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ABC's hiring last year of evangelical Christian Peggy Wehmeyer (CT, Aug. 15, 1994, p. 15) as network television's first religion beat reporter is not an aberration, according to Christian observers. Rather, it is a sign of things to come, as the "marketplace Christians" movement comes of age.

This movement, which had its birth pangs a decade ago, has evolved through a growing number of Christians frustrated with how little relevance Sunday's teachings had to do with their weekday work.

"The people in the pews are agitated," says Pete Hammond, director of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's (IVCF) Marketplace Department. "For too long, there has been very little for Christians needing to know how to apply their faith to the marketplace."

Now there are more than 200 books on faith and the workplace, including "Thank God, It's Monday," by William Diehl. In addition, there are 15 organizations focusing on ministry of the laity in the workplace.

Hammond says that, traditionally, when Christians have thought about "calling," it has fallen into the realm of missions, "Christian" service such as working for a church or a religious institution, or among helping professionals such as doctors, nurses, and social workers. What is significant about the marketplace movement is that now M.B.A.s, journalists, artists, civil employees, international financiers, and academics are claiming that their work can be as Christian as saving souls in Ghana.

"The issues go beyond being gracious with coworkers and fair with employees," Hammond says. "We believe that in each profession Christians can find something that is inherently godly about the work itself." For example, Wes Pippert, who for many years worked as the White House correspondent for United Press International, says that at its essence, journalism is about the quest for truth—an endeavor obviously compatible with biblical Christianity.

The movement, which includes IVCF's Marketplace Department, the Strategic Careers Coalition, the Coalition for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), the Mustard Seed Foundation, and hundreds of professional Christian guilds such as the Christian Legal Society, Christians in the Arts, Christian Nuclear Scientist Fellowship, and Models for Christ, focuses on helping Christians see the bigger implications of how their faith applies to their work. "Is there something about someone's faith that will make a person look at being a nuclear scientist or a securities analyst differently from one who is not a Christian?" Hammond asks. "Absolutely. There is a need for economists whose economic formulas take into account the person on the street, nuclear physicists who take into account the moral issues behind Star Wars defense, bankers who will not discriminate racially in whom they will lend to."

Foremost in the minds of marketplace Christians is a vision for equipping evangelicals to be in decision-making positions of power in mainstream society. "How often have we complained that Christians are ignored or ridiculed in the media?" asks Sue Crider, a Houghton College journalism professor. "Yet have we as a church encouraged our people to go into those arenas and make their faith be felt? Until there are Christians in those positions, the church cannot have an influence in those arenas."

A HELPING HAND: To this end, a couple of foundations are providing scholarships to send Christians to elite nonreligious universities for undergraduate and graduate work in professions considered "culturally strategic and where evangelical Christians are underrepresented," Crider says. The Mustard Seed Foundation's Bakke Fellows program and the Harvey Scholars program, cosponsored by the CCCU, provide scholarships for graduates and undergraduates, respectively, "to encourage Christians to consider vocational options where they would be capable of acting on important societal issues within the framework of a Christ-centered world-view," according to Susan Powell of the Mustard Seed Foundation. There are monetary incentives outside of school as well. The Amy Foundation offers $10,000 each year to the writer who has the most important journalistic article in a secular publication that reflects a Christian world-view and quotes Scripture.

Copyright 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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October 2 1995, Vol. 39, No. 11