and culture based on the Judeo-Christian worldview. Our nation was founded on that biblical consensus and flourished with it as it kept improving ethically and practically—until the American worldview completed its shift to humanism in the late twentieth century. The biblical worldview holds that God is the authority over all things, and that pleasing him should be the foundation of every endeavor. Secular humanism proclaims that man, not God, is the final authority and that everything exists for personal pleasure and affluence.

Historically, the influence of Christianity on American capitalism produced a huge and generally prosperous middle class that provided economic and cultural stability for the nation. Influenced by Christian leadership, traditional American capitalism increasingly promoted a lofty goal—that corporate success is not the consumption of wealth but the creation of it. It was not greed that was good, but doing good was good. The foundational ethic of traditional American capitalism—as influenced by Christianity— was not simply to “do what is good for business” but to “make it your business to do good.” Through the ages, Christian-influenced traditional American capitalism kept producing more and more extraordinary business leaders who also excelled as philanthropists by creating jobs, investing in the community, assisting the needy, providing meaningful public service, supporting the church, and in other ways making communities better. Surely there were a number of greedy business leaders, but they were marginalized, and certainly they were not celebrated as they are today. Historically in America, God’s people—the church—influenced American capitalism to practice a biblical model of servant leadership. Today, contemporary capitalism is influencing the church to practice a model of self-centered leadership. Yesterday the church produced effective servant leaders for the world of business. Today the world produces self-promoting leaders who are infecting the church.

Just as the biblical worldview affected all aspects of culture for most of American history, humanism today influences our bedrock institutions: law, government, education, healthcare, media, the arts, and the business community. This repackaged paganism embraced by contemporary American capitalism has rejected the influence of biblical truth in order to embrace a self-absorbed leadership model that promotes self-worship. Yet—alarmingly— much of the American church today is either thoughtlessly or pragmatically employing a humanistic model of contemporary capitalistic leadership. And the model is not only unbiblical but its ability to impact the culture is ultimately destructive.

Recently the evidence of this downward spiral in contemporary corporate America was manifested by entire corporations faltering and closing, not because of problems on the ground floors but because of moral failures in the penthouse offices of leaders acting on their personal and greedy quest for wealth and power. This produced a staggering loss of jobs, obliteration of countless individual retirement packages, untold numbers of divorces and wrecked families, widespread erosion of respect for the business community, the demise of the dreams of many, and a general loss of respect for the American free-enterprise system. Business leadership today is too often not about leadership but about the leader—his or her power, portfolio, and profits. The lack of biblically based leadership in American culture has left our society reeling like a boxer on the ropes after a knockout punch.