Evangelicals in the Electorate: Public Lecture and Forum

by Paul Harvey

Here's an opportunity for those of you especially in the Boston area to hear my co-blogmeister and other prominent scholars in action, next Thursday:

Evangelicals in the Electorate: A Public Lecture and Forum
Thursday, November 10, 6:30 - 8:00 P.M., Suffolk University

Although some dismiss Evangelical Christians as zealots with uncommon social politics and little regard for science, this powerful voting bloc is a force to be reckoned with in our democracy, and likely misunderstood. Dr. John C. Green, Senior Research Advisor at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, presents empirical data on what evangelicals actually believe based on surveys of clergy and parishioners. Authors of The Anointed, Dr. Karl Giberson and Dr. Randall Stephens, provide an analysis of intellectual authority within this group and examine themes ranging from Creationism to messaging. Ford Hall Forum Board member and former religion reporter for the Boston Herald Eric Convey converses with these sociological researchers to predict how Evangelical Christians’ true values will translate into civic action.

Drs. Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson will be selling and signing copies of their book, “The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age” at the end of the event.

Thursday, November 10, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. C. Walsh Theatre, Suffolk University

Adventures in Christian Retail: Finale

By Charity R. Carney

This is the last installment of my extended commentary on my experiences working for a large Christian-run retail chain. Part I of that commentary is here. Part II is of this series is up here. Extended responses informed from Darren Grem's own academic work on capitalism and American Christianity are here and here.

The one good and seemingly Christian thing about CC (“Christian Chain”) is that it is closed on Sunday. Until it’s not. One of the aspects that many shoppers find appealing about CC (in addition to the P&W muzak like “Awesome God”—that’s for you, Paul Harvey) is that it openly states that it treats its employees well. It’s right there on the door as soon as you walk in: “Closed on Sunday for Worship and Family.” The store is technically closed on Sunday, but it must be for customers’ worship and families because oftentimes employees are called in on Sundays to stock shelves, clean the store, hurriedly ready it for an upcoming visit from management. So what is at the heart of the work ethic of CC? Is it a Christian calling or is it corporate pressure, or both?

A striking element of CC’s character is it does have many long-term employees—individuals who have been working there for several years, some almost a decade on and off. Why do they stay and why do they agree to work Sundays? Why do they keep working until 1 AM on some nights to get the stock on the shelves when their shift was over at 5 PM? Why do they maintain 14 hour days when they are making part-time pay with promises of full-time benefits eventually (oftentimes promises that go unfulfilled)?

I’ve considered many options and overanalyzed the answers to these questions, I’m sure. If one took a Weberian approach, the answer may be that the employees see some greater meaning to their work. They see their employment with the company as part of their larger role as members of God’s Kingdom and doers of his will. And some of the workers at CC may very well view themselves this way. Case study: an older woman, well beyond the age of retirement, comes to work every day and puts her all into her job. She sees the work as necessary for her family and also productive in and of itself. She keeps a Bible at her station and often shares passages with coworkers and customers. Mrs. Mary (as she is affectionately called by everyone, including the manager) is not content in her employment (she often talks about how she wishes that she could go home early or how her feet hurt), but she does engage in it as a result of a compulsion to work for a higher good. God wants her to work and she sees God’s hand in her work.

What undermines this Weberian perspective are the other employees. Sexual harassment is rampant at CC as well as a general desire to goof off. In other words, Mrs. Mary is not the norm. The sexual harassment is particularly distressing considering the said mission statement of the company. There is, however, internal arbitration for any complaints. (Sorry, but a “yeah, right” is due here as anyone who has dealt with “internal arbitration” before can probably attest.) I witnessed male employees taking pictures of female employees rear-ends and bragging about it, female employees grabbing each other’s crotches as a joke, and constant back-and-forth sexual teasing. I was once asked by a male coworker if I would ever cheat on my husband. All this being said, the sexual harassment and general malaise of CC employees completely detracts from whatever Weber would say about the company and the employees’ drive to work with a godly ethic. That ain’t happening.

In the middle of the two extremes is the “false idol” worship that is incorporated into every day dealings with employees behind closed doors. At every staff meeting the manager insists upon a prayer before getting down to business and the prayer always begins by thanking God for the owner of CC and asking God to bless the owner as the owner has blessed each of us. Creepy? Yes. Christian? Uh, no. I welcome analysis of this feature of CC as it was one of the more baffling. Perhaps it is a derivative of the Prosperity Gospel—the idea that the owner is making millions because of his commitment to God and that through trickle-down Prosperity Gospel we were somehow benefiting from it? Again, I welcome ideas here, especially from you, Deg.

