A Transformational Undertaking: Entrepreneurship and Economic

Freedom.
Randy M. Ataide, J.D.
Professor of Entrepreneurship
Executive Director, Fermanian Business & Economic Institute
Point Loma Nazarene University
RandyAtaide@pointloma.edu

*This paper is for review only and may not be published,

disseminated, printed or otherwise used by the reader without
the advance written approval of the author.

Abstract

For over 20 years Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination has

exerted significant pressure on Christian scholarship, theology and practice,
including the field of economics. One of the results of this pressure has been
for Christians to question the practices and assumptions which are taken for
granted, including over-consumption and consumerism. Also, the
development of “jubilee economics” now features prominently in much of the
conversation around Brueggemann’s vision.
However, to date advocates of both The Prophetic Imagination
generally and jubilee economics specifically have generally ignored the
reality of the entrepreneur, which exists in their midst. The likely reason for
this neglect is ignorance of the history, terminology and practice of
entrepreneurs, both in the for-profit and non-profit sectors, which only serves
to reinforce incorrect entrepreneurial stereotypes and myths. Instead, the
dominant language and motif that is embraced includes activists,
organizers, poets, journalists, artists, campaigners, designers,
musicians, researchers and theologians, but it is largely devoid of
inclusive language of the entrepreneur.
Brueggemann asserts that “The prophetic witness of the church is
not to be identified in some specific functions of ministry and not in
others. Prophetic witness is a mind-set. It is a countercultural
consciousness of how the community of faith sees all things.” In his or
her early tension-filled daily endeavors, usually obscured, marginalized
and ignored by those in power structures and leadership in and outside
of the Christian community, the entrepreneur toils to seek personal
liberty, economic freedom and community wholeness.
Entrepreneurship bears a strong witness to the interrelationship
between labor and personal faith and unavoidably is an exercise in
social and community responsibility. It moves beyond categories and
boundaries and is sui generis, an irreducible form of freedom. It is time
for The Prophetic Imagination community to seek common ground with
the millions of self-employed individuals and entrepreneurs, not only in

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the non-profit, microfinance and social entrepreneur fields but the for-
profit world as well.

1. Introduction
In the preface to the revised (2nd) edition of The Prophetic
Imagination (‘TPI’), Walter Brueggemann notes that “It is evident that
in our American society, as in those brutal contexts, there are two
types of imagination, that of ‘the generals and their opponents,’ or that
of consumer ideology and its resisters. The fact is that we in American
society too easily live ‘inside this imagination’ when prophetic
imagination is capable of enabling us to live inside ‘God’s
imagination.’”(Brueggemann, xx)
Some 20 years after he first articulated his basic thesis of
prophetic imagination, Brueggemann gave further development to TPI
and the “exilic” context of understanding modern American society,
including the Christian church and community of believers. He noted
that “exile is a rich a supple metaphor (and) as the biblical writers
turned the metaphor of exile in various and imaginative directions, so
may we.” (Clarke, 2) Brueggemann moves quickly to relate the “two
primary zones” of sexuality and economics for “those demands and
desires consist…in the struggle for the interface of freedom and
faithfulness, which requires endless interpretive work and reflection.”
(Clarke, 57-58)
But what specifically are the elements of “God’s imagination”
and “the supple metaphor” of exile? What is the practical outworking
of this imagination and metaphor? Is Brueggemann speaking only of
churches, denominations, pastors and teachers? Is he speaking of
governments and or political, economic, social and organizational
systems or simply individuals or small segments of communities? Is it
defined by consumer choices, purchases and protests against
consumerism? And perhaps most importantly, what is economic
freedom? These are each formidable and thorny questions which can
rightfully stir strong opinions, even (or perhaps more accurately
especially) within the church.
Fortunately, at the close of TPI, he offers a “Postscript on
Practice” which offers some examples of various ministries,
foundations and individuals who have a particularly high level of
passion and vision which serve as enactments of the prophetic
imagination. But wisely, Brueggemann notes the limitations of such
lists with this caution: “The prophetic witness of the church is not to be
identified in some specific functions of ministry and not in others.
Prophetic witness is a mind-set. It is a countercultural consciousness of
how the community of faith sees all things.” (Brueggemann, 124-125)

