Note: From Working for Better (IVP, 2025). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
Because the rapid pace of change in US society has exacerbated the tensions already inherent in this arena, we conducted a first-of-its-kind set of research projects to form a data-driven approach to identifying and proposing solutions for the challenge of fostering faith at work. For those who are data junkies, we include several more pages of information about the specifics of our study at the end of the book. Our insights and suggested practices are based on a collective twenty years of research on the faith-at-work movement and how Christians specifically seek to integrate faith and work.
Over the past few years, we have conducted the most comprehensive set of studies to date of faith at work, including (1) focus groups with pastors and congregants in several cities in the United States; (2) surveys of over fifteen thousand workers – before, during and after the pandemic – who are representative of the demographics of the US population, including those from a variety of faith traditions as well as nonreligious workers and (3) in-depth follow-up interviews with 287 people, many of whom are committed Christians who care about faith at work. Since this is a book written primarily for Christians, the majority of the narratives presented in this book are from Christians we interviewed, unless we specify otherwise.
Although we come to this topic as scholars, we are also living faith-and-work integration ourselves. In addition to the data, we also provide personal stories from our own experiences since these topics are important for each of us as Christians. The recommendations we make in this book for the tensions we have identified reflect our hope that people of faith will do all they can to help make the world better for everyone, not just for Christians.
Our research has revealed how new demographic realities in American culture are requiring changes in the traditional models of the faith-at-work movement. For example, we put personal expressions of faith such as evangelizing alongside different pieces of the Christian tradition – those that emphasize the imago Dei, the idea that all people are created in the image of God. In our interviews with Christian workers, some talked about the importance of this concept for finding meaning and purpose. “If I am created by God, in God’s image, in His likeness, and I’m given a purpose, I have a reason for living….I help other people not to make myself look better, or to feel better,” a man who works as a village planner told Elaine. [Elaine Howard Ecklund, Why Science and Faith Need Each Other: Eight Shared Values That Move Us Beyond Fear, 2020] A geneticist said he helped others “because [I want to] glorify the one who created me, in his image.” In this scientist’s view, “we all have that shared calling of being made in the image of God. That’s our calling. It’s to reflect him. It’s to represent him.” [Elaine Howard Ecklund, Why Science and Faith Need Each Other: Eight Shared Values That Move Us Beyond Fear, 2020]
These responses reflect a new model of faith at work garnered from a bedrock of Christian theology: all people are made in the image of God. The new possibilities arising from this emphasis suggest that in these divisive times of increasingly violent conflict on the global stage, US Christians at work should do more to focus on how others – all of us – are made in the image of God. Expressing Christian faith at work includes constantly looking for ways to recognize the dignity and worth of all people in the workplace and embracing what some think of as “the other” – those who are outside our own faith community. Rather than concentrating solely on the kind of employee we are, our own expressions of faith at work and our personal responsibility and morality, we can examine the values of the workplace as a whole and work to advance justice, fairness, human flourishing and the common good.
Five Key Tensions
The data we have spent years collecting explores not just Christian faith but also how workers from a variety of religious traditions are bringing their faith into the workplace, the impact this has and why it is so important to manage and support religious diversity – and its diverse expressions – in the workplace. We explain how those from different racial groups, genders, ages, social classes and occupations negotiate their faith in the workplace. We especially draw on the voices of women and people of color, who have often been left out of literature concerning faith at work, workplace success and workplace spirituality.
When we put our research alongside the traditional understandings and approaches that have characterized the Christian faith-at-work movement, five key tensions emerged that show where the gaps are between assumptions and realities. We explore each of these tensions across a pair of chapters describing the pressures building and suggesting how they might be resolved. In every chapter we provide an understanding of current realities grounded in social-scientific data.
