Thoughts Leaders and New Perspectives in Spiritual and
Faith-Based Work and Business Work Practices:

From Spiritual Capitalism® by Peter Ressler and Monika Mitchell Ressler

"Epilogue—A New Era: Fair-Market Capitalism"
IF anyone had any doubt that we are all connected, those doubts were erased with the explosion of the World Wide Web in 1995. Suddenly everything we did mattered to everyone else. One end of the world was just a click of the mouse away from another. What you do, what I do, what others do directly affects everyone else through the invisible threads of space and time that create the Internet. Our computer screens manifest in material terms what we already are in the infinite screen of the universe—connected. Every time we read a book, watch a movie, listen to a great piece of music or close our eyes to dream, space and time are transcended by our joint human experience and we meet each other there. Where? In the deepest part of our minds and hearts that is the soul. (Copyright 2007) http://www.spiritualcapitalism.com

Religious mutual funds have exploded over the past decade. Since 1997, assets under management in funds with an explicit faith-based mission have ballooned 35-fold from $500 million to $17.5 billion, according to data from fund tracker Morningstar. Such dramatic growth makes the sector one of the fastest growing in the financial services industry.

A couple of reasons account for the recent growth spurt. In some cases, strong financial returns are attracting new investors just as pollen draws bees. The Amana Income Fund, an Islamic fund that avoids gambling, tobacco, and meat-producing stocks, outperformed all 180 funds in its equity-income category between 2004 and 2007. Investors have piled in, and not always because they were seeking a clean conscience, according to Deputy Portfolio Manager Monem Salam.

Plus, many investors are apparently motivated by more than mammon. The past decade has given rise to new families of funds aimed not only at liberal Protestants but also politically conservative evangelicals and Catholics. Meanwhile, older funds with secular as well as Christian roots now get a hearing, at least sometimes, when they vie to impress their social visions upon corporate cultures. Socially responsible investing (SRI) has morphed from a quirky (and relatively small) niche in the 1980s to a $2 trillion mainstream industry today. As the landscape has expanded, so also have opportunities for investors to couple nest eggs with personal passions for putting faith into action in highly specialized ways. But seizing these opportunities can be a daunting and confusing task. Would-be investors in this realm need to brave a thicket of similar-sounding investment products that often embrace wildly different goals and tactics. Finding a fit, however, is possible as long as the intrepid understand how to navigate the various traditions—both religious and activist—that drive this marketplace niche.

“You can’t just lump all religious funds together because they have a pretty wide variety of standards that they use,” says David Kathman, a Morningstar analyst who covers socially responsible investing. “To build a portfolio, they’ll exclude certain things, or they’ll favor certain other things.” History provides helpful context since SRI traces its roots to religious activism. At least as far back as 1758, Quakers in America refused on moral grounds to derive profits from the slave trade. In the 19th century, they shunned the firearms business with equal vigor. Methodists, too, have long appreciated the link between ethics and investing. Methodism founder John Wesley exhorted followers in a famous sermon to “gain all we can without hurting our neighbor.” That ethic has inspired his spiritual descendants to shun investments in alcohol since the 19th century. In 1971, two Methodists launched Pax World Funds, which shunned weapons manufacturers as well as other vices and served as a harbinger of today’s SRI mutual fund industry.

This tradition of using moral screens to sift investments reflects a dual quest among investors. They vie both to maintain their own moral purity and to support a parallel purity where they find it in the business world. In theological terms, these investors avoid sinners lest they be sullied by the process of financing sinful enterprise.

“There are sins today that stand out in our society,” say the screening guidelines for the Timothy Plan, a conservative evangelically based family of funds, “which we feel as … Christian investors we need to stay away from.” Its funds shun companies associated with alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pornography, and “the promotion of homosexuality.” This purity preservation tradition thrives today among a diverse cross-section of mutual funds. The six-year-old Ave Maria Mutual Funds refuse on Roman Catholic grounds to invest in companies with ties to abortion, pornography, or benefits for unmarried partners.

FROM THE DESK OF PATRICIA ABURDENE

March 2008: Conscious Capitalism in Germany

Frankfurt. Early one Monday morning in late February, I look out at 70 or so business people, mostly middle-aged men. A few of them look as if they might want to duck out for a second cup of coffee. I myself am wondering how well it is going to go over for an American to preach corporate responsibility here. After all, when Europe pioneered the social side of Conscious Capitalism decades ago, American called it Socialism. That said, the spiritual side of Conscious Capitalism -- how managers, consumers and investors embody values like integrity, compassion and purpose – is, from what I’ve seen, of growing interest to Germans.

In any event, I’ve done my homework: I’m armed with German examples of ultra-green consumer trends and great German companies who’ve won the International Spirit at Work Award or a spot on the Sustainable Business (SB) 20. Or rather Joy Moloney has done my homework. Joy (then Van Elderen) my researcher on past megatrends books, is back on board, finding facts and figures still astound me.

