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I have always considered myself an ethicist grounded in religious belief. By that I mean that I think ethics is based on the belief in the dignity and sacredness of the human person and an obligation to make all our human institutions work for the welfare of humanity. Those are core beliefs of my Catholic Christianity. I had the privilege of teaching business ethics in two very different university settings, at secular Stanford for 23 years and at Santa Clara University, a Jesuit Catholic school, for 17 years. Surprisingly, I found I did not have to teach ethics differently at one school versus the other. That fact has lessons for our current debate over whether America was founded as a Christian nation, occasioned by the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Let me first say I think those who argue that America was founded as a Christian nation are simply wrong. Two major figures I believe defined the moral character of America, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, were believers in God but not necessarily a Christian God. Jefferson explicitly rejected many, if not most, central Christian tenets, going so far as to write his own Bible excising all references to things he did not believe. Lincoln never joined a church, though late in life he was deeply religious in the broadest sense and talked of “God’s Providence.” The noted religious sociologist Robert Bellah makes the case that America was never Christian forcefully in his 1988 essay “Civil Religion in America,” which is wonderfully comprehensive, historical, and persuasive (see here). Bellah argues we have a civil religion, but that it was never Christian. He notes that Jefferson’s soaring prose in the Declaration, that the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” gives rights to all human beings and that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights,” recognizes a “higher power” but does not embrace a specific religion (see here for the text of the Declaration). The claim that “natural law” endows humans with certain rights is certainly not sectarian, and even leaves room for non-believers to anchor “natural rights” in sources other than religion. For those who today argue that the founders used many Christian concepts and metaphors, Bellah argues that this certainly does not make the American nation Christian. He even notes that many, if not most, of the concepts are drawn from the Old Testament, not the New Testament, and might better be described as Judaic rather than Christian. (Take that, Christian nationalists!) There is no question Americans have struggled to accommodate religious beliefs beyond the dominant Protestant religion of most of the founders and early leaders. These fights continue today with conflicts over posting the Ten Commandments in schoolrooms. Bellah and others have pointed out these conflicts are cultural, not religious. We did not have a Catholic president until 1960 and are struggling today with prejudice against the candidacy of Jewish and Muslim office seekers. Bellah traces the language of presidential speeches from Washington to Kennedy, showing that they consistently invoked God but never Jesus, and the inclusion of the phrases “under God” and “In God We Trust” in more recent history are a continuation of what he characterizes as our inclusive “civil religion.” So back to how I taught business ethics at Stanford and Santa Clara universities in both secular and religious contexts. I taught first at Stanford and incorporated readings from religious leaders (Popes, Jewish rabbis, theologians) on how religious thinking brought richness to our understanding of the rights of human beings working in business institutions. Students added perspectives from their Muslim, Confucian, Dharmic, and Native American religions, which I later added to the syllabus. At Santa Clara, having students read portions of the Catholic social encyclicals, which addressed business’ responsibility to its workers and later to the earth, was a no-brainer. But in the Catholic context, I felt it was important to include readings from other religious traditions, as well as from secular believers in the rights of human beings. This broadened the narrow Catholic perspective of some students. Reading the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see here), whose creation was a master class in embracing all believers, religious or not, became a touchstone in my teaching. Both at Stanford and later at Santa Clara, I could champion an identical model for ethical decision-making. It highlights six modes of ethical thinking: 1) what choice produces the greatest benefits and the least harm for human beings; 2) which choice respects the legitimate rights of all persons and delivers on the duties of others to protect those rights; 3) which choice distributes benefits and burdens fairly; 4) which choice serves the common good of the community; 5) which choice is compassionate to all affected; and 6) which choice demonstrates the virtues we hold important to being a “good” human being (see here for best current formulation of this model on the Santa Clara website). All of these ethical approaches are grounded in the concept of the natural rights of human beings—whether one finds those rights in religious concepts or the way of nature. To do ethics today, I believe you need an understanding of and commitment to those natural rights of human beings. We will sometimes differ in our detailed understanding of those rights, but we have 250 years of American experience in thinking deeply about their content. Lincoln led us in finally deciding that America’s understanding of human rights was incompatible with slavery, even if today we still struggle with racial bias and discrimination. We also struggle with how our commitment to human rights translates into our obligations to the world’s poor and to the environment. Cultural clashes between some adherents of a conservative evangelical Christianity and the rest of Americans continue, but let’s never forget that the history of America is generations of efforts to incorporate people of “new” religious and philosophical affiliations into the American nation. We may also cringe at statements like that of the Tennessee candidate for governor who this week said he would ban mosques and all non-Christian pagan religions in Tennessee because “freedom of religion,” only binds the federal government, not states (see here). The 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is an opportunity to reaffirm our understanding of America’s unique “civil religion” that draws upon the diverse religious beliefs of all of its citizens in order to advance the rights of all. That gives us all a shared foundation for ethics in our individual lives and in all our American institutions.
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