To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise. By Bethany Moreton. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009. 372 pp. $27.95 cloth.

Modern, John Lardas

doi:10.1017/s0009640711000461

Cited by 3 publications

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“…As far as I know, Han is the first to utilize the idea in connection with neoliberal economics as it has taken on a religious veneer. 6 We see this neoliberal "soft" power at work in all its devastating efficiency if we look at three very different groups of workers in the contemporary US: the conservative evangelical Christians studied by Bethany Moreton in her analysis of Wal-Mart employees, employers, and patrons (Moreton 2010); the more technologically educated workers studied by Carolyn Chen in her book on Silicon Valley, Work, Pray, Code (Chen 2022); and, finally, the spiritual entrepreneurs and their clients on social media. All three groups willingly undertake the process of transformation demanded by religious institutions across time and cultures, but the transformations required today fit squarely within the parameters of neoliberal capitalist religion.…”

Section: The Religion Of Neoliberal Consumer Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Religion of Consumer Capitalism and the Construction of Corporate Sacred Spaces

Coudert

2023

Religions

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If one looks at the United States over the past sixty years, it becomes clear that religious and spiritual practices have proliferated in unexpected places and spaces. They have become thoroughly ensconced in the boardrooms, offices, shop floors, and retail spaces of business establishments. From there, they have seeped into just about every imaginable area of American life, turning schools, parks, shopping malls, sports stadiums, hospitals, gyms, health food restaurants, spas, and the very apps on our computers and cell phones into corporate spaces promising new and enticing forms of spiritual enchantment. The purpose of this essay is to document the way new forms of spirituality have become part of a much longer history of the entanglement of business and religion, a history that began in monasteries, formed the bedrock of the Puritan work ethic, and is now an established aspect of the neoliberal ideal of the privatization and corporatization of all aspects of human life.

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Section: The Religion Of Neoliberal Consumer Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Religion of Consumer Capitalism and the Construction of Corporate Sacred Spaces

Coudert

2023

Religions

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“…7 This article studies how religion and economy relate to each other in faith-based companies. Along these lines, several historical studies have examined the relationship between Evangelical Protestantism and the rise of commodity culture (Kirk 2018), and the "Christian Free Enterprise" (Moreton 2009), as well as the "complementarity", "parity" and "symmetry" between religious and business life in America (Porterfield et al 2017). 8 Arne Rasmusson is making a similar comment about the scarce use of ethnographic studies in Christ and the Common Life.…”

Section: Luke Bretherton's Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evangelical and Catholic Timespace in Work: An Argument against a Homeless Eschatology

Ledstam

2021

Religions

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This article engages with how religion and economy relate to each other in faith-based businesses. It also elaborates on a recurrent idea in theological literature that reflections on different visions of time can advance theological analyses of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. More specifically, this article brings results from an ethnographic study of two faith-based businesses into conversation with the ethicist Luke Bretherton’s presentation of different understandings of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. Using Theodore Schatzki’s theory of timespace, the article examines how time and space are constituted in two small faith-based businesses that are part of the two networks Business as Mission (evangelical) and Economy of Communion (catholic) and how the different timespaces affect the religious-economic configurations in the two cases and with what moral implications. The overall findings suggest that the timespace in the Catholic business was characterized by struggling caused by a tension between certain ideals on how religion and economy should relate to each other on the one hand and how the practice evolved on the other hand. Furthermore, the timespace in the evangelical business was characterized by confidence, caused by the business having a rather distinct and achievable goal when it came to how they wanted to be different and how religion should relate to economy. There are, however, nuances and important resemblances between the cases that cannot be explained by the businesses’ confessional and theological affiliations. Rather, there seems to be something about the phenomenon of tension-filled and confident faith-based businesses that causes a drive in the practices towards the common good. After mapping the results of the empirical study, I discuss some contributions that I argue this study brings to Bretherton’s presentation of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism.

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Corporate Chaplaincy and the American Workplace

Seales

2012

Religion Compass

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Corporate chaplains are religious ministers trained in pastoral care, most often clinical pastoral education, paid by a company or staffing agency to serve the emotional and spiritual needs of workers at their jobsite. In the early 21st century, the secular vocation of corporate chaplaincy is a growing business and a booming enterprise. This essay traces the historical development of corporate chaplaincy from its earlier industrial forms and argues that corporate chaplains have influenced the development of the American workplace through their organizational mediation of spiritual meaning and economic productivity.Pastoral care in all its forms is the priests' real instrument of power, particularly over the workaday world. (Weber 1993, p. 75)

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To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise. By Bethany Moreton. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009. 372 pp. $27.95 cloth.

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

The Religion of Consumer Capitalism and the Construction of Corporate Sacred Spaces

The Religion of Consumer Capitalism and the Construction of Corporate Sacred Spaces

Evangelical and Catholic Timespace in Work: An Argument against a Homeless Eschatology

Corporate Chaplaincy and the American Workplace

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