Traveling to Frankfurt, I’ve come across some interesting finds, too. In Paris to change planes, I grab a Herald Tribune. There on page one are headlines that will surely concern my audience, “Germany Inc. gets wake-up call: First jail sentence in VW scandal” and “Liechtenstein a ‘tax haven’?” My friend and colleague Sabine Beidemeyer, whom looked forward to visiting in Frankfurt, had briefed me on both these stories People were shocked, she said, that a prominent executive stashed his cash in nearby Liechtenstein. Tax audits revealed he was hardly alone. It was beginning to look as if Germany were facing its own version of the 2001 U.S. “accounting scandals” which catapulted Socially Responsibility Investing and the Spirituality in Business to prominence.

Back in front of my audience, I hold up the Tribune, read the scandalous headlines and watch several heads nod. Now, I alert them to the French economic journal “Enjeux” whose cover story seems written just for me. My French-born life and business partner Alain Bolea and I often discuss how open the French are to social values, while remaining ambivalent at best to any reference to spirituality. Imagine my reaction then to Enjeux’s cover story: “Comment manager sans perdre son ame,” that is, How to manage without losing your soul. Bingo. (Or maybe Voila!) Maybe the word “soul” plays better in France than “spirit.”

Reprinted from Patricia Aburdene.com

A Message from Judi Neal, Founder of ICSW

Dear Fellow Seeker,

A new awareness and consciousness has been spreading over the planet in the last decade. We have come to see our interdependence as a human race, and our connectedness to nature. We are also coming to see the potential role that business can play in helping this transformation of global consciousness.

When I first made a commitment to attempt to live my deepest spiritual values in my work, I defined spirituality in the workplace as something that was a personal and private journey. In many ways that is still true. But as things evolve, and more and more of us are making this commitment and finding each other, we have begun to build community and a collective energy. It's not just an individual phenomenon anymore.

Several years ago I read a book called Creative Work by Willis Harman and John Hormann. That book described a vision of a better world created by businesses that lived by spiritual values. The International Spirit at Work Award was created to honor that vision and to nurture its growth. We are now becoming a collective of organizations, and the network of individuals, groups, communities and businesses is growing. A network of networks is forming, and we have reached critical mass.

Our goal is to tell the positive stories of enlightened leaders and enlightened organizations. Faith is at work. A very basic spiritual law is the Law of Attraction: What you pay attention to grows. We pay attention to the stories of spiritual values, practices, and programs that are being implemented in more and more organizations around the world.

My prayer is that each of you finds inspiration and courage on this website and within the International Center for Spirit at Work to take your work another step higher, and that each of you offers inspiration and courage to others who are on the same journey. We have so much to learn from each other and so much to give.

Blessings, Judi Neal, Ph.D.
President and CEO, International Center for Spirit at Work Founder, International Spirit at Work Award

Reprinted from Faith at Work

“Our magazine, resources, events and trainings provide experiences of hearing call; tools for discerning call; and trainings for organizations wanting to provide systems and structures to support call.

As an ecumenical network of Christians at the growing edge of the church we are grounded in Biblical faith; related to God, self, others and the earth; sustained through intentional community; and committed to faith at work in the world. We have sometimes been called "everyone's A.A." because everyone has aspects of their life that feel unmanageable. Our call is to foster intentional community and relational Christianity with the intent of impacting individuals for changed lives and changed focus/work.”

Faith At Work holds several events around the U.S. throughout the year.

The Management, Spirituality & Religion Interest Group
Domain Statement: Specific Domain: the study of the relationship and relevance of spirituality and religion in management and organizations. Major topics include: theoretical advances or empirical evidence about the effectiveness of spiritual or religious principles and practices in management, from approaches represented in the literature including religious ethics, spirituality and work, and spiritual leadership, as well as applications of particular religions, and secular spiritualities to work, management/leadership, organization, and the business system; and evaluation studies of the effectiveness of management approaches that nurture the human spirit in private, non-public or public institutions.

Excerpted from Values Centre

"The Values Centre- Supporting Leaders in Building Values-Driven Cultures"

"The Values Centre website was created by Richard Barrett & Associates to provide information on the application of the Seven Levels of Consciousness model and the Cultural Transformation Tools ® to the cultural transformation of corporations, non-profits, NGO’s, government institutions, schools, communities and nations, as well to provide details on the use of the model and tools for personal transformation and leadership development.

Richard Barrett & Associates (RBA) was created in June 1997 to support leaders in building values-driven organisations. Since then, RBA has created a series of Cultural Transformation Tools ® (CTT) for mapping values, measuring cultural capital, and implementing cultural transformation.

At the heart of the Cultural Transformation Tools ® lies the Seven Levels of Consciousness model developed by Richard Barrett. The model is used to map the personal values of employees and their perception of the current and desired culture values of the organisation. The model is also used to map the values of teams and any other group of individuals who share a common heritage or purpose. The specific application of this model to corporations, government agencies, non-profits, NGO’s, schools, classrooms, nations and communities can be found on this website."