Desires—like Tom Monaghan’s—to strengthen religious faith are responsible for a flurry of new colleges in recent decades. In 1990, Pope John Paul II issued Ex Corde Ecclesiae, a decree on Catholic identity for new Catholic colleges and universities. Ex Corde colleges submit to the authority of their local bishops and to the teachings of the Church. Twenty-three institutions now adhere to it, including several founded prior to its promulgation, like the Catholic University of America. But nine have been founded since 1970, and five since 1990—most recently John Paul the Great University, a media-focused school in San Diego, and Wyoming Catholic College in the small town of Lander.

Likewise, numerous Protestant colleges have emerged in recent years. Whereas a century ago, Christian colleges were most likely to have a denominational association (and to be funded by both tuition and appropriations from denominational bodies, drawn from churches), today’s Christian colleges have more idiosyncratic identities. Many Christian colleges grow out of the brand of a well-known preacher or leader, like Oral Roberts University in Tulsa and Pat Robertson’s Regent University in Virginia Beach. Some, like the Master’s College in Santa Clarita, California, or New St. Andrew’s College in Moscow, Idaho, grow out of an existing church. Rarer are colleges that emerge more or less from scratch, like Patrick Henry College in northern Virginia, which was founded both to serve homeschooling families and prepare graduates for service in politics, national security, and positions of cultural influence.

Sometimes, colleges are “re-booted” to have a different focus and identity. In 1996, a group of Mormon business leaders led by Richmond real estate investor Glade Knight took over Southern Virginia University. They re-fashioned the struggling former women’s college to embrace the values of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1999, donors helped to re-open the defunct King’s College, moving it from its former site in Westchester County, New York, to facilities in the Empire State Building. The new location came with an explicit goal of seeding graduates with a Christian worldview in positions of influence in government, media, and finance.

Young religious colleges can face special challenges, such as finding the right balance between religious orthodoxy and academic independence. In 2006, 5 out of 16 full-time faculty members departed Patrick Henry College after the college’s founder, Michael Farris, reportedly rebuked professors who taught that there was value in studying non-biblical sources, fired instructors with whom he disagreed, and denigrated Calvinist theology as incompatible with PHC’s statement of faith.

Sometimes philanthropy can get out ahead of a would-be Christian college. The family of David Green, founder of the Oklahoma-based arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby, are generous funders of facilities for Christian colleges. A few years ago, they bought a campus in rural Massachusetts for the planned start-up C. S. Lewis College, a “Great Books” school. The Greens renovated the campus, but the college failed to meet its fundraising goals in January. The Greens are now offering the campus, in whole or in part, for free to any Christian college that will be able to use it well.

This article was originally published in Philanthropy magazine’s spring 2012 issue.

These very questions vexed leaders in Rwanda. Families and communities needed to heal and rebuild, and the criminal justice system would never be able to deal with the backlog of genocide trials.

Rwanda opted for the path of forgiveness. In 2003, President Paul Kagame released 40,000 genocide perpetrators who had confessed to their crimes. Prison Fellowship’s Rwanda affiliate works with these ex-prisoners, encouraging them to seek forgiveness from the families of those they killed and helping them to re-integrate into their communities.

The question of forgiveness was one that fascinated the late John M. Templeton. “Forgiveness benefits both the giver and the receiver,” he would say. “Forgiving uplifts the forgiver.” “Forgiveness was what Sir John called a ‘spiritual reality,’” says Kimon Sargeant, the vice president for human sciences at the John Templeton Foundation. “He put forgiveness as a core theme in the foundation’s charter, so it’s part of our long-term subjects for research.”

Sargeant was thus intrigued by a 2008 documentary that told the story of forgiveness in Rwanda. As We Forgive features two Rwandan women whose relatives were killed in the genocide and the men who killed their families. Rosaria forgives Saveri, saying, “How can I refuse to forgive when I’m a forgiven sinner?” Reconciled, Saveri and Rosaria work side by side on projects in their village. Chantale, however, resists forgiving John—and her struggle illuminates the great challenge facing the genocide’s perpetrators and victims. It gives the film dramatic force: will Chantale forgive John? “The stories from Rwanda are one powerful example of how people can, without forgetting the past, work through the trauma, over time, to forgive,” says Sargeant.

