MAPPING THE SOCIAL LANDSCAPE

50 – Civilize Them with a Stick (Mary Crow Dog, Richard Erdoes)

Mary crow Dog and Richard Erdoes reveal how the institution of education can be an

agent of social control whose purpose is to assimilate racial-ethnic populations, such as

Native Americans, into the dominant culture; Crow Dog is a Native American activist

and Erdoes is the ghostwriter of her autobiography

Even now, when the typical Indian boarding school are much improved, the shock to the

child upon arrival is still tremendous

In the old days, nature was our people‟s only school and they needed no other; life in the

tipi circle was harmonious – until the whiskey peddlers arrived with their wagons and

barrels of “Injun whiskey”

The schools were intended as an alternative to the outright extermination seriously

advocated by generals Sherman and Sheridan, as well as by most settlers and prospectors

overrunning our land; kids were taken away from their villages and pueblos, sometimes

for as long as ten years, and coming back, caricatures of white people; when they found

out that they were neither wanted by whites nor by Indians, they got good and drunk,

many of them staying drunk for the rest of their lives

The people who were stuck upon “solving the Indian Problem” by making us into whites

retreated from this position only step by step in the wake of Indian protests

The mission school at St. Francis was a curse for our family for generations; the school is

now run by the BIA – the Bureau of Indian Affairs; all I got out of school was being

taught how to pray; I did not escape my share of the leather strap

A strange young white girl named Wise was from New York and was the first real hippie

or Yippie we had come across; she told us of people called the Black Panthers, Young

Lords, and Weathermen; she said, “Black people are getting it on. Indians are getting it

on in St. Paul and California...Why don‟t you put out an underground paper, mimeograph

it”; we put together a newspaper which we called the Red Panther

Girls who were near-white, who came from what the nuns called “nice families,” got

preferential treatment; the school therefore fostered fights and antagonism between

whites and breeds, and between breeds and skins

52 – Bad Boys; Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity (Ann Arnett Ferguson)

Illustrates how schools socially produce and reproduce race and social class distinctions

in the U.S.; in so doing, schools are an important agent of social reproduction – they

socially reproduce social inequalities that maintain social stratification; schools also

produce and reproduce gender distinctions found in society

This selection examines the effects gender and racial stereotyping have on African

American school boys; Ferguson explores why African American boys are more labeled

as troublemakers than are other gender or racial-ethnic groups of children

What I observed at Rosa Parks during more than three years of fieldwork in the school,

heard from the boy Lamar himself, from his teachers, from his mother, made it clear that

just as children were tracked into futures as doctors, scientists, engineers, word

processors, and fast-food workers, there were also tracks for some children,

predominantly African American and male, that led to prison; this reading tells the story

of the making of these bad boys, not by members of the criminal justice system, on street

corners, or in shopping malls, or video arcades, but in and by school, through

punishment; it is an account of the power of institutions to create, shape, and regulate

social identities

In the course of my study it became clear that school labeling practices and the exercise

of rules operated as part of a hidden curriculum to marginalize and isolate black male

youth in disciplinary spaces and brand them as criminally inclined

Dreams

This reading began with an anecdote about the school‟s vice principal identifying a small

boy as someone who had a jail-cell with his name on it; I started with this story to

illustrate how school personnel made predictive decisions about a child‟s future based on

a whole ensemble of negative assumptions about African American males and their life-

chances; however, the boys themselves had a decidedly optimistic view about their future

As I scanned the written accounts of students‟ dreams, I became conscious of a striking

pattern; the overwhelming majority of the boys aspired to be professional athletes when

they grew up; the reasons they gave for this choice were remarkably similar: the sport

was something they were good at; it was work they would enjoy doing; and they would

make a lot of money

A survey by Northeastern University‟s Center for the Study of Sport in Society found that

two-thirds of African American males between the ages of thirteen and eighteen believe

they can earn a living playing professional sports; nor is this national pattern for black

youth really surprising; for African American males, disengagement from the school‟s

agenda for approval and success is a psychic survival mechanism; so imagining a future

occupation for which schooling seems irrelevant is eminently rational; a career as a

professional athlete represents the possibility of attaining success in terms of the

dominant society via a path that makes schooling seem immaterial, while at the same

time affirming central aspects of identification

For these youth efforts to attain high-status occupations through academic channels are

just as likely to fail, given the conditions of their schooling and the unequal distribution