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Brueggemann also speaks extensively of the peril of numbness
regarding death. Here he means not necessarily physical death but the
belief that our institutions will never “die” through their failure and
collapse. “Kings need to assign the notion of ‘forever’ to every
historical accident over which they preside. Thus it is not thinkable
among us that our public institutions should collapse and we must
engage in deception and self-deception about our alienations.”
(Brueggemann, 42)
However, there is a group within society, as well as within the
church, who has been largely ignored by Brueggemann’s advocates:
the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur not only possesses the mindset of
counterculture action in continually critiquing, challenging and
ultimately conquering the dominant economic order, but would be
entirely comfortable with the tension of death, as the success rate for
entrepreneurial ventures ranges from 2-4% survival ten years after
creation. Few in or outside of the church live within or will ever
experience anything like this sort of tension.
It is the purpose of this paper to offer that as related to the field
and practice of business and economics that Brueggemann and other
similar authors have been too narrowly interpreted and applied by
church leadership to Christian doctrine, theology, and preaching, and
focused upon systems, individual buying decisions and corporate
citizenship. It will encourage TPI community towards serious
consideration that the entrepreneur, in either the non-profit or for-
profit setting, is a worthy symbol of the prophetic imagination.

2. God’s Economy?
Within the first few words of TPI Brueggemann addresses the
economic reality of today’s church: “The contemporary American
church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of
consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act.” His specific
hypothesis is that “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture,
nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the
consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”
(Italics in original) Brueggemann correctly notes at many points in the
text the limitations (and affirmations) of both the ‘liberal’ and
‘conservative’ positions and interpretations within the church, and also
that the alternative consciousness to be nurtured follows the process
of criticism of the dominant scheme which in turn leads the energizing
of believers and communities towards a more authentic manifestation
of personal and communal faith. (Brueggemann, 1-3) The motif for
Brueggemann’s vision of the American church comes from the rule of
Solomon, illustrated in figure 1 below:

Figure 1

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 Economics Politics
of Affluence of Oppression
(1 Kings 4:20-23) (1 Kings
5:13-18;
9:15-22)

Religion
of Immanence
(1 Kings 8:12-13)

Brueggemann is clear on the connection between religion,

economics and politics, and that as economic affluence rises, political
oppression increased to protect the dominant order and system of
affluence. The economically and politically astute Solomon knew that
religion had its place, but “it was a religion of compatibility where
abrasion was absent.” Through this, what Solomon had effectively
done what to many would have been considered impossible: “to have
taken the Mosaic innovation and rendered it null and void.”
(Brueggemann, 31-32)
Taking Brueggemann’s model and applying it to the
contemporary world, advocates of TPI often characterize its practical
applications as a pointing towards “God’s economy” which seeks to
replace the Solomonic reality with the authentic Mosaic vision of
“overagainstness.” Indeed, within the Call for Papers for the Point
Loma Nazarene University conference on “Nurturing the Prophetic
Imagination” where this paper was first presented, one of the
questions posed was “Is there such a thing as God’s Economy (a
Christian way of interacting economically in our world)?” Jean Bethke
Elshtain asserts that “The first question Christian theologians should
ask is, Given God’s economy towards us, how our inevitable
participation in the material goods of this world reflects that economy?
(Elshtain, 57) This is not a static or simple inquiry, for it has been
properly pointed out that there is a great deal of ambiguity between
issues of our faith and economics, “but the daily life of economics
stimulates constant, open questions of faith. Faith, on the other hand,
just as constantly calls economy into question. This is no new
question.” (Meeks, 21)
There are countless systems and theories of economics. To
attempt anywhere to definitively define what is “God’s economy” is a
formidable task; however a few divergent examples are useful.
Business as Mission (‘BAM’), is a global network of business persons

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that emphasizes a “kingdom mindset” where “profits are not the main
goal of a company but rather, the example of using Christian principles
in business.”1 The Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization in
2004 defines “BAM based on the principle of holistic mission, which is
an attempt to bring all aspects of life and holiness into an organic
whole” and includes “business related issues such as economic
development, employment and unemployment, economic justice and
the use and distribution of natural and creative resources among the
human family.”2 Regent University’s Center for Entrepreneurship is a
good example of a business schools within the Community that has
extensively incorporated BAM into their mission and curriculum.3 We
therefore at least can observe in these movements some tentative
steps towards at least discussing the realities and impacts of economic
systems, but within the construct of what could be understood as
“Christianizing” rather than rejecting capitalism.
However, others view that reformation of capitalism is not
acceptable, and there are several secular organizations involved in this
effort. On example is The Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE)
which has operated for over forty years as an interdisciplinary
association devoted to the study, development and application of
radical political economic analysis to social problems. URPE “presents
a continuing critique of the capitalist system and all forms of
exploitation and oppression while helping to construct a progressive
social policy and create socialist alternatives” while URPE works
internationally in cooperation with other organizations with speaking
and writing projects as well as political events.4 A much newer
organization is the New Economic Foundation, also known as “nef”
which claims that “We are an independent think-and-do tank. We
believe in economics as if people and the planet mattered. We aim to
improve quality of life by promoting innovative solutions that challenge
mainstream thinking on economic, environment and social issues. We
work in partnership and put people and the planet first.” nef
accomplishes this through a series of festivals with speakers
throughout the world.5

