Saving the Protestant Ethic

What hath Sunday to do with Monday? The faith and work movement emphatically responds to this question, “Your work matters to God.” Though often overshadowed by more well-known ways of connecting Christianity and economic concerns, such as the social and prosperity gospels, the faith and work movement is significant in its own right. Originating in the 1930s, it grew exponentially in the last decades of the 20^th century and continues to produce a massive volume of books, educational resources, conferences, institutions, and funding in the 21^st century. Andrew Lynn’s Saving the Protestant Ethic: Creative Class Evangelicalism and the Crisis of Work is an authoritative presentation of this movement’s importance, but Lynn notes that the goal of the book “is to unpack not only the when, where, and what of the movement, but also the why and how” (4).

As the ode to Max Weber in the title makes clear, the faith and work movement is a contemporary attempt, in a long history that includes earlier Calvinists and the Puritans, “to save, or more accurately, reconstruct, an innerworldly asceticism regarding work” (149). As a sociologist, Lynn is well-attuned to the historically contingent economic and social factors that influenced this movement, especially the rise of “a highly educated, career-driven, vocation-seeking professional class” (27) in the mid-20^th century. For this “creative class,” work has become the primary institution for creating meaning—a point that resonates with other recent works, such as Carolyn Chen’s Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley (Princeton University Press, 2022). But in true Weberian fashion, Lynn recognizes the centrality of the faith and work movement as a “remedial theology” in response to the fundamentalist work ethic and describes “the ineliminable role that changing theological ideas play in the movement” (4).

Lynn’s work is divided into two parts. The first outlines the historical contours of late 19^th- and 20^th-century evangelicalism, whose emphasis upon revivalism, evangelism, and eschatology created a stark divide between sacred Sundays and secular Mondays. This “Sunday-Monday gap” characterizes what Lynn calls the fundamentalist work ethic that necessitated the remedial theology of the faith and work movement. A central thesis of the work is that the faith and work movement must be understood as an attempt to overcome the Sunday-Monday dichotomy instantiated by the fundamentalist ethic. Removing this divide allows, as Lynn writes, for “work to serve as sites for merging work with worship, toil with transcendence, and economics with eternal reward" (39). Lynn’s historical telling, and the project as a whole, is careful and nuanced. For instance, he notes that even as the faith and work movement expands in the latter part of the 20^th century, the fundamentalist work ethic persists, as is typified by Billy Graham.

The second part addresses specific topics within the faith and work movement, namely its overly white, male, and professional (i.e., neither blue-collar nor unpaid domestic work) characteristics, as well as its relationship to “political evangelicalism” and culture wars. This analysis is fascinating, and while there are revelations about institutions that are funded by Koch money attached to lobbyists or the Kuyperian influence that makes for Dominionist cousins, the more significant point that Lynn draws out is how the faith and work movement reflects a particular kind of white American evangelicalism. For instance, Timothy Keller is canonical in this space. Or, while the individualistic theology of evangelicals makes any structural discussions of “social justice” a non-starter, this same bent also causes libertarian economic emphases from those such as the Acton Institute to fall flat. Given this, Lynn admits that sometimes the specific impact of the faith and work movement is hard to gauge because it so closely aligns with general trends in evangelicalism.

Throughout the work, Lynn describes the fundamentalist ethic as one that subordinates work to faith, whereas the faith and work movement attempts to sacralize it, though it rarely, if ever, subverts it (28-29). This framework really draws out the extent to which the faith and work movement is a thoroughly classic liberal movement, which, given the trends of “political evangelicalism” towards what is described as “populism,” raises questions about the movement’s future prospects. Perhaps nowhere is the classically liberal ethos clearer than in Lynn’s exploration of the movement’s sacralizing propensity as an “adverbial ethic,” a phrase borrowed from Amy Sherman (140). In other words, the faith and work movement would appear to have little to say in terms of moral claims about what one does; the focus instead is on how one does it (i.e., faithfully, diligently, sacrificially). 20^th century work, like other religions, is privatized; it is a habit of the heart.

Lynn drives home the moral shallowness that results from the prominence of this adverbial ethic, but what perhaps warrants further reflection is how this adverbial ethic reflects a lingering sacred-secular distinction. For while the faith and work movement states that “your work matters to God,” what it appears to mean is “how you work matters to God.” The work itself hovers in a neutral space about which, it seems, faith hath nothing to do or say. If the impetus behind the faith and work movement, as Lynn convincingly argues, is best understood as an attempt to overcome this divide, then it seems to be an open question as to whether the movement has accomplished this central goal.

For those interested in the relationship between evangelicals and money, economics, and work in the last century, this work is essential. And though the faith and work movement is less well known than the prosperity and social gospels because it blends in with broader evangelical trends, this means that anyone who wants to understand the last century of evangelicals should understand this movement, and Lynn’s work is an excellent resource to do just that.

Daniel F. Sebastian is a provisional assistant professor in Theology and Global Church Ministry at Evangel University.

Daniel F. Sebastian

Date Of Review:

September 9, 2024