of resources across school systems

Nightmares

School seems to feed into the prison system, but what exactly is the connection between

the two? There are serious, long-term effects of being labeled a Troublemaker that

substantially increase one‟s chances of ending up in jail

Time in the school dungeon means time lost from classroom learning; suspension, at

school or at home, has a direct and lasting negative effect on the continuing growth of a

child

There is a direct relationship between dropping out of school and doing time in jail: the

majority of black inmates in local, state, and federal penal systems are high school

dropouts; therefore, if we want to begin to break the ties between school and jail, we must

first create educational systems that foster kids‟ identification with school and encourage

them not to abandon it

One significant but relatively small step that could be taken to foster this attachment

would be to reduce the painful, inhospitable climate of school for African American

children through the validation and affirmation of Black English, the language form that

many of the children bring from home/neighbourhood; the legitimation of Black English

in the world of the school would not only enrich the curriculum but would undoubtedly

provide valuable lessons to all students about sociolinguistics and the contexts in which

standard and nonstandard forms are appropriate

There is also an immediate, ongoing connection between school and jail; schools mirror

and reinforce the practices and ideological systems of other institutions in the society; the

racial bias in the punishing systems of the school reflects the practices of the criminal

justice system

- A study done by Huizinga and Elliot demonstrates that the contrast in

incarceration statistics is the result of a different institutional response to the

race of the youth rather than the difference in actual behaviour; they compared

the delinquent acts individual youth admit to committing in annual self-report

interviews with actual police records of delinquency in the areas in which the

boys live; based on the self-reports, they conclude that there were few, if any,

differences in the number or type of delinquent acts perpetrated by the two

racial groups; what they did find, however, was that there was a substantially

and significantly higher risk that the minority youth would be apprehended and

charged for these acts by police than the whites who reported committing the

same kind of offenses

In both settings (the school and the prison), the images result in differential treatment

based on race; Jerome G. Miller, who has directed juvenile justice detention systems in

Massachusetts and Illinois, describes how this works:

- “For a white teenager to be labeled „dangerous,‟ he had to have done something

very serious indeed

Given the poisonous mix of stereotyping and profiling of black males, their chances of

ending up in the penal system as a juvenile is extremely high; the school experience of

African American boys is simultaneously replicated in the penal system through

processes of surveillance, policing, charges, and penalties

Open Endings

I stand convinced that a restructuring of the entire educational system is what is urgently

required if we are to produce the thoughtful, actively questioning citizens that Baldwin

describes in the epigraph to this chapter

19 – On Being Sane in Insane Places (David L. Rosehhan)

Deviance is the recognized violation of social norms; as norms cover a wide range of

human behaviour, deviant acts are plentiful in any given society; moreover, whether a

person is labeled deviant depends on how others perceive, define, and respond to that

person‟s behaviour

In this selection, David L. Rosenhan explores the social deviance of mental illness and

the consequences of labeling people “sane” or “insane”

Benedict suggested that normality and abnormality are not universal; what is viewed as

normal in one culture may be seen as quite aberrant in another; thus, notions of normality

and abnormality may not be quite as accurate as people believe they are

Murder is deviant; so, too, are hallucinations

The view has grown that psychological categorization of mental illness is useless at best

and downright harmful, misleading, and pejorative at worst; psychiatric diagnoses, in this

view, are in the minds of the observers and are not valid summaries of characteristics

displayed by the observed

Gains can be made in deciding which of these is more nearly accurate by getting normal

people (that is, people who do not have, and have never suffered, symptoms of serious

psychiatric disorders) admitted to psychiatric hospitals and then determining whether

they were discovered to be sane and, if so, how; if the sanity of such pseudopatients were

always detected, there would be prima facie evidence that a sane individual can be

distinguished from the insane context in which he is found; if, on the other hand, the

sanity of the pseudopatients were never discovered, such an unlikely outcome would

support the view that psychiatric diagnosis betrays little about the patient but much about

the environment in which an observer finds him

This article describes such an experiment; eight sane people gained secret admission to

twelve different hospitals

Pseudopatients and Their Settings

The eight pseudopatients were a varied group; three pseudopatients were women, five

were men

The pseudopatient arrived at the admissions office complaining that he had been hearing

voices; beyond alleging the symptoms and falsifying name, vocation, and employment,

no further alterations of person, history, or circumstances were made; the significant

events of the pseudopatient‟s life history were presented as they had actually occurred;

frustrations and upsets were described along with joys and satisfaction; these facts are