Concurrent with the rise of the modern civil rights era, some
serious questions of economic justice needed answering and powerful
religious voices and visions arose that did not hesitate to address the
questions of “God’s economy.” One example would be Mondragon Co-
operative Corporation based in Spain, founded by Basque priest Jose
Maria Arizmendiarrieta and an employer 60,000 people, with annual
sales of manufactured goods in excess of 3 billion dollars. Based upon
historic theology of Augustine and Chesterton, among others,
Mondragon holds to a social order through property distribution, wage
equity and a high esteem for the dignity of labor. (Cavanaugh, 103-
128) An alternative and more radical Christian voice, speaking against

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historical and oppression against impoverished peoples in South and
Central America manifested itself in liberation theology. (Batstone, 25-
32) Soon, reliance upon economic systems that created, maintained
and perpetuated economic disparities between people, and more
particularly among Christians, was labeled idolatry. The disparity
between the affluent North and the impoverished South came to be
known as the ‘citizenship of the poor’ and capitalism in most of its
forms was singled out as being particularly oppressive, described as
‘structural sin’ of the economic forms, functions. (Fitzgerald, 248-252)
Most economists and political scientists, however, as well as many
North American theologians and pastors, were content to leave the
dominant economic systems alone.
Within the North American Christian community some organized
groups also developed that also reject reform of the existing system
and advocate an economic revolution. A current voice and one that
frequently states their views as being congruent to TPI are those that
embrace similar language to the radical economists or something that
is embraces the Hebrew scriptural language of “jubilee economics.” In
these streams of thought, we frequently see listed such “radical” steps
of faith to include purchases of fair-trade products, support of farmers
markets, home gardens, and grower cooperatives as examples of the
practical application of these economic systems. An example of a
frequently cited firm as being a proper example include the Ben and
Jerry Ice Cream Company, which freely touts its commitment to peace,
justice, activism, living wages and other noble purposes and ideals.
The implication and desire of the firm is clearly that the consumer of
ice cream products can participate in a more just society through
supporting Ben and Jerry’s over similar products in the marketplace by
less economically astute and just companies. 6 On a more substantive
level, jubilee and radical economic proponents such as the Sabbath
Economics Collaborative offer that “practical applications” of this form
of economic justice can be accomplished through support of
community activism, socially responsible investing, sustainable
lifestyles, consumer credit and related activities.7
Laying aside the difficulties of Ben and Jerry’s being
owned by Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer brand multi-
national conglomerates that has been severely criticized, fairly or
unfairly, by a wide variety of organizations for pollution, deforestation,
racial injustice, and sexism8 such activities can be unsatisfying for
some within the Christian community who seek the “alternative
consciousness” that TPI urges. Stated another way, it seems at least
possible that what we are doing is simply re-framing our economic
choices into a more palatable form, suitable to the political,
environmental and cultural ethos of the particular moment. This should
not be construed as a wholesale criticism of the proponents of jubilee
and radical economics, but rather as a caution that there needs to be

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additional voices and views at the table as we embark on the journey
of seeking to determine what “God’s economy” is. It is beyond
the scope of this paper to attempt to definitively define what or what is
not “God’s economy.” However, the tendency is to construct a belief
system that simply justifies the culture and setting in which we live our
own lives, or in the alternative, to reject and castigate the same
culture and setting. What is clear is that Scripture does not shrink from
the burden of addressing issues of economics, and I would offer that
the Brueggemann ideal of the alternative community of Moses is
admittedly a radical notion. Brueggemann is likely correct when he
claims that “most of us are probably so used to these (Mosaic)
narratives that we have become insensitive to the radical and
revolutionary social reality that emerged because of Moses.”
(Brueggemann, 5)
But long before the rise of liberation theology, jubilee
economics, organic blueberries, Cherry Garcia ice cream and shade
grown Mexican coffee, French theologian Jacques Ellul pointed towards
the danger inherent in articulating a particular macroeconomic system
or style of economics being superior in all settings in all times. In
Money and Power, Ellul provokes us with the idea that mammon can
become a god whether in our riches we hoard our wealth our in our
poverty we covet it. Ellul would caution us as well even in the setting
where we have the right amount of wealth for we can become blinded
by our sense of stewardship. Ellul cautions us that we should hold
tenuously our certainty of speaking of “God’s economy.”(Dawn, 111)
Reflecting upon post-war Europe, he speaks of his view that “My
political activity and my reflections based on Marx’s predictions about
the evolution of capitalism did not come true. The transformation of
the world was far more complex than he had envisioned…and that is
why our societies, whether Socialist or capitalist, boil down to exactly
the same thing. Our societies are aristocratic societies.” (Vanderberg,
31, 45) It is to this assertion of economic aristocracy by Ellul that we
will turn to next, for these aristocratic principles within any economic
system that we find what is likely a greater danger.

