42 - A Test-Case in Communication

A Test-Case in Communication
By Bowen H. McCoy

HAVE been interested in the interrelationships between business and the church for several years as a result of peripheral involvements in the Nestle church boycott and the church-led battles over South African proxy-issues. In 1978, I appeared with Tim Smith, of the Center for Corporate Responsibility, on a panel before a church group. It was my role to support the multinational corporations. I was prepared to be thoroughly intimidated by Tim, who turned out to be rather pleasant; but I was not prepared to be intimidated by my fellow church members who viewed me in my role as some type of devil in a medieval morality play. I was so heavily stereotyped as an evil person for defending business that I felt as though someone had lowered a mask and a costume over me.

Lack of understanding and communication is a characteristic of the relationship between church and business. Many young clergy are educated in an anti-business environment and become disillusioned and ineffectual when they must deal with business people for leadership and funds in suburban communities. Business people can feel awkward, unprepared, and confused discussing their feelings about ethics, morality, and values and thus leave the turf to professional philosophers and social scientists who may not, in a practical sense, know what they are talking about. On the other hand, I have seen strong-willed business people become pious and ineffective as they put on their "I'm in church now" mask at church business meetings.

I

Over the years, I have known a half dozen individuals who have been convicted of criminal acts. Three of them were undoubtedly crooks. The other three, who each served prison terms, were not, in my opinion, even close to being criminals. One was caught up in Watergate; the other two in price fixing. One in particular, an active church member, was never visited by his minister, though he was imprisoned about a ninety minute drive away. His minister was not comfortable dealing with the situation.

In 1982, I was afforded a rare opportunity to collect my thoughts in the area of church and business as a result of a sabbatical leave from my

Bowen H. McCoy is a Managing Director of Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc., New York, N.Y. A graduate of Stanford and the Harvard Business School, he has been active as a Presbyterian elder and a member of the Advisory Council to the Trinity Center for Ethics and Corporate Policy at Trinity Church, Wall Street. Articles by him have appeared in the Harvard Business Review and the Journal of the American Management Association.

43 - A Test-Case in Communication

firm. I spent three months as Executive-in-Residence at the Center for Ethics and Social Policy (the "Center") at the Graduate Theological Union adjacent to the University of California at Berkeley. At the Center, I worked closely with Dr. Charles McCoy (no relation), Director of the Center and Professor of Theological Ethics at the Pacific School of Religion.

I spent a day a week working closely with my tutor in the area of business ethics. We reviewed the syllabi of some twenty-five different courses in business ethics and business responsibility taught at institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Dartmouth, Notre Dame, and Santa Clara. We also read about twenty textbooks in the field and discussed what we felt were the strong and weak points of each. In addition, I worked with Charles McCoy on an outline for a book he is writing, and I spent time with several graduate students discussing their research. Concurrently, I was teaching two sections of second-year finance, four days a week, at Stanford Graduate School of Business. At Stanford, I worked also with Professor Kirk Hanson in his business ethics course.

I learned much from my experiences at the Berkeley Center. As a result of the opportunity, I wrote two articles: one on business ethics and the other on the teaching of business ethics. I have lectured on business ethics at my local church, and I am working with Charles McCoy on a new center for ethics and corporate policy at Trinity Church in New York.

The purpose of this report is to share a handful of vignettes which illustrate for me the gap in preconceptions between business people and church people, or at least seminarians and seminary faculty. As can be seen, the preconceptions are not all one-sided. They involve me, too.

II

My first official act at the Center was to attend a 10:00 a.m. ecumenical church service to celebrate the beginning of the winter quarter. I was startled to realize that the form of the Lord's Prayer which everyone seemed to know was foreign to me. The pew hymnals had been rendered genderless by a women's organization. There was a discussion of liberation theology. I knew immediately that I was a long way from my upper middle-class, stereotyped, suburban church.

At lunch the first day, Charles McCoy was busy with a faculty meeting, so he parked me in the student cafeteria with a young woman. It was only after a half hour of animated conversation that I realized with a start that she was a nun doing a year of graduate work. I could see my preconceptions were already coming apart. The posters in the dining hall urged a boycott of Coors beer. Anti-nuclear protests, South Africa, even Nestle I was prepared for. A beer boycott seemed downright anti-collegiate.

The third week, Charles McCoy said he would be busy after lunch and that one of his graduate students had asked to spend a couple of

44 - A Test-Case in Communication

hours with me. I found myself alone with a rather large, bearded, black man who was an inner city minister back for an additional year of study. He sized me up and then asked if I had ever heard of Malcolm X. I replied that I had indeed, proudly adding that I had read his autobiography. "Good!" the minister responded. "Then you know where I stand." "I'm not sure," I replied. "I just want you to know before we start," he said, "that along with Malcolm X, I believe all capitalists are bloodsuckers!" ("Only an hour and fifty minutes to go," was all I could think.)

The next Wednesday was Ash Wednesday. At the distribution of the ashes, I purposely lined up in front of the black minister in order to receive his blessing. At the end and as a part of the chapel service, a formal announcement invited participants to become involved in an anti-nuclear protest demonstration at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory that afternoon.