important to remember; if anything, they strongly biased the subsequent results in favour

of detecting sanity, since none of the pseudopatients‟ histories or current behaviours were

seriously pathological in any way

- Immediately upon admission to the psychiatric ward, the pseudopatient ceased

simulating any symptoms of abnormality; in some cases, there was a brief

period of mild nervousness and anxiety, since none of the pseudopatients really

believed that they would be admitted so easily

- Apart from that short-lived nervousness, the pseudopatient behaved on the ward

as he “normally” behaved

The pseudopatient, very much as a true psychiatric patient, entered a hospital with no

foreknowledge of when he would be discharged; each was told that he would have to get

out by his own devices, essentially by convincing the staff that he was sane; nursing

reports, which have been obtained on most of the patients indicate that all were

“friendly,” “cooperative,” and “exhibited no abnormal indications”

The Normal Are Not Detectably Sane

Despite their public “show” of sanity, the pseudopatients were never detected; admitted,

except in one case, with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, each was discharged with a

diagnosis of schizophrenia “in remission”; the evidence is strong that, once labeled

schizophrenic, the pseudopatient was stuck with that label; if the pseudopatient was to be

discharged, he must naturally be “in remission”; but he was not sane, nor, in the

institution‟s view, had he ever been sane

- It was quite common, however, for the patients to “detect” the pseudopatients‟

sainty; the fact that the patients often recognized normality when staff did not

raises important questions

Failure to detect sanity during the course of hospitalization may be due to the fact that

physicians operate with a strong bias toward what statisticians call the type 2 error; this is

to say that physicians are more inclined to call a healthy person sick (a false positive,

type 2) than a sick person healthy (a false negative, type 1); the reasons for this are not

hard to find: it is clearly more dangerous to misdiagnose illness than health

- But what holds for medicine does not hold equally well for psychiatry; medical

illnesses, while unfortunate, are not commonly pejorative; psychiatric

diagnoses, on the contrary, carry with them personal, legal, and social stigmas

The Stickiness of Psychodiagnostic Labels

Having once been labeled schizophrenic, there is nothing the pseudopatient can do to

overcome the tag; the tag profoundly colours others‟ perceptions of him and his

behaviour

Gestalt psychology made the point that elements are given by the context in which they

occur; Asch demonstrated that there are “central” personality traits (such as “warm”

versus “cold”) which are so powerful that they markedly colour the meanings of other

information in forming an impression of a given personality; “insane,” “schizophrenic,”

“manic-depressive,” and “crazy” are probably among the most powerful of such central

traits – once a person is designated abnormal, all of his other behaviours and

characteristics are coloured by that label

All pseudopatients took extensive notes publicly; if no questions were asked of the

pseudopatients of their constant note-taking, how was their writing interpreted? Nursing

records for three patients indicate that the writing was seen as an aspect of their

pathological behaviour; given that the patient is in the hospital, he must be

psychologically disturbed, and given that he‟s disturbed, continuous writing must be a

behavioural manifestation of that disturbance, perhaps a subset of the compulsive

behaviours that are sometimes correlated with schizophrenia

A psychiatric label has a life and an influence of its own; once the impression has been

formed that the patient is schizophrenic, the expectation is that he will continue to be

schizophrenic; when a sufficient amount of time has passed, during which the patient has

done nothing bizarre, he is considered to be in remission and available for discharge; but

the label endures beyond discharge, with the unconfirmed expectation that he will behave

as a schizophrenic again; such labels, conferred by mental health professionals, are as

influential on the patients as they are on his relatives and friends, and it should not

surprise anyone that the diagnosis acts on all of them as a self-fulfilling prophecy;

eventually, the patient himself accepts the diagnosis, with all of its surplus meanings and

expectations, and behaves accordingly

The Consequences of Labeling and Depersonalization

We have known for a long time that diagnoses are often not useful or reliable, but we

have nevertheless continued to use them; we now know that we cannot distinguish

insanity from sanity

Recall again that a “type 2 error” in psychiatric diagnosis does not have the same

consequences it does in medical diagnosis; a diagnosis of cancer that has been found to

be in error is cause for celebration; but psychiatric diagnoses are rarely found to be in

error; the label sticks, a mark of inadequacy forever

21 – Down on Main Street; Drugs and the Small-Town Vortex (Paul Draus; Robert G.

