Business Ethics Today: The Sacred and the Market

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This anthology is the result of the vision of John Templeton, Jr., in seeing the need to look into the contribution of Christianity to our communities. In 2003, Templeton challenged Philip J. Clements, a fellow board member of the National Bible Association, to consider the contribution of Christianity to commerce. That challenge led to six years of research and analysis based up-on both Clements' experience in business and his connection with Christianity personally and through his obtaining a Masters in Theological Studies at the Reformed Theological Seminary. The conclusion was that Templeton was right - Christianity that came out of the Reformation did create much of the commercial environment we experience today. As part of their work on the National Bible Association, both Templeton and Clements connected with Peter A. Lillback, president of Westminster Theological Seminary . Clements and Lillback explored the possibility of a business ethics conference to begin the process of creating a business, seminary and church discourse on this important topic. That possibility bore fruit into an annual conference hosted by the Center for Christian Business Ethics Today. In 2015, the Center decided to re-form the research and presentations with a dinner table discussion as the format. The conversion of conference papers into a text requires ex-tensive efforts by many people. Special thanks goes to the many encouragers for both this text and the work of the Center, particularly Dr. Peter Heslam, the director of Transforming Business at University of Cambridge, for his inspiration and dedication to his work. Additionally many thanks goes to all of the speakers who traveled from around the country and around the world to be at the Center Dinner and gave encouragement after the Dinner. Finally, many thanks to Mrs. Julia Clements, Phil's wife of 36 years, who encouraged, supported, patiently endured the normal distractions of these kinds of projects.