Ultimately, I’ll lean on Marx (as usual) for an explanation of why employees remain in this environment (and don’t flee and file complaints with OSHA as I did). Opiate of the masses. Class. Take your pick. Religion serves as the opiate of the customers more so than the employees. Consumers come into CC with an understanding that it is a Christian company, that it is run on Christian values, that they will get soothing Christian muzak (sort of) once they enter the doors. Employees are force-fed an odd Christian message at staff meetings and through the general material culture of the place while not experiencing it in their interactions with other workers and managers. It is simply class status that keeps them there. They cannot find other employment because they have neither the skills or the education to do so. And if they do have skills/education there are other barriers: the market is terrible, one guy had a felony under his belt for domestic abuse, etc. It is mostly the ones who need the job who stay—they simply don’t have a way out. Another case study: I ran into a former CC coworker the other day. (She hardly recognized me out of uniform.) She has been at CC for over 2 years now and I never got close enough to her to tell if she was content or merely smiling because her job depended on it. Well, away from CC I found out. As soon as she saw me she ran up to tell me how much she and other coworkers wished they could do what I had done and quit. She wants to find something else but there just isn’t anything else out there. She is Pentecostal, lives by Christian virtues, and does not buy into CC’s message of Christian retail. Not after the way that she’s been treated as one of its employees. Her final message to me before we parted ways was “You go, girl. You did the right thing and stood up for yourself. I just wish I was in the position where I could do the same thing.”

Ultimately, it’s class that keeps CC’s employees there. Not some religious work ethic or “time for worship and family” on Sundays. They are there because they need the money and their families could not survive without the extra income.

My final thoughts on my experience working for CC are this: not all Christian-run retailers are the same, but the social expectations for them are. American consumers who purchase items because they believe that the corporation is working for some higher cause should question the company’s motives (key word: company) and should research what they are really selling. I think they may be surprised. I sure was.

Editor's note: You can follow Darren Grem's responses to Charity's posts "Adventures in Christian REtail" here and here

Skeptics and Soul Sisters: Beautiful Art by Amanda Porterfield and Janet McKenzie

by Edward J. Blum

Back from the Southern Historical Association and its celebrations of new books, its criticisms of old paradigms, and its copious amounts of laughter and liquor, I was so glad to be home in silence. I sat in quietude with two of my favorite artists – Amanda Porterfield and Janet McKenzie. These are women who challenge my mind and nourish my soul. Neither, of course, was in San Diego. They were on the east coast, one in Florida and the other in Vermont. But both were opening my eyes in so many ways. In one hand, I held Porterfield’s page-proofed new book on religion and politics in the early republic. Writing an endorsement for Conceived in Doubt is going to be easy, I thought to myself. It’s creative, it’s fascinating, and it turns Nathan Hatch’s democratization thesis on its head. I don’t want to say more on the argument, but I firmly believe that it will become a “must-read” for students both of the early republic and of American religious history. Her rendering of how doubt became the pathway for a new reckoning of religion and politics will join David Sehat’s The Myth of American Religious Freedom to transform how we talk about and teach religion in the early republic.

In my other hand, I cradled Holiness and the Feminine Spirit: The Art of Janet McKenzie. It’s a beautiful and inspiring book that pairs McKenzie’s art with personal, poetic, and scholarly reflections. She gained national and international fame when she was won the “Jesus 2000” competition from the National Catholic Reporter’s contest for her painting “Jesus of the People.” Although her most famous, this painting was but one of her many accomplishments. Her others feature Mary with Gabriel, the Holy Family, and even a touching homage to 9/11. Her art is visually stunning, and it induces for many an avalanche of spiritual reflection. McKenzie’s work is borne of religious conviction, and she, in her own words, strives “to reflect in my art … that sacred and inherent place within that connects us all beyond race and gender where no judgment exists.”

As I thumb through the pages, I see images of Mary next to Gabriel. The sacred wings, as Mary E. Haddad (a former Toyota sales-woman from Detroit and now pastor in California), writes, “enclose and embrace Mary.” Heaven and earth “stand side by side” and the distance that former artists had put between the two figures is dissolved in a fellowship of foreseen terror. The book has poetic responses to McKenzie’s “Holy Mother of the East” and “Magna Mater.” The amazing theologian Diane Hayes works from “Woman Offered #5,” a startling image of a black woman being crucified. For Hayes, it is time for women who have suffered, have had pain, have carried the “weight of the world on their shoulders” to “come down from the cross” and to “choose for themselves the paths they should take, the lives they should lead, the tapestries they will weave.” And finally, McKenzie’s “Homage to 9/11” portrays the Twin Towers as two women who support one another. An essay by educator Sally Goodrich follows. Goodrich lost her eldest son in the 9/11 attacks, but inspired by McKenzie’s art, Goodrich joined her grief to giving: she ventured to Afghanistan and help the young there. What amazing stories, reflections, and images. For scholars, McKenzie’s book offers tremendous insight into how individuals respond to the visual arts, and for the spiritually inclined, it offers a vibrant array of considerations.

For me, Porterfield and McKenzie stand side-by-side with strength from their own creative arts. One opens the art of skepticism, the dangers of doubt corralled and the craftiness of disbelief hiding often in plain sight. The other displays salvation beyond suffering, where visions of lives that are gone can inspire hopes for lives to come.