Templeton provided the filmmaker, Laura Waters Hinson, with funding to promote her film and communicate its lessons, both in Rwanda and throughout the United States. Hinson used the movie to launch the As We Forgive Rwanda Initiative, a Rwandan-led organization that promotes reconciliation by presenting the film, as well as a comprehensive discussion program, in Rwandan public schools, churches, and villages. “The majority of people come away with a new hope that reconciliation is possible, where they may not have previously thought it possible,” says Hinson. “People come away believing that it is possible.”

Hinson uses the movie as a way to launch reconciliation efforts. “When our team goes into a village setting, they work with the community, giving them ideas for engaging in practical reconciliation.” A team may recommend planting a community garden or sharing a cow or goat. In some villages, victims and perpetrators have formed associations that pool money, purchase and work collective land, and share the income. “This,” Hinson says, is “leading to an enterprise solution to poverty.”

That same spirit of enterprise animates Hinson’s next film, Mama Rwanda, which is being supported by the SEVEN Fund, a Templeton grantee. “It’s about Rwandan mothers who, after overcoming the effects of the genocide, are becoming entrepreneurs and lifting their communities and country out of poverty,” says Hinson. “It shows how people who are very, very poor are able to do these practical projects to rise out of poverty.” She points to one woman featured in the film who started a business making banana beer, commercializing what had long been a somewhat unsafe traditional homebrew.

“My first film was all about what happens with the reconciliation phase of rebuilding,” Hinson adds. “Now that reconciliation is setting in, how do we move to the next phase of rebuilding—creating prosperity, creating new things, innovating, growing. This is the next stage of reconciliation.”

Hinson’s words echo those of now-retired Anglican bishop John Rucyahana in As We Forgive: “When they forgive, they get released. Repentance is a requirement. Transformation is our calling.”

This article was originally published in Philanthropy magazine’s Winter 2012 issue as an accompaniment to “Stopping the Slaughter.”

The open office is a small part of Montgomery’s powerful sense of openness and equality. He’s the founding partner of Bridgeway, an investment management firm based in Houston. It’s not a typical financial firm. Among its 30 employees—Montgomery calls them all partners—there is a seven-to-one compensation cap: the highest-earning partner makes no more than seven times the salary of the lowest-earning partner.

Founded in 1993, Bridgeway pursues what Montgomery calls a “statistically driven and evidence-based investment strategy.” Bridgeway adheres to a rigorously quantitative model for selecting stocks, mitigating risk, and minimizing costs. This approach, he told Barron’s in 2007, “not only takes a lot of the cost out of the process, but also a lot of the emotionalism that so often trips up individual and institutional investors alike.” Today, Bridgeway has $2 billion under management.

While it seems there is something clinical, almost mechanical, about Montgomery’s investment strategy, his overall business model is ambitious, passionate, and more than a little idealistic. Bridgeway gives away half of its after-tax profits each year. (“The only idea I had in starting Bridgeway that turned out 10 times more powerful than I expected,” notes Montgomery, was “having a strong mission statement that attracts people who want to make a real difference in the world.”) And its principal charitable focus is as ambitious as Montgomery is unassuming: eliminating genocide.

Genocide has haunted Montgomery since 1968, when he first studied the Holocaust in an eighth grade history class. “It was news to me,” he explains. “It was a watershed moment. I had no concept of the cruelty and the idea of eradicating a whole people group because of their religion, race, ethnicity, or beliefs. And it had happened just a single generation before.” Then, beginning in 1975, the Khmer Rouge began eradicating as many as two million people—a quarter of Cambodia’s population. The college-aged Montgomery “thought we had learned the ‘never again’ lesson of the Holocaust. And I felt utterly helpless to do anything about it. ‘If I had a million dollars,’ I thought, ‘I’d be doing something.’”