Two weeks later, I sat as Charles McCoy's guest at a monthly board of directors meeting of the Graduate Theological Union. I was asked to report on my work in business ethics. The report appeared to be well received, with supportive and friendly discussion from individuals such as Robert McAfee Brown and Robert Kimball. Then the individual seated next to me calmly made one of the most outrageous anti-business statements I've heard, and he did not even realize that he had done so. I'm beginning to understand how others feel in the face of relentless, ingrained, unconscious prejudice.

That evening the executive committee of the Center for Women in Religion invited me to join them for two hours of discussion, wine, and supper. I heard several grievances expressed toward specific ministers and priests whom the women felt were anti-feminist, as well as tales of sexual harassment. They asserted that theological education for women is itself unethical if the churches throughout the country are not prepared to provide equal opportunity for women. They then asked me to review their printed fund-raising materials and offer constructive criticism. They were surprised that I was offended by the four letter words in the document with which they expressed their point of view.

The final day of my visit I conducted a two-hour seminar with the social science faculty at Pacific School of Religion. We began with strong assertions that business is unethical, and that business must be a positive force in redistributing wealth world-wide and solving the problems of hunger and social injustice wherever they exist. We ended agreeing that all large social units, whether they be the government, corporations, universities, or churches, tend to de-personalize the individual, become abstract, and, in a sense, unethical.

III

What conclusions can one draw from these vignettes? Of primary interest was the necessity for me to face up to my own stereotypical behavior patterns. The situation was structured so that I was a visitor, a guest in residence; and so I preconditioned myself to react to everything

45 - A Test-Case in Communication

as an observer, as a hospitable guest in what was at times to me a bizarre yet very real environment. I was preconditioned in a perhaps unnatural way to react to my experiences with openness and not with anger, to listen intently, and learn.

I saw and learned a great deal. I was shocked, not by any particular set of experiences, but by the immense gap between my own perceptions of reality as an affluent Christian businessman and the perceptions of the seminarians and the faculty. The seminarians exhibited high energy, dedication, and sincere concern for social justice, the welfare of others throughout the world, and a commitment to serve others. Issues which many of my church friends have put aside as unsolvable or irrelevant to their own lives have a powerful freshness and reality to seminarians. My concern is not with the cultural clashes which I experienced, but rather that they can work at their mission successfully and in a practical manner.

Time and again, after long hard listening and questioning, students began to perceive that they were not anti-business as such, but they were inimicable to all large, depersonalized organizations which had lost touch and integrity with the individual. This perception provides a common ground for discussion among almost all church people, without turning anyone off at the outset.

A major point which seminarians, ministers, and priests must comprehend, if they are to be relevant, is that working within the system from a common set of concerns and definitions is far more effective than attempting to tear the system apart without fully understanding it. There is an urgent need for dialogue and healthy debate among the idealistic, strident young and the middle-aged, affluent, who control the voluntary funding of social concerns.

My experience was unique; but what can an individual accomplish? Those seminarians who were incorrigibly anti-business would view me only as an isolated aberration, the exception which proves the rule. Yet, I have come away with a strong feeling that somehow seminarians should be exposed to the real world.

Perhaps a "work-study" component should be included in all seminary curricula. Many colleges have a year abroad. Some colleges prescribe student work for six months. A seminary which persuaded students to become involved with business, or even with aiding in the annual budget-raising process of a local church, would give the students a greater perception of reality.

IV

Seminarians, in my opinion, need to understand the background concerns and needs of their prospective congregations. To serve, one must listen and understand. To teach, one must hear and build upon what is already there, not attempt to tear it down. To lead, one must gain confidence and respect, not anger and ill-will. How much heartbreak is

46 - A Test-Case in Communication

caused because seminaries send out inspired evangelists who are not prepared to cope with the world as they find it? I am reminded often of the minister who could not bring himself to visit the Christian businessman from his congregation who was imprisoned nearby.

As I reworked this article, I was reading a biography of one of my heroes, Willi Unsoeld. It is entitled Ascent: The Spiritual and Physical Quest of Willi Unsoeld. Willi did it all. He climbed Mt. Everest-the hard way. He directed the Peace Corps in Nepal. He taught philosophy at Evergreen College. He was Associate Director of Outward Bound. He even studied for a year at Pacific School of Religion. I am an inveterate hiker, and I've been four times to Nepal where I have hiked a thousand miles in the Himalayas. I bad met Willi before his unfortunate death on Mt. Rainier.

Yet, ironically, the short passage in the book which to me captures the man is the following quotation from a friend:' "The Unsoelds considered what you do spontaneously, emotionally, as the truth; but it had to be their spontaneity, not yours."

In a way, that is the point of it all. Seminaries attract idealistic, committed, dedicated individuals. Who else but a somewhat arrogant person could possibly mount a pulpit and proclaim the Word of God? Preachers rationalize this by appearing humble and attesting that God speaks through their agency. Yet we know it takes self-confidence and ego to stand before a living, breathing congregation. My message to seminarians is simple. Listen. Listen hard. Then build upon what you find to be true.