Doing God's Work

Christianity, Capitalism & The Problem With Sacred Duties

Credit: Elevation Church Orlando

“I refuse to take this for granted,” I posted on Instagram after one of the Sunday mornings when I drove an hour from Elon to Raleigh to go to church. That Sunday, I brought a friend who professed his faith in Jesus Christ during the service. I made this trip nearly every Sunday, often bringing friends with me—or sometimes students I had just met. One time, we even got a university van to bring people.

On several Sundays, Elizabeth and I woke up at 5 A.M. to volunteer in the kids' ministry at church. I also helped manage the church’s social media accounts for free. All of it was free—and optional. I didn’t have to do any of it. But I got to. And that’s where I begin to pull back the curtain on Christianity’s relationship with capitalism.

In Simone Stolzoff’s book, The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work, he notes the phrase “sacred duty,” otherwise known as “vocational awe.” Coined by interviewee Fobazi Ettarh, she describes vocational awe as the belief that there are work environments that “are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique.” This idea of sacred work is connected to the early formation of Protestantism by Martin Luther and John Calvin.

“Calvin took Luther’s sanctification of work one step further,” writes Stolzoff. “Instead of simply putting our heads down because we ought to, Calvin believed hard work was a key trait of those on the path to heaven, the Elect.” In other words, work was viewed as a holy act with eternal implications. As that view became more ingrained, industries were able to entice workers with jobs where they could work hard for causes considered bigger than themselves.

In citing Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Stolzoff explains Weber’s thesis that “there is a common spirit between capitalism, an economic system that values profit, and Protestantism, a religious system that values hard work as the path to heaven.” Stolzoff continues, “Weber argues that Calvinism—specifically the idea that your ability to be productive is an indicator of whether you’re going to heaven or hell—is the foundation for modern day capitalism.”

Over the years, evangelical Christianity and capitalism have become further entangled. More notable examples include former United States president Donald Trump inviting evangelical Christian leaders to the White House and some of those leaders publicly campaigning for him. Stolzoff also cites the “prosperity gospel,” which is “a belief mostly among American evangelicals that financial success is the will of God.”

Source: Facebook (Sean Feucht)

This relationship between Christianity and capitalism is also exemplified in our everyday lives, such as in the language used by churches and in other evangelical environments. For example, at my Southern Baptist high school, classroom teachers and chapel speakers spoke to students about finding their calling. As a result, students often interpreted their calling as a specific college to attend or career path to pursue.

Wage labor was taught as something God wanted us to participate in—and even better if it was at a church or Christian organization. Regardless of where we were hired or went to school, we were charged to consider how we might honor God there. Everything we did was an opportunity to represent Jesus and attract more people to him. I took this message to heart and joined my friends in signing up to volunteer on the greeting team at our church.

As greeters, we were the first faces people saw at church. We met them at their cars when they parked and walked new attendees in. The idea is that newcomers would feel loved from the first moment they arrived and begin to connect that to how God loves them. It was also an opportunity for them to get on the church’s contact list and start receiving communications about how to get more involved.

Greeters were expected to get to church about an hour or two before the service. During this time, we helped set up and had an opportunity to eat or drink something in the volunteer room. Stories from church members hung on the walls, sharing how the church had impacted those congregants or someone in their life. These stories helped reinforce that volunteers play a role in changing people’s lives. They persuaded me that choosing to do anything else with my time was a missed opportunity to witness salvation.

As organizational behavior researchers Jeffery A. Thompson and J. Stuart Bunderson wrote about zookeeping, those who view it as a sacred duty believe leaving a zookeeping job is “a negligent abandonment of those who have need of one’s gifts, talents, and efforts.” When church volunteers’ duties are framed as sacred and essential to God’s mission, it can feel immoral for those volunteers to do less or stop altogether—especially when their labor is so integral to the church’s operations.

Church volunteers are often told it is not our job to save people; it’s God’s. However, churches tend to rely on unpaid labor from volunteers to function. It might be God’s job to reach people. But churches utilize volunteers to complete administrative tasks, operate cameras, lead worship music, care for children, set up, tear down, and whatever else is needed to keep those people engaged. Motivated by love, these commitments often become like second jobs. But as Stolzoff recently wrote for The New York Times, “Love, unfortunately, doesn’t pay the bills.”

Many churches and Christian organizations aim to dominate your time like a job would without paying you like a job would, often under the guise that you can’t put a price on doing God’s work. But the actual cost is exploitation without feeling like you can raise any concerns.

As outlined by researcher Charlotte Overgaard, volunteering is “foremost a form of unpaid labor.” However, many volunteers would say it’s unpaid labor they choose to do. The International Labour Organization states: “Volunteer work refers to activities performed willingly and without pay to produce goods or provide services for others outside the volunteer’s household or family.”

I signed up to be a church volunteer and even suggested additional ways to contribute because I wanted to; however, the work other volunteers and I completed was more reminiscent of labor in an employee relationship. This is all while there were actual employees that got paid and a lead pastor whose popularity afforded him a nearly $2 million house—and that popularity has only continued to grow.

This is the reality in many evangelical churches around the globe. FX’s new docuseries, The Secrets of Hillsong, discusses church leaders' improper use of funds at one of the world’s biggest megachurches, Australia’s Hillsong Church. One of the clips shows an Australian member of parliament, Andrew Wilkie, bringing these allegations forth.

“Hillsong followers believe that the money they put in the poor box goes to the poor,” says Wilkie. “But these documents show how that money is actually used to do the kind of shopping that would embarrass a Kardashian.”

Wilkie alludes to church payments, such as a $6,500 Cartier watch and $2,500 worth of Louis Vuitton luggage for the church’s first lady Bobbie Houston and a $150,000 three-day luxury retreat in Cancun for the Houston family.

Like many megachurches, Hillsong has multiple locations predominantly run by volunteers. And while these volunteers might believe wholeheartedly in the church’s cause, Stolzoff puts it plainly that “creative, mission-driven and prestigious jobs often take advantage of employees’ love for what they do.”

While volunteering isn’t employment, both represent different transactions. Wage labor is an economic transaction. Unpaid labor is a time and energy transaction. Rather than framing volunteer roles within churches as sacred duties, dominating people’s time without giving them much freedom to scale back their commitment or leave, it would be better for church leaders to be transparent with congregants about the nature and value of volunteer work.

When Elizabeth and I would wake up at 5 A.M. to drive an hour to church to do unpaid labor, we traded our time and energy to help care for churchgoers’ children and maintain the kids' ministry. We derived meaning from our work at the time. Now, it’s most meaningful for me to be told the truth. I want clarity when making decisions about how I choose to spend my time and energy.

If I’m doing God’s work, I want to know it’s work—and that my willingness or unwillingness to do that labor doesn’t determine my value. That I can stop at any time. I don’t need work to be a labor of love when I know I’m already loved.