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Wal-Mart's faith-based economic theory for religious conservatives
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Religious conservatives generally support individualism and big business, values which often conflict with Christian and Jewish teachings.
Religious conservatives generally view questions of individual morality as more important than ones emphasizing social and economic justice. Richard T. Hughes of Messiah College, author of Christian America and the Kingdom of God, believes we are not a Christian nation, because we adhere more to the values of the Roman Empire than to the egalitarianism of the early Christian community. Our economic values, he states, are not congruent with those of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus's Sermon on the Mount.
As I noted in a recent posting, absolutely none of the attendees at a recent Values Voter Conference ranked expanded health care coverage for all as among the top three significant social issue, while they considered abortion, religious liberty and same-sex marriage the top concerns of the day. Also, a recent survey found only six percent of conservative religious activists felt the nation should have comprehensive health insurance, compared to 78 percent of progressive activists.
Conservative values tend to support the views of the business community, generally ones that benefit owners and employers, since they stress individualism, personal reward and American exceptionalism. Tacit acknowledgment of this bias was reflected in the Bush administration's unsuccessful attempt to emphasize compassionate conservativism in order to appeal to the charitable values of the GOP's evangelical/fundamentalist base.
Implications of this merging of conservative religious and economic perspectives are found in two recent studies of Wal-Mart, Bethany Moreton's To serve God and Wal-Mart, and Nelson Lichtenstein's The retail revolution. This company is important because it is the largest private-sector employer in the world, hiring one out of every 200 Americans.
Both authors attribute Wal-Mart's success in part to its position in the evangelical Christian universe. The company's stores are deliberately family-oriented and downscale, avoiding any controversial products and making consumption acceptable to its small-town conservative customers. As Ralph Reed noted, if you want to reach the evangelical population on Saturday, "you do it at Wal-Mart."
Both authors found that the company promotes employment as a form of Christian service. They note it targets male and Christian management recruits primarily at business students at small, denominational schools in Arkansas, Texas, Missouri and Oklahoma.
It avoids Harvard and Wharton grads partly because of its principle of Servant Leadership, a model of management which encourages cheerful acceptance of overtime without additional compensation. As one manager exclaimed at an annual meeting, "Thank you to Jesus Christ, for he is the one that gives me the Servant Leadership."
The company preaches free market values as sacred policies. Redemption through capitalism and the company is preached in its publications, but unionization, mandatory healthcare and federal minimum-wage laws are rigorously opposed. As Lichtenstein notes, "The free market is seen as a well-designed instrument to reward Christian behavior and punish and humiliate the unrepentant." By contrast, government regulation is deemed unchristian.
Historically, Judaism and Christianity have either survived or flourished under a wide variety of economic regimes, from imperialist to capitalist to socialist to communist. The danger today is turning religious communities into handmaidens of any one eco-political philosophy.
It's destructive for politics, and it's idolatrous for faith.
For more info: See my last posting on conservative values (October 12). Richard T. Hughes teaches at Messiah College, founded by the Brethren in Christ. He had an outstanding interview on WHYY-FM's Radio Times on October 14th. His latest publication is Christian America and the Kingdom of God (2009).
Hughes makes the important point that America is not and should not be a Christian nation: first, the founders, who included both theists and deists, wanted to avoid repeating the sad history of European state churches and religious wars by institutionalizing tolerance of all faiths. Second, we have not acted like Christians, especially by the standards of Evangelical bodies like the Brethren. He doubts any government can fully live up to biblical standards.
See Bethany Moreton, To serve God and Wal-Mart: the making of Christian free enterprise (2009) and Nelson Lichtenstein, The retail revolution: how Wal-Mart created a brave new world of business (2009). A review was written by Timothy Renick, Big-box values. Christian Century, October 20, 2009, pp. 28 - 33.
It is noteworthy that Moreton argues Wal-Mart has been successful in making consumerism acceptable to its evangelical customers, removing the guilt about consumption that Max Weber found often accompanies Protestantism.
