American business is an opportunistic enterprise. When it became profitable to do so, social justice got absorbed into corporate culture. Then, at lightning speed in the past few months, anti-racism has become the new flavor of the year.
Can this happen with religion?
The New York Times just came out with how this can be in a piece headlined: “God is dead. So is the Office. These People Want to Save Both.” The lead is quite clever:
In the beginning there was Covid-19, and the tribe of the white collars rent their garments, for their workdays were a formless void, and all their rituals were gone. New routines came to replace the old, but the routines were scattered, and there was chaos around how best to exit a Zoom, onboard an intern, end a workweek.
The adrift may yet find purpose, for a new corporate clergy has arisen to formalize the remote work life. They go by different names: ritual consultants, sacred designers, soul-centered advertisers. They have degrees from divinity schools. Their business is borrowing from religious tradition to bring spiritual richness to corporate America.
In simpler times, divinity schools sent their graduates out to lead congregations or conduct academic research. Now there is a more office-bound calling: the spiritual consultant. …
From whence cometh such ideas? What is the religious content of these practices?
Although three of the folks — from the Sacred Design Lab — profiled in this piece attended Harvard Divinity School, a fourth, Kursat Ozenc, from the Ritual Design Lab, has no theological background other than as an ‘experience designer’ for The Muslim Giving Project. I could find no evidence of theological education for another, Margaret Hagan.
Before the pandemic, these agencies got their footing helping companies with design — refining their products, physical spaces and branding. They also consulted on strategy, workflow and staff management. With digital workers stuck at home since March, a new opportunity has emerged. Employers are finding their workers atomized and agitated, and are looking for guidance to bring them back together. Now the sacred consultants are helping to usher in new rituals for shapeless workdays, and trying to give employees routines that are imbued with meaning.
Ezra Bookman founded Ritualist, which describes itself as “a boutique consultancy transforming companies and communities through the art of ritual,” last year in Brooklyn. He has come up with rituals for small firms for events like the successful completion of a project — or, if one fails, a funeral.
But Bookman attended Southern Methodist University as a theater major.
I am curious why the Times reporter didn’t dig a bit deeper into these folks’ lack of religion credentials. Additional questions about these consultants’ actual religious beliefs would have been helpful as well.
Messages on the start-up’s Instagram feed read like a kind of menu for companies who want to buy operational rites a la carte: “A ritual for purchasing your domain name (aka your little plot of virtual land up in the clouds).” “A ritual for when you get the email from LegalZoom that you’ve been officially registered as an LLC.”
Folks, you can’t make this stuff up.
But the Times treats this like holy writ. The result is a combination of public relations and some kind of generic evangelism.
The theme of the article is legit: Attendance at traditional religious institutions is dropping, but people are spiritual beings who need some kind of ritual to get themselves through the day.
The Sacred Design Lab trio use the language of faith and church to talk about their efforts. They talk about organized religion as a technology for delivering meaning.
“The question we ask is: ‘How do you translate the ancient traditions that have given people access to meaning-making practices, but in a context that is not centered around the congregation?’” Mr. ter Kuile said.
In other words, ripping off actual phrases and actions used in churches, synagogues and temples and transforming them into a pastiche of cool-sounding words — symbolism and ritual stripped of its original doctrinal content and then mashed together.
Where are all those cultural appropriation protestors when you need them?
There were a few caveats in this piece, including a bit of blowback from workers who have their own religious practices outside of the workplace and resent having some woo-woo ritual foisted on them. In other words, there is a bit of journalism here.
There’s also a pungent quote from RNS columnist Tara Isabella Burton who correctly identifies the whole idea as consumer-driven religiosity that makes no demands and fits whatever brand presents itself.
I think the writer could have been way more jaundiced about this trend, which ranges from “corporate incantations” to start the day to “deepening one’s Zoom practice.” But hey, there’s more out there than just this.
I don’t know if any of you noticed a piece in the February issue of Fortune magazine, “Business Gets Ready to Trip,” which tells of the increased use of psychedelics for the mentally ill and how lots of investors are throwing money at this trend. Then skip to this Business Insider piece that ran in July about entrepreneurs micro-dosing on psychedelics to spur new ideas and solve complex problems. Rolling Stone has been onto this for years but everyone else just woke up to this trend quite recently.
What has this to do with religion? People want the transcendent very badly. If they can’t get it from organized religion, they’ll go to ritual or drugs. According to this Business Insider piece, Steve Jobs’ use of LSD contributed to his Zen-inspired design aesthetics for Apple products and packaging.
There’s a rich motherlode of religion stories in all this, now that faith — at least the non-deistic variety — is spilling over into the workplace, now that the workplace has morphed into the home. I’m curious what these rituals cost (the Times doesn’t say) and how many businesses really are going this route. And even though these rituals sound non-sectarian, at which point will they veer off into dogma?
So many questions, so few answers for now.
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