“Today,” he continues, “the world has shrunk to nothing. When Cambodia happened, I had this sense of it happening on my watch. When the Rwandan genocide happened, I felt it was happening in my backyard. You can get on a plane and go to Rwanda; you can be there in a day.”

Learning from Rwanda

Bridgeway was less than a year old when the genocide broke out in Rwanda. For 100 days in 1994, Hutu nationalists, incited by the Hutu-led Rwandan government, slaughtered some 800,000 Tutsis. Montgomery was in no position to intervene, but Rwanda was a profound learning experience for him. The lessons of what happened (and what didn’t happen) in the lead-up to the bloodbath could be applied to future conflicts—and the process of reconciliation and restoration afterward.

By 1997, Bridgeway was profitable, and by the early 2000s, it had substantial resources at its disposal. One of the first places it went was Rwanda. To get the initiative underway, Montgomery brought Shannon Sedgwick Davis onto his team. Davis had previously worked at anti-slavery organization International Justice Mission and on Rwandan restoration for philanthropic advisory firm Geneva Global. She quickly determined that Bridgeway should work at the grassroots level. “We want to empower local organizations to take reconciliation into their own hands and work within their own culture and experience,” notes Davis. “It’s much more valuable than having me go there and preach as an outsider.”

For example, Bridgeway has supported groups of Rwandan widows of the genocide. (“Widow” here includes women whose husbands are serving life sentences for their roles in the genocide.) Brought together by the Anglican Church in Rwanda, half of the women are Hutu and the other half are Tutsi. They gather together to turn sorghum into soap. They pool their profits to achieve a greater measure of economic self-sufficiency—and to expand into new ventures—but they also promote reconciliation within the group. “One woman’s husband is in jail for killing the husband of another woman in the group,” Davis marvels. “This woman went to the other woman and sought forgiveness on behalf of her husband, and they began to move forward in a relationship. There’s a lot of power in that.” (Click here for more on how Rwandans are working together to heal the scars of hatred.)

Bridgeway has also supported an initiative called “child-headed villages.” Rwanda has upwards of one million orphans, and over 40,000 families without an adult head of the household. Due to expropriation during the genocide or loss of records (or both), many of these young orphans cannot return to their families’ ancestral land. Rather than being institutionalized in orphanages, they are placed in groups in new villages, with the responsibility for tending its land and managing their own affairs. Adult chaperones live in the villages as surrogate parents, and the land is titled in the name of the youngest child in each family—to ensure that property isn’t transferred or taken away when an older child marries or moves.

Stopping the LRA

Montgomery and Davis began to think about what they would do next. “Our mission statement is a world without genocide,” says Davis. “Do we mean that? Or do we want to be a foundation that picks up the pieces after a mass atrocity?”

They also felt that they were spreading themselves a little thin, having supported a number of NGOs working worldwide, as well as groups working in Darfur and the Middle East. “We decided to focus on sub-Saharan Africa,” says Montgomery. Specifically, they decided to focus on the Lord’s Resistance Army in the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Central African Republic, and South Sudan,  where, Davis says, 90 percent of Bridgeway’s resources (and her time) are now devoted. Why? “Of all the armed conflicts on the face of the planet,” Montgomery explains, “this should be the easiest one to stop.”

The Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, is a guerrilla rebel group in east-central Africa. Starting in Uganda and spreading throughout central Africa, the LRA has killed thousands, abducting nearly 70,000 boys to serve in its ranks and leading to the internal displacement of more than 2.1 million Africans. Led by Joseph Kony—“an incredibly evil man,” Davis says—the LRA usually invades the villages, kills most of the men, and rapes most of the women. It will kidnap strong boys and force them to join the LRA, and often take a few younger girls as concubines.