3. The Aristocracy of Economics

Elluls’ view of the aristocrat was based upon his strongly held
notions and warnings against the rise of the technological era. He
believed that with the advent of modern technology that societies
would develop certain schisms and functions, and that ultimately the
theoretically trained experts in the sciences would achieve high status.
But Ellul did not stop there, for he argued that “Through two
centuries of European history, great individuals forged all history.
Today this is no longer true. History is made by the heavy mechanisms
of the state machinery and by the social forces that combine with or
contradict one another—hence, things that totally escape the power of

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the subject.” Ellul maintained that what was actually occurring in
society was the “suppression of meaning” and that that our religious
faith now was beginning to include “the forms of spiritualism, through
which we can separate totally…(W)e must not forget that this is what
Marx meant when he called religion the opiate of the people, when he
said that the function of religion is to continue the domination of
capitalism over the exploited…” (Vanderberg, 54) Ellul’s point that
technologically sophisticated economies inevitably gravitate towards
the primacy of the expert/aristocrat is one that merits further
consideration.
Towards Ellul’s point of the rise of the aristocracy manifested
primarily by the technocrat/leader, we find that some contemporary
secular business authors are in clear agreement with him. In a forceful
dialectic, entrepreneur and founder of Business Ethics Magazine
Marjorie Kelly claims that what Americans have experienced is
capitalism’s aristocratic form through a modern iteration of the ancient
“divine right of kings,” one in which the few control the many. Rather
than providing economic freedom, Kelly argues that “The democratic
ideals America’s founding fathers show the way out. That way leads to
economic democracy, to a new economic order that respects the
workings of the market while reclaiming its gifts for the many rather
than the few. In truth, an economic democratizing process means
extracting aristocratic bias from business institutions while leaving the
institutions themselves substantially intact, and healthier.” (Kelley, xii-
xiii) While Kelly’s economic democracy theory is likely in nascent form
it will “likely inspire a future, more mature probably more influential
work.”9
Long ago, Schumpeter noted that “class struggle was the
principal driving force of history” but unlike Marx he did not view it as
primarily a struggle between the privilege and underprivileged. Rather,
Schumpeter’s believed that the true struggle was between feudalism
and capitalism, among elites and elites: merchants and aristocrats,
entrepreneurs and bureaucrats, venture capitalists and Wall Street.”
But what Schumpeter failed to see (likely driven by his European
background), was that “the entrepreneurial spirit would emerge from
America’s past and rise to challenge, engage and extinguish the
embers of bureaucratic hegemony, bringing to an end the era of
monopoly capitalism.”(Acs and Armington, 5)
Extracting the aristocratic bias from the economic system is not
the same as radical or jubilee economic theories, both of which
repudiate large portions of traditional capitalist and free market
economics. Rather, reform to the existing system to minimize wealth
discrimination is Kelly’s purpose, where corporate wealth belongs to
those who helped create the wealth rather than simply bowing before
the throne of shareholder rights. Is this simple reform? Consider Kelly’s
assertion that “Under market principles wealth does not legitimately

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belong only to stockholders. Corporate wealth belongs to those who
create it, and community wealth belongs to all.” This is no timid
assertion, and it is likely that “Those are fighting words, of course, and
the people who presently hold the high ground of economic power in
society will not be amused.”(Kelley, ix)
But we must as well think of economic democracy on a number
of levels, for as has been noted at multiple points in this paper, our
personal economic choices are very important. “For example, what
would happen if we applied God’s economy and God’s concern for the
poor to decisions about weddings in our churches? I won’t even hazard
a guess at how much is spent for the average church wedding (when
$10,000 for one bridal gown is not out of the ordinary), but can the
fortunes expended be compatible with true fellowship with God’s
commands, when people are starving? (Dawn, 113)
Personal economic choices of food, shelter and housing are the
focus of much of those who proclaim jubilee and radical economics as
a superior moral economic system, if not actually the best
manifestation of “God’s economy.” I do not want to disparage these
choices, for they certainly have their place and their advocates are
often serious and committed Christians. But the wholesale rejection of
the entire free market system and the offering of a replacement may
be one possible manifestation of TPI, but there must be more. And
further, those within the Christian community, and perhaps most
importantly and urgently the pastors, theologians and teachers, should
recognize that there is an existing image in the marketplace that
frequently manifests the prophetic mindset: the entrepreneur.

