Work

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Work

Religion and work are intertwined in complex ways. Sometimes religious beliefs and teachings give rise to cultural norms; sometimes religious and social standards are mutually supportive; and sometimes religion challenges prevalent views and practices. Three characteristics surrounding labor in the United States demonstrate how religion motivates, upholds, and confronts the world of work; they are the work ethic, the gender division of labor, and the right to work and workers' rights.

Work Ethic

Religious beliefs and teachings motivate individuals' labor and also sustain society's views toward work. Max Weber, a German social scientist, described how religion was an incentive for work. He noted that in northern Europe, prior to the Industrial Revolution, a set of ideas with Lutheran and Calvinist origins was prevalent; he termed it the "Protestant ethic." The ethic connected labor in this world to salvation in the next. It inspired people to work hard and long, to limit consumption of material goods, to save money, and to reinvest profits into business enterprises. It disposed workers to meet the production needs of fledgling industries, and it furthered the pursuit of wealth in commercial enterprises. Ultimately it contributed to the Industrial Revolution and to the growth of capitalism as an economic formula that stressed productivity and prosperity. In the United States the ethic was sometimes called the "Puritan ethic" in recognition of one religious group that brought it to the colonies.

Over time, the religious ethic converted into a secular one: working hard, remaining disciplined, seeking success, and cultivating profit became cultural norms. The ethic permeated individuals' lives and became so prevalent that the term "workaholic" was coined for individuals who manifest an extreme work ethic. Religious leaders, while encouraging work, also warn about sacrificing family for career. (See Salkin, 1994.) They exemplify how religion plays a dual social role, both upholding and confronting existing beliefs and norms.

The work ethic was reflected in the creed of commerce stressing acquisition and prosperity, which spread globally from Western Europe and the United States. Devoid of religious association, norms developed that promote acquiring profits, accumulating material goods and wealth, demonstrating disciplined effort, and making prudent expenditures. Business enterprises routinely appealed to "the bottom line" of profit, even when defending policies, practices, and procedures that negatively affected the employment and conditions of workers.

Further, the work ethic was manifest in U.S. policy. The cultural link between market forces and individuals' labor was reflected in income redistribution policies based on the premise that the market takes care of people's needs. Individuals' supplementary benefits are tied to their means, and decisions about welfare distribution are based on how much income individuals have and on whether they are "deserving"—that is, medically unable to work or, at least, trying to find a job. Often those without jobs and/or receiving welfare benefits are stigmatized. In contrast, many other industrialized societies distribute minimum benefits based on citizenship or on some other criterion not related to job-holding. (For further elaboration see Esping-Anderson, 1990.) In sum, the centrality of a "work ethic" is clear in the commerce and policies of the United States as well as in the motivations of individual workers.

Gender Division of Labor

Religious beliefs and teachings are tied in with the way work is divided by gender in the United States. Sometimes religious groups explicitly educate about gender roles and work; however, there is wide variability in teachings among and within groups. (See Demmit, 1992 and Ellison and Bartkowski, 1997.) More often, long-standing cultural norms implicitly reflect religious and other influences and shape labor in two ways. First, they affect individuals' occupational preferences and their actual selection of jobs. An emphasis on women's procreative, nurturing, and sustaining family roles legitimizes women's gravitating toward specific kinds of jobs and sanctions how men and women treat and value work inside and outside the home. Some want women to work at home; some think that women's work away from home should be in jobs, such as volunteering and doing part-time work, that do not interfere with family responsibilities. Others prefer jobs that socialize, nurture, or otherwise mirror women's roles in kinship groups, such as teaching, nursing, and service work. Often these jobs, as well as volunteer work, are named "good works."

Second, an emphasis on women's work as secondary or supportive to men's affects the groupings of workers available for employment, the apportioning of jobs by gender, the ranks in which women labor, and the type of rewards they get. Women are found in "pink-collar" occupations (i.e., occupations that are mostly filled by women, such as nurse, beautician, elementary-school teacher) and clustered at lower ranks (e.g., sales). Women are overly represented in part-time jobs and in the secondary labor market, which includes jobs that provide minimal benefits to workers in terms of income, job security, and chances to advance. And women in full-time employment earn about three-fourths of men's income. Certainly religion is not wholly accountable for the apportionment of the labor market in the United States, but affinities are apparent between religious beliefs and teachings and gendered occupational patterns and job choices.

The Right to Work and Workers' Rights

Religious groups often articulate the right of individuals to provide for themselves and their families as well as their duty to do so. They emphasize that self-reliance contributes to personal dignity and self-respect. (See Maxwell 1998.) Some church groups (e.g., the Mormons) make available employment rehabilitation and placement services. They maintain employment centers and enterprises that hire members. In so doing, religious groups support existing cultural norms about the value of work and individuals' right to it.

Some religious groups stress the rights of laborers and thus confront existing social norms. For example, churches in the South articulated the rights of African Americans to work and to have equal opportunities for employment during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The Roman Catholic Church in its teachings articulates the rights of workers: the priority of labor over capital, the importance of participation in decision-making, the need for just wages and decent working conditions, and the prerogative to unionize. (See National Conference of Catholic Bishops 1986.) At times such teachings are explicitly involved in labor conflicts, even within church organizations. For example, in 1998 Catholic Healthcare West, the second-largest hospital network in California, faced unionization demands from ten thousand workers in ten hospitals in Los Angeles and Sacramento, who called attention to religious principles about their rights to join workers' associations. Indeed, issues surrounding the right to work and the rights of workers manifest how religion both accommodates to and comes into conflict with the culture and realities surrounding work in the United States.

Conclusion

In the 1950s, Gerhard Lenski studied the connection between individuals' occupational mobility and their religious denominations. The Protestant-Catholic differences found then had vanished by the 1970s. Nonetheless, the term Lenski coined, the "religious factor," captures a persistent feature of the culture and practice of work in the United States. The norms, values, beliefs, teachings, and practices of religion both sustain and confront the work world and labor within it. Put simply, a "religious factor" permeates work and vice versa.

Bibliography

Demmit, K. "Loosening the Ties That Bind: The Accommodation of Dual-Earner Families in a Conservative Protestant Church." Review of Religious Research 34 (1992): 3–19.

Ellison, C. G., and J. P. Bartkowski. "Conservative Protestantism and the Household Division of Labor." Paper presented at the Association for the Sociology of Religion Meetings, Toronto. 1997.

Esping-Anderson, Gösta. The Three Worlds of WelfareCapitalism. 1990.

Greeley, Andrew. The American Catholic: A Social Portrait. 1977.

Lenski, Gerhard. The Religious Factor: A SociologicalStudy of Religion's Impact on Politics, Economics, andFamily Life. 1963.

Maxwell, Neal A. "Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel." Ensign 28, no. 5 (1998): 45.

National Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy." 1986.

Salkin, Jeffrey. Being God's Partner: How to Find the Hidden Link Between Spirituality and Work. 1994.

Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 1930.

Katherine Meyer

Contemporary American Religion