The Inseparability of Faith, Work, and Economics

The word Lynn uses repeatedly to describe the imposition of free-enterprise ideology on the faith-and-work movement is “sacralization.” The not-so-subtle accusation is that the faith-and-work movement has merely “baptized” a faith in “impersonal markets, material needs, and an amoral pursuit of self-interest.” He writes with the same market skepticism that has become common among center-left commentators today, and an increasing number in the so-called New Right. References to “impersonal algorithms” that “control and terminate workers” are common, even if not totally coherent, and Lynn’s own distrust of market forces to meet the needs of workers, vendors, and other stakeholders is hardly disguised. What Lynn has inadvertently done is make the case many of us have been making for years — that a defense of a free and commercial society must be inextricably connected to a morally enlightened sentiment. This is hardly new news to the very people Lynn is criticizing (who have spent decades aggressively making that very case that an atomistic understanding of markets fails in its duty to meet the conditions for human flourishing).