“Their cruelty is utterly egregious,” Montgomery adds. “Relative to Eastern Congo or Darfur, it’s not a large number of people killed, but the havoc and fear they create is far out of proportion to their numbers.” Kony’s LRA is infamous for its Christmas massacres, in which squads of LRA guerrillas have brutally killed hundreds of villagers in the DRC.

Bridgeway is working on a number of fronts to stop the violence and conflict. It has supported organizations like Invisible Children and Resolve. Invisible Children produced an eponymous film about the LRA that brought American attention to the war for the first time. “Never before have we seen advocacy groups work so well together and be so effective,” Davis raves. “They passed the LRA Disarmament Act with a unanimous vote. But a lot of the stories they were telling were Ugandan stories, and their programmatic work was in Uganda.”

For more than five years, Davis says, the LRA has been largely neutralized in Uganda. Instead, the conflict has migrated to the northeastern part of the DRC, where Kony’s troops would launch surprise raids on fearful villages. “I was spending a lot of time in Congo,” Davis explains. “We went deep into the LRA territory—what they call the Red Zone. It was critical to Bridgeway that we find a way for these people to start protecting themselves against attacks. The 2009 Christmas massacre happened over a several-day period, 30 kilometers from the operating base of MONUC [the United Nations mission in the DRC]. No one responded. These people were slaughtered.”

Davis shivered as she thought of the carnage. Then she got to work. The attacks were mostly on villages in a rough circle with a radius of about 30 kilometers. What if the villagers were able to warn each other about impending attacks? “I asked Invisible Children, ‘Can you get these communities radios so they can start warning themselves?’,” Davis explains. “They took the ball and just ran with it. We funded the radio system. They equip these villages with radio towers and give the radios to the tribal chiefs, who put up the tower when they need to communicate about attacks.” When attacks are reported, the villagers are able to flee into the forest and elude the LRA.

The radio network had other benefits. “We were getting an incredible amount of intel, so we could plot attacks and patterns.” The data points became LRA Crisis Tracker, a website on which attack locations are publicly available. The tracker is expanding into the Central African Republic, farther south in the DRC and north into South Sudan as attacks are reported.

“We as philanthropists have leeway to be a lot bolder on these sorts of investments,” Davis explains. “Traditionally, you pay advocates to swing the stick for governmental intervention. That’s fine, but it’s also good to go directly to the source and listen directly to the people. I don’t have to ask the U.S. government to get radio towers out there!”

Montgomery shares the sentiment. “Sure, there’s advocacy, and yes, there’s education,” he says, “but right now there are people dying.”

Bridgeway’s work—some of which Davis prefers to keep off the record—has helped to catalyze international attention and action. At least 10 mid-level LRA commanders have defected, been captured, or been killed recently, and President Barack Obama has authorized 100 combat troops into the region under the aegis of U.S. Africa Command. The aforementioned LRA Disarmament Act, enacted in 2010, established a formal U.S. goal of apprehending Joseph Kony and bringing him to justice, as well as supporting victims of LRA attacks in both the DRC and Uganda. “There’s been more action on the LRA front in the past few months than in the previous three years,” Davis says. But she and Montgomery have their eye on the prize: ending the violence for good. “The goal would be to get Joseph Kony to the Hague where he can stand trial,” Montgomery points out.

“That would be the end of the LRA,” Davis adds.

“Just Lines on a Map”

Montgomery is intrigued by research on happiness. Once you hit $50,000 in annual income, he points out, increases in income no longer correspond to increased happiness. That was one reason why he and his wife, Ann, agreed to practice a simpler lifestyle than their wealth would allow. They own a modest four-bedroom home, a few blocks away from Bridgeway’s office. With their surplus wealth, they decided to pursue philanthropy now. “We just thought it would be a lot more fun to give along the way,” he explains.

To date, Montgomery and Bridgeway have given tens of millions of dollars toward the efforts of their philanthropic mission. Why so much of their profits, and why so much of it to eliminate genocide? Montgomery thinks for a moment. “Sometimes you don’t know the deeper reasons of what you do, and I think that’s true for me and genocide specifically,” he replies. “I have some sense that there’s a bigger picture that I’m part of, but I don’t understand the full dynamics of that.”

