Book Review: Spiritual Enterprise

Spiritual Enterprise: Doing Virtuous Business by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch (New York: Encounter Books, 2008. 300 pp)

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is Chairman and CEO of Global Fiduciary Governance LLC, a leading strategy and thought leadership company. Ted founded Spiritual Enterprise Institute in 2005 and serves as a research professor at Yale University.

The Rabbit Trail 

It endlessly frustrates me when an individual soils a valid argument by injecting needless rabbit trails. For example, someone could contend that they dislike country music as a whole because they don’t favor the drums. Yes, drums exist in country music, but it doesn’t mean that quality of country music is defined by the drummer. In a similar manner, Ted Malloch ruins an interesting argument in Spiritual Enterprise by continually framing his statements in a conservative versus liberal, capitalist versus communist approach.

Virtuous Business and Spiritual Capital 

In essence, Malloch argues that businesses should shift from a strictly profit-oriented approach to a virtue-oriented approach. Granting the detrimental effect of profit maximization philosophies, Malloch believes that virtue provides a long-term framework for business success.

“The bold idea that the creation of wealth by virtuous means is the most important thing we can do for ourselves and others, for our society and for the world at large” (xix).

Typically, the modern business analyzes itself in terms of economic capital. It utilizes metrics to understand growth and success. Malloch, on the other hand, recognizes that business establish many forms of capital. For instance, the humans that comprise a firm create social capital and even more, the religious values of employees construct a spiritual capital. Malloch defines spiritual capital

“as the fund of beliefs, examples and commitments that are transformed from generation to generation through a religious tradition, and which attach people to the transcendental source of human happiness” (11-12).

Using less “Christian” terms (Malloch believes that spiritual capital assists a firm whether or not an employee aligns with a specific religious tradition), Malloch suggests that a business ought to act virtuously. Defined as a set of principles constituting proper character, virtue functions as the glue that keeps business functioning.

Support Your Thesis! Forget the Rabbit Trail! 

Truthfully, I appreciate Malloch’s insights on virtue. As an ethical position, virtue seems to flourish as a middle ground between hard-lined deontology and utilitarianism. While one side seeks principle-based living and the other urges outcome-based living, virtue requests character building.

Despite the positive claims of virtue on business, Spiritual Enterprise becomes bogged down in Malloch’s acrid view of liberalism and communism. Too often, Malloch’s thesis drowns in the vitriol of politics. As an example,

“Only the discredited caricature of business—as a zero-sum game in which every person’s profit is someone else’s loss, and in which the ruthless pursuit of profit is the sole purpose of the game—persuades people to overlook what surely ought to be obvious: that in business you expose yourself to criticism, take risks, acquire heavy debts of responsibility and accountability, and are thrust into moral relation with others, in ways that demand a far more robust and serious morality than is needed to survive in some cushioned state bureaucracy or in a comfortable academic chair” (16-17).

At its core, Malloch argues that wealth creation helps everyone. Yet by belittling the positions of people in “cushioned” and “comfortable” places, Malloch’s argument feels slightly trollish. If I want to learn about the way to manage a business virtuously, I don’t need to know why liberalism and communism exist as grave evils to society. Of course, connections exist between politics and the marketplace but virtue deals with character and thus, liberalism and communism are not in the scope of this book.

Spiritual Enterprise carries an intriguing premise, but Malloch’s venom deters from the overall aim. For views on business management, take your eyes somewhere else.

Verdict: 1 out of 5

---

Posted by: Donovan Richards

Affiliate Links:

Powell's

Indie Bound

Amazon

Book Review: Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century

Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century: The Classic That Woke Up the Church by Walter Rauschenbusch; edited by Paul Raushenbush (New York: HarperOne, 2008. 400 pp)

Walter Rauschenbusch was the leading proponent of the Social Gospel Movement whose mission was to reform society to meet the social needs of the poor through the ministrations of the institutional church. PBS recently called him “one of the most influential American religious leaders of the last 100 years.”

Paul Raushenbush, great-grandson of Walter Rauschenbusch, was associate dean or religious life and the chapel at Princeton University and current religion editor at the Huffington Post. He has served as an associate minister at the Riverside Church in New York City and has been involved in ministry to street youth in Seattle and Sӑo Paulo, Brazil.

An Allegory of the 19th Century 

Walter Rauschenbusch begins the fifth chapter of Christianity and the Social Crisis with a poetic allegory of the 19th Century. Upon the end of that century, Rauschenbusch imagines the 19th century descending into “the vaulted chamber of the Past”, where previous centuries congregate to discuss the perils and pieties of their respective eras. With unprecedented material success accumulated in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, the 19th Century metaphorically pats its own back. Interjecting, the 1st Century enquires whether or not the 19th Century has solved the problem of hunger. Hearing this question, the 19th Century lowers its head realizing that another hundred years have passed without any progress on the core issues of human suffering.