4. Entrepreneur As An Alternative “Supple Metaphor”

Brueggemann details at length in TPI the profound
distinctiveness between the Israel of Moses, one based upon scarcity,
tension and a constant state of anxiety and that of Solomon, a new
reality unparalleled in the history of Israel. Anxiety is replaced with
aplenty, and for the first time Israel was not immediately concerned
over the basic elements of survival, and what arose was soon a
community not based upon equality and mutuality, but one that soon
developed an oppressive social policy. Ultimately, this led to a sense of
complacency, or what Brueggemann would call the ‘dissipation of the
over-againstness” towards God and his presence, which is most clearly
understood by the three interrelated elements of the economics of
affluence, the politics of oppression and the religion of immanence.
(Brueggemann, 30)
In his conclusion of this section of TPI titled Royal Consciousness,
he makes a striking statement detailing the complacency and neglect
of passion and pathos, detailing a stifling culture devoid of prophetic
energy and authentic relationship with God. He refers to it as a “royal

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program of achievable satiation” which should give pause to anyone
involved in the profession of business and economics:

“(It) is fed by a management mentality that believes there are

no mysteries to honor,
only problems to be solved. This, the Solomonic evidence
urges, was not a time of
great leadership, heroic battles or bold initiatives. It was a
time governed by the
cost-accounting of a management mentality.” (Brueggemann,
37)

It is from this statement that those within the business and

economics community will recognize a convergence between theology
and praxis. For those within the field of entrepreneurship, either in
theory or practice, Brueggemann’s language is unmistakable: it is the
historical and contemporary language of entrepreneurship, which
rejects notions of a “cost-accounting management mentality” as much
as anyone. We clearly see this in what is widely regarded as the first
definition and use of entrepreneur, by the 17th century European
economist Richard Cantillon. In his economic treatise on agricultural
production (the dominant economic engine of all world economies
throughout most of history) known as the Essai, Cantillon offered the
French term entrepreneur meaning “one who undertakes.”
Distinguishing the “undertaker” from landowners and hired labor, he
stated that “Undertakers of all kinds adjust to risks [and] live at
uncertainty.” Further, Cantillon makes it clear that there is no
distinguishing in class between hired labor and the undertaker, for they
were to be view as equal. The distinguishing characteristic was that
hired labor worked for a defined wage while the undertaker was self-
employed. (Aspromorgous, 365-66) While Cantillon’s worked in relative
obscurity during his lifetime, when Adam Smith in his Wealth of
Nations restated Cantillon’s entrepreneurial insight his work began to
be seriously considered.
It is critical to note that there is no English word that can
translate the French word entrepreneur, and very early entrepreneur
was rendered in English as “master”, “speculator” and “projector”, all
terms which are simply inadequate to convey Cantillon’s work.
Cantillon’s main contemporary was Jean-Baptiste Say, who too
recognized that there was indeed a unique and previously unidentified
actor in the economy and embraced similar language as Cantillon for
entrepreneur. Noting the considerable challenges of translating, Say’s
translator Prinsep, decided to use the term "adventurer" because, as
he explained, the term "entrepreneur" was "difficult to render into
English". The point was emphasized by Say in his comparison of the
English and Italian languages, for the latter had no less than four words

