Monday, 31 March 2025
Ethos Coordinating Editor, Dr Lesa Scholl, stole a few minutes during Associate Professor Matthew Kaemingk’s visit to ask for personal reflections on his journey of work and worship.
For Matthew Kaemingk, the connection between the workplace and worship was about closing the gap between Sunday worship and Monday work.
He had been running a number of faith and work organisations in New York, Houston and Seattle when he found himself planning for a weekend retreat for workers.
He asked his wife, a worship director, if she could help by picking out some songs, prayers and blessings that would speak to the workers. But when she looked through her resources, she found that she didn’t have anything helpful.
This discovery led the couple on a journey of questioning: why is it that we feel this gap between Sunday worship and Monday work? Why doesn’t Sunday morning seem to connect in deep ways for lots of people with their Monday morning lives? What can be done about it?
‘I did what theologians do, which is descend into the library and started to study scripture and church history, trying to understand what had gone wrong and what we might do about it, And so [my] first book on work and worship came out of that’, Matthew said.
That book, Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labors and Liturgy (2020), was both a culmination and starting point of a journey exploring liturgies and how to engage workers in a deep and meaningful way.
Much of Matthew’s perspective comes out of his willingness to challenge, critique and question, and to engage generously without fear.
Another one of his books, Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in the Age of Fear (2021), challenges a lot of stereotypical US evangelical ideas, as does Matthew’s podcast Zealots at the Gate, co-hosted with friend and Muslim political thinker, Shadi Hamid.
Matthew emphasised the importance of being civil and generous to people from other faiths and being willing to engage in difficult conversations.
‘As an evangelical Christian, I think the way I respond to those kinds of challenges is to say, if Easter is real, if Jesus is resurrected, if he is truly not just my personal Lord and Saviour but Lord and Saviour of the whole world, then evangelicals can’t be driven by fear,’ he said.
‘Far too often we’re driven by fear, and evangelicals can’t be people of fear,’ he said. ‘If Easter is real, we should have a joyful engagement with public life.’
‘We’re not grasping for a victory…Whether we’re engaging with public issues in the marketplace or in politics, or with other religions, arts, culture, media, whatever – it can’t be a desperate or fearful engagement. It needs to be one of hope and assurance.’
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