Carlson)

One type of social deviance, according to sociologists, is crime; if deviance is the

violation of a social norm, then a crime is the violation of social norms that have been

made into laws

One type of crime that sociologists have long studied is illegal drug use; why do

segments of the population use and abuse illegal drugs? What social factors contribute to

certain groups using drugs? Most sociological research has focused on urban areas and

drug use

Draus and Carlson examine the social networks of drug use in small-town America; they

utilize qualitative interviews and focus groups to gain an understanding of the

relationship between illicit drug use, social networks, and geographical location in rural

Ohio; Draus‟ and Carlson‟s ethnographic account of life and social marginalization in

this small town reveals that many social factors lead people to deal and use illegal drugs

Introduction: Small-Town America, Social Networks, and Substance Abuse

As Parr and Philo have expressed it, cities are seen as places where people are physically

proximate but socially distant, while in rural areas the situation is reversed

Small towns are symbolically equated with the presence of high social capital, with

“imagined geographies” of reciprocal care and control; they are often the unstated norm

that the “deviant” inner city is defined against; for this very reason, perhaps, studies that

focus on the relationship between social networks and “deviant” health behaviours in

small towns are few – the moral geography of small towns is idealized, and “deviant”

behaviours such as illicit drug dealing and using are defined as essentially “out of place”;

however, the community‟s belief in its own imperviousness to problems can cause them

to overlook signs of trouble that seem obvious in retrospect

Content, Composition, and Context

Is exposure to illicit drugs and subsequent drug use in rural areas primarily a result of

neighbourhood or community-level factors (context), or is it largely a function of the

individual psychologies or personalities that happen to prevail in this population

(composition)?

Pescosolido and Levy have argued that there are three crucial dimensions of social

networks: that of network structure, that of network content, and that of network

function; in the case of drug-using networks, the surface function (that of illicit drug

using) may itself form the basis of social relationships (content) that constitute the

network (structure); if these drug-using networks overlap significantly with other

networks, especially those of work, neighbourhood, and family, we might predict that an

individual‟s access or exposure to non-drug users would be much more limited; in such

cases, the tight social networks of the small town might in fact amplify such behaviours,

rather than constrain them

Qualitative research on the relationship between social networks and substance use

behaviour has also shown distinct differences across contexts

In a sense, these abstracted concepts of social networks, social capital, and social support

might all be seen as elements or dimensions of a larger whole, that complex and concrete

set of lived relations and associations that constitute social space; from this perspective,

the attempt to analytically separate social networks from the physical locations where

they occur is somewhat beside the point, as these are all constitutive parts of a seamless

human and social geography; this paper employs an ethnographic approach to explore

this geography, based on the first-hand accounts of current and former drug users and

dealers in small-town Ohio; we take the position that understanding peoples‟ subjective

“sense of place” is essential to understanding so-called “place effects”

Method, Research Sites, and Sample Selection

This data in this paper are drawn from an ethno-epidemiological study designed to

examines substance abuse practices, health care needs, barriers to obtaining care, and

service utilization patterns over a 5-year period; respondent-driven sampling was used to

identify and recruit 249 active users of powder cocaine, crack cocaine, or

methamphetamine from three rural countries in west Ohio

Most of the participants were men and the majority of participants were unemployed,

while another 14% were only employed on a part-time basis

Though the specifics were different, each town had its own areas that were considered

“the wrong side of the tracks” and informally marked as such; local residents would often

point to these areas – and the bars or “watering holes” within or around them – as

epicentres of illicit drug activity

Describing Networks and Area Effects: The “Vortex,” the “Hole,” and the “Web”

Malik, when asked to describe the small-town social environment, he responded with a

metaphor drawn from physics: “I call these towns a vortex”

Chuch used a biology metaphor of the spider web; the spider web is an appropriate

analogy for the paradoxical nature of social networks and social capital within the small

town; the web can represent safety and support, surrounding and protecting person; it

can also refer to multiple networks that link one to different social circles; on the other

hand, it can also be a trap that entangles and suffocates

Social Networks and Social Capital: “There’s Two Sides to Every Town”

Drug using, in Eve‟s experience, was often deeply embedded in local ties, both familial

and social

The intermingling of “crack subculture” with the tight-knit social networks in these

marginalized areas had particular implications for the distribution of the drug

Boredom: “There Really Is Nothing To Do Here”

In the interviews, many participants expressed the belief that the problem of drug abuse

in the small town was in fact worse than it was in big cities

Drug Availability: “It’s Really Probably Going on More Down Here...”