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equivalent in meaning to entrepreneur: imprenditore, impresario,
intraprenditore and intra-prensore.” (Koolman 281-285)
With time, this translation difficulty likely led to the entrepreneur
developing into a “cultural myth” where the realities and dangers of
attempting to be self-employed was overshadowed by the publicity
and attention accorded the small number of entrepreneurs who
achieved great success. (Pinto, 75-77) Headline grabbing inventors and
entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others who achieved
incredible success while taking great risks with a single-minded
purpose came to become the synonym for entrepreneur for most
people. While the specific motivations that drive Entrepreneurs are
complex, success, however it is measured, is typically not the driving
motivation of the Entrepreneur. (Shane, 91-110) This fact often
surprises many non-entrepreneurs, especially church leaders,
theologians and pastors.
However, throughout European and North American business
and economic theory, there developed the widespread understanding
of the key participants in the economy known as a “triad of agents”
composed of landowners (property owners), workmen (labor) and
capitalists (financiers and bankers), and until very recently
entrepreneurship was not even a field of study in colleges and
universities. Western business became dominated by management
theory, tools and procedures, and the rise of the modern corporation
only formalized management as the focus of business and economics
with widely mixed results, with little attention give to the entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship has long been overlooked as a topic of economic
study. (Schram, 8)
Few have written on the topic of the shortcoming of managerial
thinking as forcefully and with as much credibility as Henry Mintzberg
of McGill University, who has been dubbed the “practical radical.”
Mintzberg contends that there is “a war between two quite different
cultures of achievement: one, the entrepreneurial, informal, outside-
normal-channels, no-guarantee and the other professional,
representing security, dignity and order” and that “status goes to the
latter.” A harsh critic of business education and the University system,
he has argued that “At just the time when American business is said to
need the flexibility and the lack of hierarchy that an entrepreneurial
climate can create, more and more businessmen seem to feel that
their chances for personal success will be greatest if they become not
entrepreneurs but professionals, with advanced educational degrees.”
(Shane et al, 128)
One must place Mintzberg’s comments as occurring within a
significant shift in modern entrepreneurial research and practice that
traces itself back to the highly influential Schumpeter in the mid 20th
century. While there remains uncertainty as to what entrepreneurship
is in contemporary business and economic literature, there is clearly a

11
move away from the individual notions of entrepreneurs as
mythological type figures with superb technical skills, passion and a
single minded focus. This began in 1959 when Cole asserted that
entrepreneurship was “the purposeful activity of an individual or a
group of associated individuals undertaken to initiate, maintain, or
aggrandize a profit-oriented business unit for the production or
distribution of economic goods and services.”(Yusef, 117) With time
and the advent of social entrepreneurship, microfinance and the non-
profit market this definition would be broadened as illustrated below in
Figure 2:

Figure 2

Cole’s definition remains an important benchmark for us as while

he maintained Cantillon’s original thought of undertaking,
entrepreneurship was clearly no longer exclusively the domain of the
individual. It became and is becoming much more of a group,
community and social phenomena and field. Schumpeter as well
modified his own original view of the purpose of the entrepreneur in
creating an individual occupation as he later placed entrepreneurship
clearly within organizational change and renewal. “Though
entrepreneurship can involve—and thus often is mistaken for—
invention, creativity, management, starting a small business, or
becoming self-employed, it is neither identical with nor reducible to
any of them. The defining trait of entrepreneurship is the creation of a
novel enterprise that the market is willing to adopt.” (Schram, 7)
Over thirty years ago, Harvard Business School Professor
Abraham Zaleznik provided the business community with a stirring call
to understanding business in a new way, and he dealt directly with the

12
“management mentality.” The era had passed of rigid organizational
models, competence and capability building, the balance of power, and
related frameworks that had held sway over the American business
system for decades. In Brueggemann type language, Zaleznik offered
the view of the business leader as artist, one who was adaptable and
imaginative, using inspiration, passion and creative energy to lead
their organizations: “The difference between managers and leaders
lies in the conceptions they hold, deep in their psyches, of chaos and
order. Leaders…tolerate chaos and a lack of structure and are willing
to delay closure in order to understand the issues more fully. In this
way, Zaleznik argued leaders are much more like artists, scientists and
other creative thinkers than they are with managers. Organizations
need both managers and leaders but developing both creates a
reduced focus on logic and the need for strategic exercises in favor of
an environment where creativity and imagination are permitted to
flourish.
Another highly influential voice in entrepreneurship has been the
Kauffmann Foundation, who has long supported entrepreneurial
research and development, both in for profit and nonprofit ventures. In
2008, a consortium of senior educators from leading universities
including M.I.T., Stanford, Columbia and Duke collaborated on a
Kauffmann Report which stated that “Entrepreneurship is a process of
fundamental transformation: from innovative idea to enterprise and
from enterprise to value. The very ordinariness of entrepreneurship in
American commerce points to a society that prizes originality and
improvement and the human traits that enable both. Thus,
entrepreneurship is more than a business practice. As a distinct mode
of thought and action, it derives from business but can operate in any
realm of human endeavor.” The Kauffmann Report speaks in similar
language of the dynamic and integrative nature of the Mosaic
community. “Entrepreneurship merges the visionary and the
pragmatic. It requires knowledge, imagination, perception, practicality,
persistence, and attention to others. Entrepreneurship is a self-
actualizing and a self-transcending activity that—through
responsiveness to the market—integrates the self, the entrepreneur,
with society.” (Schramm, 12)
Thus, the entrepreneur too seeks a radical social reality, one
that continually upends the dominant order. Similarly, the Israel of
Moses that Brueggemann speaks of lives in a reality of scarcity,
tension and a constant state of anxiety. While it is clear that TPI is
laced with language of critique, lament and anguish, we must also
acknowledge that imbedded as well is language of energy, inspiration,
evocation and the emergence of a new reality. While profoundly
theological, this language is not exclusively theological for it has
always existed in the thoughts, minds and practices of the
entrepreneurs. Further, we must again recall Brueggemann’s caution

13
that “The prophetic witness of the church is not to be identified in
some specific functions of ministry and not in others. Prophetic witness
is a mind-set. It is a countercultural consciousness of how the
community of faith sees all things.” Thus, the entrepreneur should
stand alongside the other dominant symbols and metaphors of the PTI
as one worth serious consideration.

