The Master: A Religious Cult

In The Master (2012), Lancaster Dodd tells Freddie Quell, the man whom Lancaster wants to cure of alcoholism and mental illness, “I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all I am a man.” Given Lancaster’s presumption of infallibility concerning knowing that every human soul has been reincarnated even for trillions of years, the end of the line would more fittingly be, “I am a man above all (others).” With regard to being a physician, Lancaster comes up short because he underestimates the medical severity of Freddie’s alcoholism and his likely psychotic mental illness. Upon being released from jail, Lancaster should realize that Freddie’s rage and temper-tantrum in his jail cell evince mental illness of such severity that it is lunacy to suppose that the patient can be cured by walking back and forth in a room between a wall and a window and being sure to touch both, and by saying “Doris” over and over again in a dyad with Lancaster’s new son-in-law. In fact, Lancaster actually encourages Freddie’s alcoholism by asking that Freddie continue to make his “potion,” which contains paint-thinner filtered through bread. It is not Lancaster, but his wife, Peggy, who puts a stop to the “booze.” From her sanity, both that of Freddie and Lancaster can be questioned. That Lancaster is the Master of a religious cult, or “movement,” renders his mental state particularly problematic.

The full essay is at "The Master."

Spiritual Leadership in Business: Transcending the Ethical

The spiritual business leader who searches for personal and profes-sional integration is the chief beneficiary of this booklet, which can also be taken for a way to promulgate meagerly a new theory on the phenomenon of religion that stresses its uniqueness and distinctiveness. I begin with spirituality in order to find cleave distinctive nature off any reduction to ethics. In distinguishing spirituality from ethics, I look at religious experience of transcendence as a more suitable basis for spirituality. Next I’ll look at the business literature on spiritual leadership—scholarship that conflates such leadership with ethical leadership. I extract residue from that extant literature that can serve as a launching pad for an account of spiritual leadership that is grounded in transcendent religious experience.

The book: Spiritual Leadership in Business

Spiritual Leadership in Business: Transcending the Ethical

In this essay, I provide a synopsis of my booklet on spiritual leadership in business. In the text, I suggest that while it may convenient in the business world to conceptualize spiritual leadership as being essentially ethical in nature, this convenient tactic does not do justice to the distinctly religious basis and connotations of spirituality. By religion, I do not mean only theism, or even just organized religion (i.e., religious organizations); rather, I have in mind religious experience—whether through prayer, meditation, worship, or another means that is oriented to yearning beyond the limits of cognition, sentiment, and perception—as if an inherently limited human brain were nonetheless “hard-wired” for beyondness itself whether or not a transcendent religious object (e.g., a deity) exists. Rather than expunging spiritual from its native terrain and reconfiguring it to fit within a secular context as ethics, we can relate the religious sense of spirituality to the secular world of business with due deference to their respective natures rather than muddling them into something murky.[1]

The full essay is at "Spiritual Leadership in Business."

The booklet, Spiritual Leadership in Business: Transcending the Ethical, is available at Amazon in print and as an ebook.

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1. By analogy, the notion that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine—a theory coined at the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E.—involves taking the human as human and the divine as divine rather than reconfiguring one term to suit the other. Just as one essence, or ousia, has a human element and a divine element, spiritual leadership can be reckoned as having a religious and a secular element. One essence can contain a notion of spirituality that is religious in nature and a theory of leadership that is been derived in a secular context. 

Spirituality as Distinctively Religious

To be at its fullest, the notion of spiritual leadership applied to business should not shirk the religious basis of spirituality to make it somehow more fitting to business-or a certain rendition of business. Many of Gilbert Fairholm’s descriptions of spirituality risk embalming spirituality in a secular tomb in keeping with the bias typically found in the business world against anything religious. Fortunately, some of his other characterizations of the term provide an alternative basis for an invigorated notion of spiritual leadership applied even in the business world.

Material from this essay has been incorporated into Spiritual Leadership in Business: Transcending the Ethical, which is available at Amazon in print and as an ebook. 

See The Essence of Leadership, which is available at Amazon in print and as an ebook. Taoist, Buddhist, and Judeo-Christian principles relevant to leadership comprise part two of the book. 

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1. Gilbert W. Fairholm, Capturing the Heart of Leadership: Spirituality and Community in the New American Workplace (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997).

A Self-Governing Chinese Catholic Church: Conflating Statecraft and Religious Authority

In late December, 2016, as the Chinese government was negotiating a deal to improve relations with the Vatican, Yu Zhengsheng, a senior Communist Party leader, “endorsed the notion of a self-governed Chinese Catholic church.”[1] The key point, I submit, hinges on governance. In what sense does governance apply rightfully (or fittingly) to a religious organization? This is a question to be put both to the Chinese government and the Vatican.

Yu Zhengsheng meeting Chinese Catholic religious authorities (Source: Yao Dawei/Xinhua)

From one standpoint, the sort of governance that naturally applies to states seems less than fitting applied to religious organizations. Most obviously, a religious organization and a nation-state are of two distinct domains. More subtly, the sort of authority wielded by a government can, if applied within a religious organization, undercut spiritual authority and spirituality itself among the faithful. Rendering the governance of a religious organization as including that of a state, such as the Vatican is, naturally incurs the sibling rivalry with other countries. Put another way, were the Roman Catholic Pope not a head of state, Chinese officials might have felt less need of a self-governed Chinese Catholic Church. Yu Zhengsheng would have been less likely to urge that spiritual leaders in China “adhere to the principles of independence and self-management.”[2] Put another way, a more spiritual and less political church would be less of a threat to any government, including that of China. Spiritual leadership from the Pope would be more likely to pass as if through a semi-permeable membrane into China.

From the other standpoint, the sort of governance that naturally goes with religions is less than fitting applied to governments of countries. Yu Zhengsheng’s claim that spiritual leaders should work to promote the “good virtue of patriotism” crosses a line because religious organizations are not in the domain in which patriotism exists. For Catholic priests to urge patriotism would undermine the credibility of their spiritual guidance. Given the Vatican’s own status as a nation-state, the question could be raised: Which patriotism—of China or the Vatican? Hence the Vatican’s involvement in governmental governance naturally invites jealousy in other governments.

Perhaps both statecraft and religious authority are vulnerable to overreaching. Perhaps problems would be simpler were people to apply self-discipline to keeping within their respective domains. The Chinese government should not ask Catholic clerics in China to advance Chinese patriotism and the Vatican should get out of the nation-state business. Keeping to two very different sorts of authority can go a long way to minimizing conflict and category-mistakes.

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[1] Javier C. Hernandez, “Catholic Churches in China Should Be Independent of Vatican, Official Says,” The New York Times, December 30, 2016.

[2] Ibid.