Will religion be the next workplace issue? Faith at Work

[LiviaOlivia]

The New York Times
October 31, 2004
Faith at Work
By RUSSELL SHORTO

<snip>

...... Chuck Ripka is a moneylender -- that is to say, a mortgage banker -- and his institution, the Riverview Community Bank in Otsego, Minn., is a way station for Christ. When he's not approving mortgages, or rather especially when he is, Ripka lays his hands on customers and colleagues, bows his head and prays: "Lord, I pray that you will bring Matt and Jaimie the best buyer for their house so that they have the money to purchase the new home they feel called to. And I pray, Lord, that you grant me the wisdom to give them the best advice to meet their financial needs."

The bank is F.D.I.C. approved. It has a drop ceiling and fluorescent lighting. Current yield on a 30-year mortgage is 5.75 percent. The view out Ripka's office window is of an Embers chain restaurant. Yet for all the modern normalcy, the sensibility that permeates the place comes straight out of the first century A.D., when Christianity was not a churchbound institution but an ecstatic Jewish cult traveling humanity's byways.

The bank opened 18 months ago as a "Christian financial institution", with a Bible buried in the foundation and the words "In God We Trust" engraved in the cornerstone. In that time, deposits have jumped from $5 million to more than $75 million. The phone rings; it's a woman from Minneapolis who has $1.5 million in savings and wants to transfer it here. ''I heard about the Christian bank,'' she tells Ripka, ''and I said, 'That's where I want my money.''' Because of people like her, Riverview is one of the fastest growing start-up banks in the state, and if you ask Ripka, who is a vice president, or his boss, the bank president, Duane Kropuenske, whose office wall features a large color print of two businessmen with Christ, or Gloria Oshima, a teller who prays with customers at the drive-up window, all will explain the bank's success in the same way. Jesus Christ has blessed them because they are obedient to his will. Jesus told them to take his word out of the church and bring it to where people interact: the marketplace.

Chuck Ripka says he sometimes slips and says to people, ''Come on over to the church -- I mean the bank.'' He's not literally a man of the cloth, but in the parlance of the initiated, he is a marketplace pastor, one node of a sprawling, vigorous faith-at-work movement. An auto-parts manufacturer in downtown Philadelphia. An advertising agency in Fort Lauderdale. An Ohio prison. A Colorado Springs dental office. A career-counseling firm in Portland, Ore. The Curves chain of fitness centers. American Express. Intel. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The I.R.S. The Pentagon. The White House. Thousands of businesses and other entities, from one-man operations to global corporations to divisions of the federal government, have made room for Christianity on the job, and in some cases have oriented themselves completely around Christian precepts. Well-established Christian groups, including the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the Promise Keepers, are putting money and support behind the movement. There are faith-at-work newsletters and blogs and books with titles like ''God@Work,'' ''Believers in Business'' and ''Loving Monday.''

The idea is that Christians have for too long practiced their faith on Sundays and left it behind during the workweek, that there is a moral vacuum in the modern workplace, which leads to backstabbing careerism, empty routines for employees and C.E.O.'s who push for profits at the expense of society, the environment and their fellow human beings. No less a figure than the Rev. Billy Graham has predicted that ''one of the next great moves of God is going to be through believers in the workplace.'' To listen to marketplace pastors, you would think churches were almost passe; for them work is the place, and Jesus is the antidote to both cubicle boredom and Enron-style malfeasance.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/magazine/31FAITH.html

[RC]

1. I wonder how long it will be before

someone notices some money missing?

[kestrel91316]

2. I wonder how accepting folks would be if it were................

a (gasp!) pagan practicing her religion on the job............betcha there would be a big to-do, as we all know that Wicca/paganism is not a "real" religion according to our fearless leader.

[kestrel91316]

3. I wonder how accepting folks would be if it were................

a (gasp!) pagan practicing her religion on the job............betcha there would be a big to-do, as we all know that Wicca/paganism is not a "real" religion according to our fearless leader.

[TaleWgnDg]

4. So it's tent revivalism together with entrepreneurship to the tune

of hallelujah chants . . . this is considered a healthful (and legal) work environment? Oh.

All this while the rest of America prays (pardon the pun) that these money-changers are chucked out of their entrepreneurial temple ASAP? Can I have an "amen" to that?!!

**************************
"I believe that God wants me to be
president." — Richard Land, a Director
of the conservative evangelical Southern
Baptist Convention, quoting GWBush on
"the day (GWBush) was inaugurated for his
second term as governor (of TX) in 1999."

"I could not be governor (of Texas) if
I did not believe in a divine plan that
supersedes all human plans." - GWBush

"I, George W. Bush, Governor of Texas, do
hereby proclaim June 10, 2000, Jesus Day in
Texas and urge ... all Texans to answer the
call to serve those in need. By volunteering
their time, energy or resources to helping others,
adults and youngsters follow Christ's message
of love and service in thought and deed."
— GWBush, as Governor of TX, officially
proclaiming June 10, 2000, as
"JESUS DAY in TEXAS."

"Government cannot make ppl love one
another ... (; instead,) love comes from a
higher calling, a higher authority; the great
strength of America lies in the hearts and
souls of citizens who've heard that call, not
in the halls of government."
— GWBush, President
**************************




.

[salin]

5. Don't know that Christ would be happy to be used as a marketing tool

which is exactly what this is all about (do this open faith thing - and folks will do business with you under the {absurd} notion that you are {by your self-proclaimed words - not necessarily by any of your actions} "more honest". There are even now "Christian" Yellow Pages. I find that to be beyond distasteful (using Christ as a marketing tool), and into the realm of blasphemous.

[ixion]

6. people should really keep their personal lives out of the office

IMO.

That includes politics, sex and religion. It's all unprofessional.

That's why it's called 'personal'.

[CityHall]

7. This is disgusting

Secular society has let this idiocy fester for too long. I hope the one beneficial side effect of the Bush regime will be that thinking people will wake up and resume the enlightenment tradition of challenging superstition and foolishness regardless of how benignly it presents itself.

Rational people have generally deserted the benighted backwaters where blind faith has ruled, with the result that there is no one left to stand up to these people in their race toward theocracy. At long last, they've gone too far in influencing policy and may no longer claim exemption from criticism under the veil of a religious tolerance they don't themselves practice.


I should like to see, and this will be the last and most ardent of my
desires, I should like to see the last king strangled with the guts of
the last priest. -- J. Messelier of Paris, 1733