Laura Nash and Scotty McLennan. Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2001. 310 pages, $23.95
Laura Nash is senior research fellow at Harvard Business School, and Scotty McLennan is dean for religious life at Stanford University and an ordained minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church. In this volume, they present a well-crafted and readable presentation of their sociological study of the relationship between faith and business. The authors' basic premise is that there is a widespread disconnection between the Church and business and that several strategies can, and should, be employed to bridge the gap between them.
From an academic perspective, the book is well organized and capably written. In the first three chapters, Nash and McLennan attempt to set out the current relationship (or lack thereof) between the Church and business and the coping strategies employed by each camp to deal with the other. Chapter four seeks to set forth a framework for interaction between these two spheres by identifying and discussing the traditional roles of the Church and businesspeople. This provides a helpful reality check for gauging our own individual approaches. The seven-fold categorization of approaches to the Church-business relationship-Secularists, Cynics, Atomists, Percolators, Generalists, Justifiers, and Resacralizers-presented in the book is insightful, although it is somewhat simplistic. (It would seem that most people would identify with aspects of more than one category.) Commendable in this section of the book is the negative view of prosperity gospels-the notion that the measure of one's relationship with God is his or her material wealth and economic success.
The next part of the book examines
the reasons for the failure of the Church to relate to business people
and vice versa. The character of these chapters is summarized well by
the quotation of a "Lutheran businessperson" which appears at the beginning
of chapter four, "I love Sunday. I love Monday. Then there is my faith,
and that's separate from both. What I really don't understand is what
relationship they have to each other, or what it should be" (95). This
sort of separation between faith and business is typical of the participants
in Nash and McLennan's study and, I think, typical of many Christians in
the
This book provides an accurate portrayal
of the feelings and experiences of businesspeople and clergy earnestly
trying to integrate their faith with the world of the twenty-first-century
business. However, one cannot help wondering if this sort of separation
is endemic to the Church and to business at large. The answer to this
question is uncertain at best, given the methodology employed in this research;
Nash and McLennan conducted most interviews "in the greater Boston area,
with significant input from several congregations along the eastern seaboard,
Chicago, and in the Los Angeles area" (276). One immediately notices that
a significant portion of the country is unrepresented in the sample. In
fairness, the authors do acknowledge this fact: "We have been warned that
our sample may be overly-skewed toward the most liberal and secular-humanist
population in
One must question, however, whether such a skewed sample can be considered representative at all. Also absent from the study are African-American churches. The explanation offered for this is that "in many areas both the economic and social profiles of these congregations and the historic role of the black church as mediator to congregants' economic life were radically different from those of white churches" (278). This seems tantamount to saying that it did not support their hypothesis, and thus it was ignored. After further discussing the differences between black churches and white churches, the authors make the astonishing statement: "Similarly we did not try to study Jewish or Islamic congregations." (279). Jewish and Islamic congregations are not Christian; thus, it makes no sense to even consider including them in a study of Christian congregations (not to mention that most Jewish and Islamic congregations would likely be offended at such thinking). Moreover, placing African-American Christian congregations in the same category as non-Christian congregations is simply ludicrous. This kind of problem plagues this book. There is little recognition of the uniqueness of Christianity over and against all other world religions. Another glaring issue is the small sample size for divinity schools and seminaries. The authors report 154 responses from fourteen institutions (279). On average, this represents less than half of the requested responses from these institutions (279).
Throughout the book, the authors approach the subject of faith/business integration from a decidedly liberal point of view, favoring a rather syncretistic approach to integrating Christianity with the world of business. The authors focus much attention on the "New Spirituality," which is largely a mixture of New Age principles and self-help empowerment. Although they recognize some inherent weaknesses in the "New Spirituality," they do not recognize that much of it may well be antithetical to biblical Christianity. The Bible, not New Age spirituality, is the foundation and authority for Christian life. This "New Spirituality" may be popular, but it is seldom Christian. The lack of recognition of the distinction between Christianity and other religions can also be found among the institutions contacted as "leading divinity schools and seminaries" (279). One of the institutions surveyed was the Institute for Buddhist Studies (Graduate Theological Union). Suffice it to point out that Buddhism is not Christianity, and Christianity is not Buddhism. This same criticism also applies to the authors' inclusion of a participant who is self-described as a "Christian-Buddhist" (5). Now it is true that we live in a pluralistic society, and that people are free to believe whatever they choose, but let us not call those beliefs Christian unless that is what they truly are. No one would posit a Jewish-Muslim, or an Islamic-Hindu, so why do this with Christianity? One wonders how the results of the authors' research would be different had they interviewed a significant number of conservative Christians who still believe in the supremacy of the Bible.
Overall, Nash and McLennan do make a number of good points, but one must be conscious of the distinctly liberal and syncretistic flavor of their book. Christianity is unique among world religions, and, in this reviewer's opinion, it is a disservice to ignore that uniqueness. Further research, pursued with wisdom and discernment, drawing upon a broader spectrum of Christians (and only Christians if indeed the desire is to assess the relationship between Christianity and business), would be worthwhile reading. Read with discernment, this book raises some key issues of which every Christian ought to be aware, and though I do not wholly agree with the approach taken in this book, and believe that it misses a significant portion of the Christian population of this country, it does raise some important issues which, admittedly, the Church has not always been successful at addressing.
James F. West, M.S. <west@mobap.edu>
Instructor of Computer Science
Missouri Baptist University
© 2004 Missouri Baptist University. All rights reserved.
Scott Turow. Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. 164 pages, $18.00
As a lawyer who has been appointed by the federal courts on death penalty cases, I was particularly engaged by the intellectual and moral odyssey Scott Turow charts in this work. Turow is both a veteran writer and a seasoned lawyer. Over twenty years ago, his first book, One L: The Turbulent Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School (another personal account of an earlier odyssey, published by Putnam in 1977), served me as a primer on the law school experience. Having found his insights there to be instructive, I undertook the reading of his latest work with a high level of expectation. My interest was further captivated, though, by the arresting words of Laurence H. Tribe, Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, appearing on the book's back cover: "Written with a fine lawyer's feel for fairness and with a superb novelist's gift for telling us truths beyond the power of law's logic to express, Ultimate Punishment is the ultimate statement about the death penalty: to read it is to understand why law alone cannot make us whole." I did, and I do. You should, and you will.
Like politics and religion, however, the question of the death penalty nearly always polarizes people. This adverse effect is often largely due to the conflagration of both political and religious ideologies as they are advanced in efforts to form the policy and direct the practice of capital punishment by governments seeking to uphold twenty-first-century ideals of a democratic society where the rights of individuals are constitutionally protected. To his credit, Turow's approach ameliorates these confrontational and sometimes caustic attitudes that are brought to bear upon this issue. Within the pages of his self-styled "reflections," Turow invites the reader along on his journey of experiences with the death penalty, early as a prosecuting attorney, later as a pro bono defense counsel and, most centrally, as a member of Governor George Ryan's Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment. Throughout his work, he intertwines compelling, personal stories of both those accused and victims of capital crimes portraying a full spectrum of uses and abuses of the ultimate punishment in the American criminal justice system.
Turow's storytelling reveals the profound humanness of crime as well as the often stark limitations of our legal system to mete out just punishments. The accounts of his experiences prosecuting the guilty, like Hector Reuben Sanchez, and defending the innocent, like Alejandro Hernandez, open the reader to a much boarder awareness of the complexities inherent in the issue that is, all too often, narrowly presented as simple as black and white-pro or con-for it or against it. Turow takes time to tell us about Anthony Porter who was one of the many wrongfully convicted on death row, but, happily, one of the few who was permitted to escape an unjust death at the hands of his government through the persistent efforts of his appellate lawyers. The authenticity of his own internal struggle to come to a reasoned position on the question of capital punishment is exemplified by Turow's efforts in an appeal on behalf of Christopher Thomas whose prosecution was fraught with errors and abuse. Although Thomas was indeed guilty as an accomplice, the reversal of his death penalty and the subsequent hearing on his re-sentence to life imprisonment provided Thomas the opportunity to express an unreserved admission of responsibility for his role in the crime, his remorse for the immeasurable loss to the victim's family and his humble appeal for their forgiveness.