V. Finding Common Ground

In 2004, Professor Richard J. Goossen of Trinity Western
University casts a clear indictment of the church and religious leaders
that “…religious leaders speak inadequately about business—more so
than almost anything else they preach on. Their professional
vocabulary, for the most part, so misses the point that it is painful to
listen to them. The alarming state of the church’s ability to be a
relevant force influencing business can be summered up in a simple
observation: we already see many signs of Christian businesspeople
from every denomination reject religion, and religion overwhelmingly
rejecting businesspeople.” (Goossen, 62) It has been argued that
entrepreneurs with religious beliefs in particular are ignored, poorly
defined and ultimately marginalized from not only the religious
community but also from the entrepreneurial and business world.
(Ataide, 3-4)
Religious leaders and advocates of radical and jubilee economics
would be well served to consider the entrepreneur as a viable ally in
the TPI, for few within the fields of business and economics have been
“outsiders” as much as the entrepreneur and the importance of the
entrepreneur to economic activity and societal transformation cannot
be underestimated. Entrepreneurship has been and remains an
important driver of economic and social growth both in the U.S. and
worldwide. Nearly seventy percent of the U.S. economic growth can be
attributed to entrepreneurial activity (Reynolds, Hay & Camp, 2000).
Over the past twenty years, two-third of all jobs and differences in
economic growth rates among industrialized countries can be
attributed to entrepreneurship (NCOE, 2002). Sixty seven percent of all
inventions (Zacharakis, Reynolds & Bygrave, 2001) and ninety five
percent of all radical innovations created since World War II (Timmons,
1999) originated in entrepreneurial firms. Some examples of
entrepreneurship-driven innovation include the heart valve, assembly
line, air conditioning, artificial skin, hydraulic brake, and soft contact
lenses (Slaughter, 1996; Timmons, 1999) TPI simply cannot ignore this
group who share many of the same fundamental characteristics that
they advocate, albeit while operating within the existing economic
system.
Intriguingly, perhaps it is that TPI is actually supporting and
affirming the entrepreneur without acknowledging it. It does not take
one long to see entrepreneurial examples in the TPI literature.

14
Brueggemann lists many examples including the Family Counseling
Services Urban Ministries which is “presided over by cunning and
knowing Bob Lupton…(and) operates entrepreneurially and taps
effectively into resources of corporate capitalism in the enactment of
its dreams.” In Memphis, an entrepreneurial personality leads the
Church Health Center provides health care for the poor and “The
moving force for this immense project is Scott Morris. Morris combines
medical expertise and theological sensitivity, a capacity for
organizational effectiveness and abundant people skills.”
(Brueggemann, 122-123)
So too does Marva Dawn note the entrepreneurial spirit and
rejection of the bureaucracy when she recounts Dorothy Day, co-
founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, and the importance of
“working from the bottom” with an “intense, persisting localism” and
with true entrepreneurial zeal “She realized full well that federal
programs seemed to provide the answer to urgent problems…(and)
knew the power of the modern nation-state, its capacity to pull people
together, its capacity to launch programs, to mobilize unparalleled
resources. Her purposes were different.” (Dawn 155-156) All of this is
unmistakable entrepreneurial endeavor, committed to in one form or
another, subverting the dominant powers through innovation,
nimbleness, flexibility and strategic allocation of resources.
Entrepreneurship need not be viewed as hostile in any way
towards religious beliefs. In some ways, there is a natural kinship
between the entrepreneur and the “theological notion of the
civilisation of poverty (which) proposes as a dynamic principle the
‘dignification’ of labour in explicit contrast to the accumulation of
capital.” (Fitzgerald, 251) Research overwhelmingly confirms that
financial gain is not a primary goal of the majority of entrepreneurs,
but rather individual and organizational freedom and respect is at its
core. (Shane) Further, contemporary research has been pointing to the
significant connections between the two including that there is a clear
intellectual connection between Islam and Christianity and
entrepreneurship in particular. (Autresch et al, 4-8) “Religion and
political science offer interesting options to explore the power of
entrepreneurial activity outside the realm of business. A very
promising area that may well become fundamental to
entrepreneurship education builds on research in psychology and
sociology. This area of learning analyzes and teaches the traits that
correlate with entrepreneurial achievement, such as creativity,
innovation, and self-efficacy.” (Schram, 13) Social entrepreneurship in
particular bears a strong witness to this interrelationship between
entrepreneurship and personal faith. Unavoidably, therefore,
entrepreneurship is an exercise in social responsibility…It is sui
generis, an irreducible form of freedom. (Schram, 7-8)

