What is it about?
Does work demand conformity? How far should we bring other aspects of our lives into our job roles? Moreover, how far should religion - its beliefs and practices - be allowed into our working lives? These are some of the questions which are addressed in this chapter based on my interviews with British Quakers. These Quakers tell me that their religion is important to them at work: their religion fits in with their employment and their employment complements their religious beliefs and practices. But outlying cases in the study reveal what can happen when differences with the work organisation emerge. The Quaker quest to harmonise the world becomes then more conflicted and, in outlying cases, unmanageably so. In these cases, religion at work is no longer a good idea. The organisational arrangement appears instead antagonistic to their religious ends and its mood music a capricious cacophony of frustrated ambition for a better world. The marriage of religion and work is then seen as one of convenience. It is set out ultimately on the work organisation's 'take it or leave it' terms.
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Why is it important?
This research is important because work and religion have much in common insofar as they often share fundamentally aspirations to make better the world. However, under certain conditions a cleavage in practice emerges. This chapter theorises both this commonality and their differences as religion is lived out in the context of the organisational everyday. Institutions across the globe, once taken for granted, are now being questioned. Sometimes, even their reasons for existing are under attack. Work and religious organisations hold sway over the lives innumerable people, directly and indirectly. Accepted views of work or what counts as religion are on the move specially as society in the twenty-first century evolves, spurred on by technological innovations. This research tries to address the core of what work and religion means to the members of a small, liberal faith in the British context. In so doing, it suggests something bigger: that religion lived out at work is contingent on the approval of the work organisation and its claimed values. These values can change adding a further condition to the chimerical compact between religion and the working world.
Perspectives
I believe that this chapter identifies how religion - beyond the boundaries of the Quaker faith - can be viewed more clearly in everyday terms. If religion is the belief that life can be lived out faithfully according to first principles. All else is religious superstructure. So that, if we want to see what religion means, we can observe at work how these claims shade into everyday practice. Religious ends are shared when it intersects with work but tend to remain latent and unseen if still potent within the weeds and undergrowth of organisational workaday. Religion and work emerge in this research as two everyday aspects of the same, shared ambition: a collective impulse to make better the temporal world.
Dr Mark John Read
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This page is a summary of: Research Handbook on the Sociology of Organizations, June 2022, Edward Elgar Publishing,
DOI: 10.4337/9781839103261.
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