Prior to Turow's appointment by George Ryan to the Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment, his views on the death penalty had swung from one extreme to another. During his days at university, he, like the majority of students in the late 1960s and early 1970s, adamantly opposed capital punishment. After law school and then six years an Assistant United States Attorney prosecuting crime, however, Turow had no qualms about seeking the death penalty for senseless murders like those committed by Hector Sanchez, or even worse, John Wayne Gacy: "My job as a prosecutor-and the sensible first response of society-was to make sure they didn't do bad things again. And I could see that a sentence of death was the most certain means to accomplish that goal in extreme cases" (13). Subsequent to his service as a federal prosecutor and while in private practice with one of Chicago's largest law firms, he volunteered on the death penalty appeals of Alex Hernandez and Christopher Thomas. By that time, Turow described himself as "a death penalty agnostic." He writes, "Every time I thought I was prepared to stake out a position, something would drive me back in the other direction." (14). So when he was introduced with the other thirteen members of Governor Ryan's Commission in March 2000, he was not among the four who stated their principled opposition to capital punishment from the outset of the Commission's work.
With his fellow commissioners, Turow was charged with the job of determining for the State of Illinois what reforms, if any, would make application of the death penalty fair, just, and accurate: "Our foremost task was pragmatic: identify problems and propose solutions. The big issues [i.e. retain or abolish capital punishment] would come at the end" (27-28). The bulk of his book recounts the scope and substance of the Commission's investigations, findings, and ultimate recommendations that occupied its attention for the next two years. First, they examined in detail the thirteen out of twenty-seven cases where the convicted capital offenders were later exonerated after exposure, through the process of appeal, of forced confessions, false testimony by accomplices or jail-house snitches, or what even was worse, bad faith and out-right knowing and intentional prosecutorial misconduct, such as willful withholding of evidence known to the prosecutor that would prove the defendant's innocence. Turow astutely observes that while the multiple layers of state and federal appellate review in death cases are often viewed by the public as "today's version of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, unfathomably complex and unbearably protracted.. The reason there is always further review is because there has to be; although over the years, I've sensed that the inevitability of additional scrutiny has a natural tendency to occasionally make judges and lawyers less scrupulous than the stakes would seem to require" (78).
The Commission then proceeded to convene, throughout Illinois, public and private hearings open to proponents and opponents alike. Turow and his colleagues, though, were particularly interested to hear from the surviving family members and friends of those who had been the victims of murders. Survivors seek a justice "embedded in the concept of restitution: the criminal ought not end up better off than his victim" (53). Yet, Turow was not persuaded that compensatory justice for the loss to loved ones was a compelling reason, in and of itself, to maintain capital punishment as it had been practiced by the State: "At the end of the day, if we are to subscribe to the death penalty, it must benefit the rest of us, as well" (56). In this broader quest, the societal benefit of deterrence was explored by the Commission, but, from Turow's perspective, their review of empirical studies conducted over the past thirty years found that the reported evidence was inconclusive. Economic analyses proved equally indeterminate. He says, "I decided I wasn't going to find any definitive answers to the merits-or the failings-of the death penalty in the realm of social science" (62).
Something, though, continued to prevent Turow from moving over to join the minority four members who stood in complete opposition. That something was the extreme case-multiple murderers like John Wayne Gacy or Henry Brisbon. Unlike the notorious Gacy, Brisbon, the I-57 murderer of the early 1970s, is little known outside Illinois, but his crimes, although less numerous, were as deeply depraved. Brisbon, however, had been convicted of his gruesome crimes during that period in American constitutional history (1972-1976) when the imposition of the death penalty was for a short time deemed unconstitutional. Sentenced to 1,000 to 3,000 years of confinement, literally, Brisbon is incarcerated in the Tamms "CMAX" Correctional Center in southern Illinois. While in prison, he has murdered yet again. He now faces a death sentence. Turow and a few of his colleagues from the Commission obtained permission to visit the Tamms facility. The Brisbon case had brought him to a fundamental inquiry. He recalls:
[T]he pivotal question for me was whether there were means beside execution to control the Brisbons of the world, the prisoners whose record suggests that they are so bad to the bone that they are clearly prone to murder again if give the opportunity. If the conditions of their confinement cannot reliably prevent this, the argument in favor of capital punishment in Brisbon's case, and others like it, seems overwhelming to me. (84-85)
After a comprehensive tour of the facility and a lengthy interview with the warden, Turow left Tamms unable to conclude that the best technologies of confinement available in corrections today could guarantee that Henry Brisbon would not murder again.