By this metaphor, Rauschenbusch pursues the notion of a social gospel. Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century is an updated edition of Rauschenbusch’s original publication titled, Christianity and the Social Crisis which graced best-seller lists 100 years ago. Inventively, Walter’s grandson, Paul has included responses at the end of each chapter from influential theologians.

The Social Aspect of the Gospel 

In Christianity and the Social Crisis, Walter Rauschenbusch begins with a reappraisal of the gospel. Since Christianity had for centuries emphasized the personal salvation of human beings, Rauschenbusch reassesses this principle citing the gospels.

While he refuses to completely ignore the future salvific aims of Jesus, Rauschenbusch asserts that Jesus carried revolutionary social aims. He writes,

“Whoever uncouples the religious and the social life has not understood Jesus. Whoever sets any bounds for the reconstructive power of the religious life over the social relations and institutions of men, to that extent denies the faith of the Master” (42).

Historically speaking, the aims of Jesus were social in nature. When he spoke of the Kingdom of God, he did not mean a heavenly future exclusively; Jesus also situated the Kingdom of God in the present, an attainable society toward which disciples must work.

The Failure of the Church 

Given this position, Rauschenbusch decries the classic self-serving and individualistic tendencies of the Church. Instead of focusing on social justice, the church looked inward. Rauschenbusch warns,

“The Church was able to offer the most enticing eternal rewards to those who gave to her. Thus she discouraged the giving of aid from man to man and encouraged the concentration of giving on herself. To some extent this systematized charity, and an ever larger percentage of the gifts never reached the poor” (152).

In other words, by linking eternal rewards to service of the church and by lining the church coffers with money instead of giving alms to the poor, the Church neglects the social aims of Jesus and replaces them with a hollow theology of personal salvation and increasing monetary power. Clearly, Rauschenbusch possesses a low view of the Church institution.

The Social Crisis 

Walter Rauschenbusch

Without the church acting in accordance with the marginalized of society to pursue social reconstruction, the economic reality of the early 1900s is harsh, to put it nicely. With capitalists holding monopolies on private property, the majority of Americans carry the work of their hands as their only economic bargaining chip.

Throughout Christianity and the Social Crisis, Rauschenbusch illustrates many depressing scenarios for the economically powerless. Speaking in terms of which I am acutely aware, he notes,

“I can conceive of nothing so crushing to all proper pride as for a workingman to be out of work for weeks, offering his work and his body and soul at one place after the other, and to be told again and again that nobody has any use for such a man as he” (195).

Such words resonate in our current setting with many recent college graduates encountering the worst job market in decades.

The Church, the State, and the Social Utopia 

With these harsh realities in mind, Rauschenbusch believes that an alignment of the church with social reconstruction offers opportunities to unlock a social utopia. A man of pristine optimism, Rauschenbusch suggests,

“Theology must become Christocentric; political economy must become anthropocentric. Man is Christianized when he puts God before self; political economy will be Christianized when it put man before wealth. Socialistic political economy does that” (301).

This view, later defined in Christian-communistic terms, suggests that the Church acts as a partner with other social institutions. Together, all can work toward the social utopia where people do not suffer from want or need.

What about Communal Evil? 

Nevertheless, Rauschenbusch’s belief in the goodness of humanity blinds him to the possibility of communal badness. In a response to the final chapter of Christianity and the Social Crisis, Jim Wallis argues,

“It is fair to say that [Rauschenbusch] not only failed to anticipate any of [Communism’s sordid] history but also generally missed communism’s potential for collective evil. His almost utopian dreams for the future, at the height of the progressive era and at the beginning of the century, reveal a naïveté about human nature and sin that was characteristic of the time” (344).

Although many Evangelicals find Rauschenbusch’s Christology to teeter dangerously on the edge of heresy, I am not too concerned with Rauschenbusch’s views on the divine nature of Jesus. From a perspective at the dawn of a new century, the glaring mistake in Rauschenbusch’s ideology is his optimism. Given the opportunity to operate society from collective principles, the communist methodology to date has failed precisely because of humanity’s capability for collective evil.

The Crisis Continues 

Walter Rauschenbusch recognizes the failure of the 19th century. Even though many hailed the wealth accumulated in that century, Rauschenbusch knows that further work must be done to accomplish the social aims of the gospel. With beautiful prose and timeless arguments (for the most part), Rauschenbusch recognizes the importance of social aims in Christianity. Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century is a must read for all Christians and could even inform the opinions of those who do not hold Christian beliefs.

Verdict: 4.5 out of 5

---

Posted by: Donovan Richards

Affiliate Links: