Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life.

Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life. By Laura Nash and Scotty McLennan. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2002. 352 pages. Cloth. $23.95.

Nash, a researcher at Harvard School of Business, and McLennan, Dean for religious life at Harvard, mince no words: There is a vast chasm today between church and business that hurts both sides. To support this claim as more than an anecdotal truth, the authors did in-depth interviews of both business people and clergy. These interviews support the distance between some of the fundamental beliefs and attitudes of these two groups. Business people who are active church leaders cannot identify ways that their faith is a resource for their work lives, and pastors, who profess admiration of congregants who are business leaders, describe corporate America as a hotbed of greed and corruption.

The authors identify three primary tripping points in church culture that are sources of the business-church estrangement: a history of non-engagement in business from a theological perspective, a vague but deep ideological hostility toward capitalism and modern corporations, and a history of associating spirituality only with settings outside of business and the corporate world. The authors put this schism at the door of the church.</p> <pre> In many cases, the ecclesiastics whom we have interviewed have no awareness of the depth of their distancing from practical economic dilemmas, or of the reasons for the church's inability to be a significant influence on the business culture. Strong in their own distaste for the false gods of the marketplace, they fail to see their own role in cutting the church off from the significant parts of the lay Christian's everyday life. (p. 102) </pre> <p>The authors do not offer answers to this problem. Rather, they see their work as a wakeup call to the church. However, they do argue for engaging in church-business dialogue and forming linkages between these two groups through the many lay persons who love both. To assist the reader with this process they provide a reflection action section at the end of each chapter as well a separate discussion guide.

The research for this book was among Caucasian business people and Protestant churches, so their findings do not reflect the experience of Black, Jewish, or Muslim business people or worship groups. Although this book takes both religion and business seriously, the primary challenge is to church leadership to initiate the change.

Peter Kunnalat

Catholic Theological Union, Chicago