The concluding chapters of Turow's book outline the eighty-five recommendations issued in the Commission report submitted to Governor Ryan on April 15, 2002. Principal among the changes urged were those aimed at reducing the risk of convicting the innocent, such as video-taping interrogations to prevent or at least expose forced confessions, line-up procedures that promoted more reliable eyewitness identifications, pre-trial hearings to determine the reliability of jail-house informants. The most substantive of the reforms advocated by the Commission was the reduction of the eligibility criteria (statutory aggravating circumstances) for capital punishment from twenty to only five: multiple murders; murder of law enforcement or fire-fighting personnel; murder in prison; murder aimed at hindering the justice system and murder involving torture. Although some of the procedural recommendations were adopted by the Illinois Legislature, the substantive changes were not. In fact, the legislature expanded, rather than reduced, the number of death-qualifying circumstances, making death sentences more, not less, likely in Illinois murder prosecutions. Governor Ryan, before leaving office, responded to the legislature's acts by commuting the sentences of those remaining on death row to life imprisonment.
Turow's informal and conversational writing style, sprinkled with contractions and even an occasional split infinitive, renders his book quite accessible to the general public. For the scholar, though, he includes an extensive section at the end of his work presenting an extensive list of both formal legal citations to court reporters and URL's for those authorities he relies upon that are available on the Internet. While not explicitly advancing a Judeo-Christian worldview, Turow and the Commission expressed ideas of justice in their recommendations that are implicitly consistent with such a view. For example, Turow notes that although the Commission did not recommend abolition of the death penalty by Illinois, it did suggest banning it as a punishment when the murder conviction is based solely on the uncorroborated testimony of a lone eyewitness or a single accomplice (91). This recommendation adheres to the requirement set forth by Moses that death may not be imposed as a penalty on the testimony of only one witness. (See Num. 35:30; Deut. 19:15.) On the whole, Turow's insights reveal the limitations of any human system of justice:
Murder takes us to the Land's End of the law. Our horror and revulsion undermine our capacity to reason - and prove that justice alone will not make us whole. Only the attachments we have to each other, the antipodal experience of what goes on in the moment a murderer kills, can accomplish that. In the face of the cruelties we visit upon one another, murder being the gravest wrong among them, a sense of meaning and convection must come from outside the law. (109)
Acknowledging these very real limitations, and with a ready admission of his own fluctuations, Turow concludes with his response to the question posed by Senator Paul Simon at the summation of the Commission's work: Should Illinois retain capital punishment? Senator Simon had been one of the four Commission members who confessed his opposition from the outset of their task. Turow's book explains why he has now joined that number as he articulates a persuasive rationale for any who would undertake to consider this question seriously.
Cordell P. Schulten <schulcp@mobap.edu>
Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies and Administration
of Justice
Missouri Baptist University
© 2004 Missouri Baptist University. All rights reserved.
Arthur F. Holmes. Building the Christian Academy. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001. 122 pages, $12.00
Building the Christian Academy defines the aims of Christian higher education and then traces the evolution of Christian learning in the West. Arthur F. Holmes, professor of philosophy emeritus at Wheaton College, Illinois, is a leading scholar in Christian learning. He has authored such critically acclaimed works as Faith Seeks Understanding: A Christian Approach to Knowledge (1971); Philosophy: A Christian Perspective (1975); All Truth Is God's Truth (1977); Ethics: Approaching Moral Decisions (1984); The Idea of a Christian College (Rev. ed., 1987); Contours of a World View (1997); Fact, Value and God (1997). He is also editor of the book The Making of a Christian Mind: A Christian World View & the Academic Enterprise (1985).
In his introductory chapter, "The Soul of the University," Holmes identifies the four principal concerns-"the heart and soul"-of Christian education: the usefulness of liberal arts as preparation for service to both church and society; the unity of truth; contemplative (or doxological learning); and the care of the soul (that is, moral and spiritual formation) (2). These four Christian emphases in higher education are based on the biblical concepts of wisdom and the personified Logos. The remainder of Building the Christian Academy comprises eight chapters on the eight major historical periods, respectively.
Holmes locates the beginnings of Christian higher
education in third-century Alexandria,
It was St. Augustine (A.D. 354-430) who laid the foundations of Christian liberal education. His educational ideas molded the medieval conception of education and exerted a formative influence on monastery and cathedral schools. His book On Christian Doctrine was a classical text for Christian education throughout the medieval and Reformation periods. Augustine's idea of education was doxological; according to him, liberal learning would necessarily lead to the contemplation of God. Confessions, his spiritual autobiography addressed solely to God, exemplifies his doxological approach to education.