15
 However, the Christian community, church leadership including
pastors, theologians and scholars, needs to modify their language to
include entrepreneurs and their activities when they speak of TPI and
their economic proposals. What drives this ignorance? Likely a lack of
knowledge of the field and practice of entrepreneurship, driven by the
stereotype and mythology of entrepreneurs as elites, headquartered in
dynamic locales and clusters throughout the U.S. But the reality is
much different: Silicon Valley, Seattle and other perceived
entrepreneurial hubs are far behind cities such as Laramie, Wyoming;
Anchorage, Alaska; Rapid City, South Dakota; and Enid, Oklahoma,
typically with only about 40 percent the per capita business formation
of much more rural areas.(Shane, 23) TPI is thinking of a different
dominant language and motif that is embraced in radical and jubilee
economics, activists, organizers, poets, journalists, artists,
campaigners, designers, musicians, researchers and theologians, but it
is largely devoid of inclusive language of the entrepreneur. It is time
for this movement to seek common ground with the millions of self-
employed individuals and entrepreneurs, not only in the non-profit,
microfinance and social entrepreneur fields but the for-profit world as
well.
Finally, understanding symbols is notoriously tricky, and
therefore this points to the possibility that the questions related to the
potential, type and nature of “God’s economy” is actually not the
correct question for the Christian. Luke Timothy Johnson has rightly
noted the following historical and contemporary tension: “It is good to
remember that the construction of symbolic worlds—especially of
religious symbols—did not occupy all or even the best efforts of those
committed to the task. Their symbolic world involved politics,
economics, and warfare as much as magic and mystery cults. However
much religious symbols legitimized and expressed those other
activities, it was probably true then, as now, that greater effort went
into making a living than into the interpretation of living.” (Johnson, 22)
Ergo the entrepreneur.
Few know and experience this dichotomy as well as the
entrepreneur who must continually reinvent and often re-imagine his
or her own role, activities and enterprise simply to survive for another
day. The entrepreneur has no systematized protector, guardian or
advocate but continually lives, survives and even thrives in a state of
chaos, shortage and tension—of profound faith actually—that those
who imagine a new reality would be well served to carefully consider.
Alan Roxburgh addresses the need of Christian leaders to rethink the
power structures and parties involved in imagining a new reality, a
view which seems to clearly square with Brueggemann’s. “Leaders
must learn how to identify and bring into their organizations the
leaders who are now largely absent: prophets and barbarians. These
might not be the kind of designations that sit well with church

16
organizations. These leaders are the new architects who can perceive
structural formations that are not yet in existence; they are the
apostles who will stretch a church system far beyond its inherited
world.” (Roxburgh, 119) These types of leaders, from any and all parts
of the Christian community sound entirely in conformance with the
Mosaic vision of biblical community.
I encourage the Christian and TPI community to honor the
implications of what Brueggemann says is difficult but not impossible
for Christian congregations in the United States to do: think of diverse
individuals and sub-communities as a “thinkable mode of ministry.”
(Brueggemann, xv.) Entrepreneurs may not practice radical or jubilee
economics, and they may not lead congregations and churches or
write theological treatises, but they are engaged in ministry in and all
around the church. They are a natural advocate and ally of Christian
leaders, and are at least, a “thinkable mode of ministry” in the realm of
the prophetic imagination.

Endnotes

17
1
See http://www.businessasmissionnetwork.com/2006/10/rich-history-of-business-as-mission.html
2
http://www.regententrepreneur.org/paradigm.html
3
See Regent’s website at http://www.regententrepreneur.org/index.html
4
http://www.urpe.org/about/abouthome.html
5
http://thebiggerpicture2009.org/about-ne
6
See for example http://www.pointloma.edu/Roots_of_Giving/The_Gift.htm as well as
http://www.benjerry.com/activism/peace-and-justice/
7
See http://www.sabbatheconomics.org/content/page.php?section=3&content_id=9
8
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unilever
9
http://books.google.com/books?id=0nVIJfhZiV4C&sitesec=reviews&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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