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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Increasing numbers of evangelical business owners are hanging out their shingles with the word "Christian" prominently displayed. Are they bringing godliness to Main Street -- or making hay on holiness?
Aug 4, 2005 | Christian Faith Driving School: The name might sound a bit dissonant to those who presume a certain separation of church and interstate. For the school's founder, however, the holy-meets-earthly title was a natural, even necessary choice. Mark Gadow, 40, has been a devout born-again Christian since the day that prayer alone, he says, healed his nearly debilitating joint pain. After 16 years in law enforcement, he was "called" to do something different, he says, and the school, based in Caroline County, Md., was born.
He does not "witness" about his faith until the last session of the program, but he does preach the "moral values" of "courtesy and consideration to other drivers," he says. "By the end of the course the students seem to think that they can call and talk to me as a friend or a mentor, or ask me to pray with them." Gadow recalls that the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration recommended against using "Christian" in the name of the school, suggesting that it might narrow his market. But he persisted, and now, four years later, he's turning students away.
Gadow is just one of an apparently growing number of small- and medium-sized-business owners who are proudly hanging out their shingles with the word "Christian" -- or at least with a telltale symbolic dove, fish or Bible verse -- prominently displayed. There are now Christian real estate agencies, cellular and long-distance services, financial planners, computer repair guys, furniture stores, bed-and-breakfast associations, diets, yoga and karate instructors, and goat breeders. These companies -- in contrast to religious bookstores, for example -- do earthly things in, they say, a Christian way.
Unlike Curves, Domino's or Coors, for example, which have been criticized for tithing their earnings to archconservative causes -- and unlike the Chick-fil-A fast-food chain, closed on Sundays because of its founder's religious beliefs -- these Christian companies link their work directly and overtly to their missions. ("Christian," in these cases, is generally taken to mean "born again," in which the business owner has a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" that guarantees eternal life, and the responsibility to offer others the same opportunity.) The mission statement of Houston-based auto-repair franchiser Christian Brothers Automotive ("Christian" as in Christian, not a surname), for instance, reads: "To glorify God by providing ethical and excellent automotive repair service for our customers, according to Colossians 3:17, 'And whatever you do in word and deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.'"
Such enterprises are "a byproduct of multiculturalism," says Alan Wolfe, author of "The Transformation of American Religion" and director of Boston College's Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, noting that identity politics are not the exclusive domain of the secular left. "You identify who you are, take pride in your subgroup. It's no different in that sense from a business that caters to African-Americans or Hispanics. It's part of the general trend of segmentation in American life."
No statistics yet exist on the number or growth of these businesses, but there are certainly enough to support numerous regional and national Christian business directories. The largest such directory, the Shepherd's Guide, now covers over 100 cities (after launching with just Baltimore, Md., in 1979). "There seems to be more of a recognized movement of Christian businesses in the marketplace," confirms David Moyer, Shepherd's Guide vice president. "In years past you didn't so much make a statement of your religious life through your business. Today Christians -- and I believe rightfully so -- are making a commitment to say, 'I want to stand out for my belief.'" (According to Christian retail trade association CBA International, sales of specifically Christian products reached $4.34 billion in 2004, up by about 10 percent from 2000). The Christian Blue Pages has tripled the number of regions it serves; Chris Chandler, founder of the online business directory Christian eBuy.com, says that four years ago, he received one or two listing submissions a day. Now he gets 200. Why the increase? "Now people are seeing that they can be more open with their faith in the marketplace and the workplace. They're more emboldened," says Chandler. "I also think a lot of people feel that we're in the last days, and we've really got to share our faith."
The last days? One might have assumed that for evangelicals, these were the glory days. In fact, just as Chandler suggests, what's behind this surge in "Christian" businesses seems to be a little of both.