The next several centuries saw the rise of the monastery and cathedral schools. Educational theorists in this period included such Catholic scholars as Boethius, Cassiodorus, Charlemagne, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St. Victor (author of Didascalicon, written in the 1120s), Francis of Assissi, and St. Bonaventure. According to these figures, liberal education would contribute to biblical interpretation, to moral development, and eventually to spiritual formation and the contemplation of God.
In 1100-1500, the scholastic university unaffiliated with the monastery or cathedral sprang up in places like Paris. Education philosophers of this era strived to combine theology and the liberal arts. Abelard developed new dialectical techniques derived directly from Scripture. Thomas Aquinas incorporated Aristotelian philosophy into his theory of education. He considered the expansion of the capacity to know truth and goodness as the two aims of education-truth was the aim of "speculative science," and goodness the aim of "moral science" (50).
The medieval period then was replaced by the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. Erasmus, an Aristotelian humanist, defended the study of classical, non-Christian authors because believers would salvage wisdom from their arts. Martin Luther argued that university education should focus on the courses that are useful for propagating Christian faith, especially history, grammar, and ancient languages. The most important reading material for Luther, however, was the Bible. Unlike Luther, John Calvin valued both classical and humanist learning. His Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536-39), is considered a masterpiece embodying the idea of Christian humanism; in this book, the author liberally cited secular philosophers and poets, as well as Christian authors.
The rise of modern science in the seventeenth century radically changed the way people viewed education. Francis Bacon was a representative utilitarian philosopher: whereas the Protestant Reformers pursued classical learning to serve the church, Bacon pursued new knowledge to serve society. The champion of empirical observation, he scorned the scholastic or humanistic approach to education. Specifically, he blamed the three "vanities" that he found in non-experiential learning: the "contentious learning" of scholastic disputations, the "delicate learning" of humanists, and the "fantastical learning" of alchemists and astrologers (72). Bacon's idea of knowledge as power ushered in the secularization of learning. At the same time, his combining wisdom and scientific discovery exerted a positive influence on the Puritans, Comenius, and John Milton.
Western education in the nineteenth century was significantly influenced by Enlightenment philosophy. Swimming against the tide of the utilitarian approach to education, John Henry Newman advocated learning for its own sake. In his book The Idea of a University (1852), he envisioned a university suitable for a wholesome learning: a residential community of learners in which tutors help students grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. According to Newman, university education should be informed by Christian theology and pursue universal (as opposed to fragmentary) knowledge.
Christian education in the twentieth century was characterized by liberal theology and the increasing secularism. Theorists of Christian education included such well-known figures as Arnold Nash, C. S. Lewis, and Abraham Kuyper. Nash stressed that committed Christians should bear witness to the glory of God with their respective academic disciplines. According to Lewis, education should help students practice love, cherish ideals, and find something to live for. Kuyper, the Dutch theologian, proposed Calvinism as a worldview that could stem the tide of naturalistic philosophy.
Holmes concludes his book by affirming the metanarrative about Jesus Christ and his kingdom in the making. He also stresses that Christians need to reclaim the theological foundations of learning: "Human knowledge may be more or less perspectival, but not things in themselves, nor the truth about what they are, a truth which exists independent of whether we know it or not. Different worldviews may represent different perspectives on life, but this does not logically imply that metanarratives are no longer possible" (106).
Building the Christian Academy is penned by a prolific and respected Christian philosopher. Succinctly and crisply written, it offers an excellent overview of the history of Christian liberal learning. However, those who look for concrete advice on how to wed faith to academic pursuit will be disappointed. The author states, "In short, we must return to the liberal arts. We must build community and reintroduce the paidagogus. Christian scholarship must be cultivated, and we must focus on the theological foundations of learning" (118). Most would agree with his statement, but the real question is how the Christian academy can counter epistemological challenges from postmodernity in the kind of language acceptable to everyone concerned. For example, "we" Christians do acknowledge Jesus as the Word. Then, on what objective basis should "they"-atheists, agnostics, and fervent believers in other religions who have their own scriptures-acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Savior as well? How can we Christians have a truly meaningful conversation with people whose assumptions and premises are fundamentally different from ours? Holmes might have added a chapter discussing the complex issue of faith-learning integration in a pluralistic, postmodern age. Overall, Building the Christian Academy is essential reading for Christian scholars and administrators, especially those who wish to know how Christian education has developed historically and how it has shaped the Western mind and culture.
John J. Han, Ph.D. <hanjn@mobap.edu>
Professor of English
Missouri Baptist University
© 2004 Missouri Baptist University. All rights reserved.