Each of our chapter pairings focuses on an older approach to faith at work and then shifts to a newer way of considering our engagement while retaining aspects of the traditional. We work hard as we explain these chapter pairings to amplify what we can learn from the traditional approach while setting forth a new way. We chose these particular chapter pairings in this particular order because this is where – as scholars and as Christian workers ourselves – we think there needs to be the most intervention in setting forth a new vision in order to see the greatest redemption in workplaces today.
In chapters two and three we show that while Christians’ understanding of work and calling has changed over time to become more expansive, the message that all work can be done in service to God has not made the inroads we might have expected. We also provide a framework that broadens typical conceptualizations of calling. Chapters four and five examine experiences of religious discrimination and accommodation at work and explore the ways that Christians can move beyond primarily seeing themselves as a persecuted minority to helping prevent discrimination and becoming advocates and protectors of fair treatment for all and, in particular, for those who are outsiders. In chapters six and seven we discuss the ways we can move from focusing only on personal responsibility to leading the way in creating organizational systems that affect behaviors at work for the common good, and we suggest ways people can contribute to structures that are more likely to engender positive organizational outcomes. Chapters eight and nine discuss the different levels of support that working men and women receive from their church communities and how that can affect their workplace outcomes. We provide suggestions for ways both churches and workplace leaders can contribute to flourishing for all. In chapters ten and eleven, our last chapter pairing, we examine the many ways Christians express their faith in the workplace and how such expressions are viewed by those outside the faith. We argue for a principled pluralism approach, which respects those of different beliefs and practices while holding firm to the foundational aspects of the Christian faith.
We end the book, in chapter twelve, with a discussion of how a biblical understanding of rest might infuse the way we approach our work. We intentionally do not include a chapter pairing in response to our chapter on rest. In some sense, the first eleven chapters of this book provide the substance of the pairing for the last chapter. Most of this book focuses on how our faith influences our work. But Christians should also be attentive to how our faith shapes our approach to rest. No matter our approach to faith at work, rest should thread through all we do. To rest from our work and to cultivate rest possibilities for others at work reveals our place in the created order. The success of the world ultimately does not depend on us.
From Defending Rights to Radical Embrace
Our recommended path for resolving these key tensions reflects a fresh model for faith at work that moves from an individualized, in-the-trenches approach to an other-focused, more community-oriented perspective of radical embrace.
More specifically, we make the case that the exclusive claims of Christianity actually demand an embrace of others in the workplace, regardless of their faith commitments, belief systems or worldviews. We call on Christians to bring their faith into the workplace by shifting from an emphasis on talking about our beliefs and defending our own rights to empathizing with those who are religiously different, with a particular emphasis on the imago Dei – the idea that every person we encounter is worthy of dignity and respect because every person is made in the image of God. We integrate this radical-embrace perspective throughout the book, showing how this core truth demands different practices and ways of expressing our faith in the workplace.
To be clear, we are not advocating a watered-down Christianity that sees itself as no different from any other religion, nor are we primarily concerned with evaluating the truth claims of other faith traditions. Rather, we are arguing for the equivalent value and dignity of each person and for an approach to Christianity in the workplace that recognizes and centers on such.
The cultural shifts we described at the beginning of this chapter are already underway. How we respond to these shifts will determine whether faith at work retreats into a self-protective corner or becomes a redemptive presence with ripple effects for the common good far beyond its immediate reach. Using compelling real-world stories, research insights and practical applications, we hope to provide new information, ideas and guidance for Christian workers, Christian workplace leaders and pastors and church leaders who want to see all people flourish at work. We close each chapter with questions that can be used for personal reflection or group discussion. Our primary goal is to help those in the Christian faith community consider how to adapt their approach to a changing world in which older ways can get in the way and newer ways open the way.
Taken from Working for Better by Elaine Howard Ecklund and Denise Daniels. Copyright (c) 2025 by Elaine Howard Ecklund and Denise Daniels Barwell. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press.
Elaine Howard Ecklund, Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences and professor of sociology, Rice University; and Denise Daniels, Hudson T. Harrison Professor of Entrepreneurship, Wheaton College