Theo said that the small-town drug scene was “too open”; he described the local people

as “followers” who were “ten years back” in terms of trends, but who desperately wanted

to prove how “rough” they were

Jason claimed that crack dealers openly referred to it as “a million dollar town,” and

migrated there specifically to make money off the locals, who were willing and able to

pay more for a lower quality product

Discussion

The idea that small towns and rural areas are somehow “outside” the influence of

substance abuse has always been somewhat of an illusion

The assertion that drug use, in part, results from a lack of other meaningful activities,

coupled with the availability and opportunity provided by social networks consisting

largely of active drug users

Some have attempted to psychologise boredom, while for others boredom may represent

the alienation or anomie of an underemployed working class

It is clear that rural location itself proved to be no barrier to accessing illicit drugs for

these individuals, including those who rarely left the small towns where they lived

On the other hand, the lack of anonymity in small towns may pose a barrier to accessing

care for stigmatized conditions; embedded patterns of rural sociality may actively deter

people from seeking care for fear of detection or judgment

A “paradoxical social network” is one that provides a strong source of identity and yet

actively confines the individual; these rural drug users seem to occupy such a

“paradoxical place” of familiarity and estrangement, their association with other users

reinforced by a common marginality within the small town geography

Though the barriers between “urban” and “rural” areas are as porous and fluid as ever

they have been, these interviews reveal that many people within small towns still live

intensely local lives, and that place-bound associations actively shape their thoughts and

behaviours

44 – The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Max Weber)

The institution of religion is the topic of the following three selections; sociologists have

long studied how religion affects the social structure and the personal experience of

individuals in society; Max Weber, for example, often placed the institution of religion at

the center of his social analyses; Weber was particularly concerned with how changes in

the institution of religion influenced changes in other social institutions, especially the

economy

The selection excerpted here is from Weber‟s definitive and most famous study, The

Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; in his analysis of capitalism, Weber argues

that the early Protestant worldviews of Calvinism and Puritanism were the primary

factors in influencing the development of a capitalist economic system; without the

Protestant Reformation and a change in societal values toward rationality, capitalism

would not have evolved as we know it today

In modern times the Occident has developed, in addition to this, a very different form of

capitalism which has appeared nowhere else: the rational capitalistic organization of

(formally) free labour

Rational industrial organization, attuned to a regular market, and neither to political nor

irrationally speculative opportunities for profit, is not, however, the only peculiarity of

Western capitalism; the modern rational organization of the capitalistic enterprise would

not have been possible without two other important factors in its development: the

separation of business from the household, which completely dominates modern

economic life, and closely connected with it, rational bookkeeping...; it is rather the

origin of this sober bourgeois capitalism with its rational organization of free labour; or in

terms of cultural history, the problem which is certainly closely connected with that of

the origin of the capitalistic organization of labour, but is not quite the same thing

Now the peculiar modern Western form of capitalism has been, at first sight, strongly

influenced by the development of technical possibilities; the development of these

sciences and of the technique resting upon them now receives important stimulation from

these capitalistic interests in its practical economic application; however, calculation,

even with decimals, and algebra have been carried on in India, where the decimal system

was invented – but it was only made use of by developing capitalism in the West, while

in India it led to no modern arithmetic or book-keeping

Among those of undoubted importance are the rational structures of law and of

administration; for modern rational capitalism has need, not only of the technical means

of production, but of a calculable legal system and of administration in terms of formal

rules; however, why did not the capitalistic interests do the same in China or India? Why

did not the scientific, the artistic, the political, or the economic development there enter

upon that path of rationalization which is peculiar to the Occident?

For in all the above cases it is a question of the specific and peculiar rationalism of

Western culture

To approach the side of the problem which is generally most difficult to grasp is: the

influence of certain religious ideas on the development of an economic spirit, or the ethos

of an economic system; in this case we are dealing with the connection of the spirit of

modern economic life with the rational ethics of ascetic Protestantism

- That side of English Puritanism which was derived from Calvinism gives the

most consistent religious basis for the idea of the calling; not leisure and

enjoyment, but only activity serves to increase the glory of God according to he

definite manifestations of His will

But the most important thing was that even beyond that labour came to be considered in

itself the end of life, ordained as such by God; St. Paul‟s “He who will not work shall not

eat” hold unconditionally for everyone; unwillingness to work is symptomatic of the lack

of grace

For everyone without exception God‟s Providence has prepared a calling, which he

should profess and in which he should labour; and this calling is not, as it was for the

