants about the specific tasks, interactions, joys, struggles, challenges, and fears associated with various kinds of work.
  • Christian workers told us that churches could offer tailored small groups for members who work in the same field and thus would better understand the specific challenges and ethical dilemmas they may face in the workplace due to their faith.
  • One final recommendation is for clergy to visit church members in their workplaces. This would allow church leaders to better understand a range of job experiences as well as the workplace ethical issues their congregants sometimes face. It could also help Christian workers see connections between their work and their faith.

Chapter 7: Focusing on Systems Thinking

  • Engaging in systems thinking is especially important for Christians because Christianity is a corporate faith. It is about a community.
  • Thinking and acting systemically in life is consistent with biblical teaching.
  • Christians could and should use their faith to bring changes to their workplace organizational systems.
  • When workers focus on changing a work culture to make it more honest, or when they confront an authority figure over what they perceive to be a dishonest practice or request, they are working for systemic change.
  • Christians in leadership positions sometimes recognized that they had more power than those who were at lower levels in the organization to influence the workplace climate through ways they communicated their faith values.
  • Christian organizational leaders should particularly be attentive to issues of pay in their organizations.
  • Christians can also consider the ways they might explore the values of the organizations in which they work. They can ask questions about the extent to which these values match the Christian values that shape their lives.
  • One way Christian leaders could use their power is by addressing unjust rhythms of work and rest in their organizations.

Chapter 8: Restricted Roles for Women

  • We find that across all types of Christian churches and denominations, women who work are less supported in their professional endeavors than men.
  • We argue that churches both create and perpetuate cultural understandings of gender that influence not only the experiences people have at church but also the experiences they have in the workplace.
  • More often than not, the male clergy we interviewed chose not to provide the same support for working women that they do for working men.
  • Across all church types, we heard from women congregants and pastors who confirmed that churches support male and female workers differently.
  • It surprised us that in both traditional and more progressive congregations there are similar mechanisms disadvantaging women who work.
  • Our research uncovered numerous examples of congregations and their leaders failing to support and sometimes even hindering women’s workforce participation by neglecting to provide pastoral support for women, not treating working women’s concerns as mainstream, or not considering women’s work schedules.

Chapter 9: Men and Women Flourishing Together

  • We argue that churches need to be more overt in their support of working women in particular, recognizing the unique challenges they face in the workplace and the unique demands they experience trying to maintain work-life balance.
  • All congregations should engage with questions of how women’s gifts in leadership, organization, communication, and decision making can be affirmed and utilized within churches.
  • Christians in the workplace should look for both those who can act as mentors and those whom they can mentor.
  • We want to stress that the conditions of systemic burnout look even more extreme for women who are part of racially/ethnically minoritized groups.
  • We need to find ways within our church congregations to recognize every person as made in God’s image and worthy of the opportunity to develop their God-given gifts.
  • As Christians in a variety of workplaces and as pastoral leaders in congregations, we should help women express their giftings both in the church and at work.