Lutheran, a fate to which he must submit and which he must make the best of, but God‟s

commandment to the individual to work for the divine glory

It is true that the usefulness of a calling, and thus its favour in the sight of God, is

measured primarily in moral terms, but a further criterion is found in private

profitableness; the superior indulgence of the seigneur and the parvenu ostentation of the

nouveau riche are equally detestable to asceticism; but it has the highest ethical

appreciation of the sober, middle-class, self-made man

This worldly Protestant asceticism, as we may recapitulate up to this point, acted

powerfully against the spontaneous enjoyment of possessions; it restricted consumption,

especially of luxuries

As far as the influence of the Puritan outlook extended, under all circumstances it

favoured the development of a rational bourgeois economic life; it was the most

important, and above all the only consistent influence in the development of that life

John Wesley said, “I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has

decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I do not see how it is possible, in the nature

of things, for any revival of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily

produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches...We ought not

to prevent people from being diligent and frugal; we must exhort all Christians to gain all

they can, and to save all they can; that is, in effect, to grow rich

The full economic effect of those great religious movements, whose significance for

economic development lay above all in their ascetic educative influence, generally came

only after the peak of the purely religious enthusiasm was past; then the intensity of the

search for the Kingdom of God commenced gradually to pass over into sober economic

virtue; the religious roots died out slowly, giving way to utilitarian worldliness

One of the fundamental elements of the spirit of modern capitalism, and not only of that

but of all modern culture: Rational conduct on the basis of the idea of the calling, was

born from the spirit of Christian asceticism; one has only to reread the passage from

Franklin “time is money” in order to see that the essential elements of the attitude which

was there called the spirit of capitalism are the same as what we have just shown to be the

content of the Puritan worldly asceticism

Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world,

material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives

of men as at no previous period in history; today the spirit of religious asceticism has

escaped from the cage

46 – Faith at Work (Russell Shorto)

In the tradition of Max Weber, who examined how the institution of religion influenced

changes in the economy, this excerpt by Russell Shorto similarly investigates this

relationship; in the U.S., a growing number of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians

are starting businesses they designate to be “Christian” workplaces; many of these people

identify themselves as marketplace Christians who operate their business as they think

the Bible would tell them to; Shorto interviews the people involved in running a Christian

book

The Riverview Community Bank opened as a “Christian financial institution,” with a

Bible buried in the foundation and the worlds “In God We Trust” engraved in the

cornerstone; if you ask Chuch Ripka who works there, they explain the bank‟s success by

saying that Jesus Christ has blessed them because they are obedient to his will; Jesus told

them to take his word out of the church and bring it to where people interact: the

marketplace

Thousands of businesses and other entities, from one-man operations to global

corporations to divisions of the federal government, have made room for Christianity on

the job, and in some cases have oriented themselves completely around Christian

precepts

To listen to marketplace pastors (like Chuch Ripka), you would think churches were

almost passé; for them work is the place, and Jesus is the antidote to both cubicle

boredom and Enron-style malfeasance; they integrate faith and work

With traditional institutions fragmenting and many people both hungry for spiritual

guidance and spending more time at work than ever, it was perhaps inevitable that the job

site would become a kind of new church

The idea of corporations dominated by a particular religious faith has a hint of

oppressiveness, a “Taliban Inc.” Aspect; some friction may come from the insistence of

marketplace Christians on seeing offices and factories as arenas for evangelism;

converting others, after all, is what being an evangelical Christian is all about; one tenet

listed in the Riverview Community Bank‟s first annual report is to “use the bank‟s

Christian principles to expand Christianity”

The first thing to know about Chuck Ripka is that he says Jesus talks to him – actually

speaks to him, calling him “Chuck”; many Christian business owners and residents say

they consider him to be not only a community leader and an expert in small-business

loans but also a conduit of the divine, a genuine holy man

However, while quite a few people look to him as a spiritual leader, his own faith is

based not on a denomination‟s core doctrine so much as on inner voices and convictions

Thanks to the value American law places on religious expression, proselytizing on the job

is perfectly legal, even in a government workplace, even when it‟s the boss who is doing

the pushing

A major response in this country (U.S.) to Islamic terrorism has been a rippling of

Christian muscle; the workplace-ministry phenomenon, too, seems to have gained

momentum since 9/11