“There is a spiritual aspect of this to me, a life calling,” he adds in a reflective tone. “National borders are just lines on a map. They’re completely artificial.” For John Montgomery and his team at Bridgeway, that is the guiding vision: a world in which the lines with the potential for hateful division—race, religion, ethnicity, nationality—do not become fault lines of conflict.

And until that time, they sense it’s their duty to stop the slaughter.

This article was originally published in Philanthropy magazine’s Winter 2012 issue.

Green is president of Hobby Lobby, a nationwide chain of arts-and-crafts stores founded by his father, David. The Good Book informs his family’s business and inspires their philanthropy. It is also the centerpiece of their latest charitable project: the creation of the country’s first museum devoted to telling the story of how the Bible came to be, recounting its effects on the world, and relating its message.

The Greens own an unrivaled personal collection of Bibles, biblical manuscripts, and scriptural antiquities. When their museum opens, it will showcase a world-class collection with a strong non-sectarian emphasis. Among the items it will feature are fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the world’s oldest complete Bibles, exquisitely illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages, and first editions of landmark Bibles.

In the meantime, a portion of the family’s collection is touring the world. On May 16, Steve Green unveiled “Passages,” an exhibit at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art that marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. After that, a portion focused on the Catholic contribution to the King James Bible will travel to the Vatican, where it will be a featured exhibit at the Braccio di Carlo Magno museum in St. Peter’s Square. Other sites for a “Passages” exhibition are currently being negotiated both stateside and abroad. The exhibit will go on a worldwide tour while the Green family continues to build a permanent museum dedicated to the Bible.

“Whether you believe or not,” Steve says, “the history of this book is a story to be told—people gave their lives for it. Our goal is to make the Bible more accessible than ever before.” This story, as told through the Greens’ collection, is breathtaking. “Passages” starts with the earliest Jewish scribes and moves on through the apostolic, patristic, and medieval ages. It examines the Renaissance and European Reformation and culminates with the English Reformation and the translation of the King James Bible.

“You would have to travel around the world to see single items that are on display here in Oklahoma City,” says Scott Carroll, a biblical scholar and the curator of the exhibition. He glances at the artifacts on display, eyes wide with awe, before continuing. “There are numerous items that you couldn’t see anywhere outside of Oklahoma City.”

Among its more than 300 notable artifacts are an unpublished fragment of Genesis from the Dead Sea Scrolls; the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, which contains the earliest known manuscript of the New Testament in Palestinian Aramaic; the Roseberry Rolle, a translation of the Psalms into Middle English that predates John Wycliffe’s English Bible by 40 years, as well as first editions of Coverdale, Tyndale, Geneva, and King James Bibles. The exhibit also includes a number of interactive features. St. Jerome, who translated the Latin Vulgate, appears as an animatronic figure. So too does William Tyndale, who translated the New Testament into English and was put to death by Henry VIII. Docents dressed in period costumes operate exact replicas of the Gutenberg and King James printing presses, and artists conduct live demonstration of scriptural adornment techniques.

“To know the story of how the Bible was transmitted and preserved is important,” says Carroll. “It didn’t simply drop from Mt. Sinai and end up in a motel drawer! It’s a story of sacrifice and loss of life, of people diligently copying texts, of teaching the story to generation after generation. That’s all part of the story of ‘Passages.’ If you are a person of culture, you must know about the Bible and how it came to be.”

“We believe in the Bible,” says Steve Green. “We live our lives according to the Bible. We believe it is the best instruction for man to live by, and we strive to do that ourselves.” The Bible is likewise at the heart of their business. “We strive to run our business according to biblical principles. As we apply the principles that we see in scripture, we believe that God blesses—and we have definitely been blessed.”

More Than a Hobby

The Green family traces those blessings to Altus, a small town in the dusty southwestern corner of Oklahoma. At age 16, David Green started working in the Altus five-and-dime. After serving briefly in the U.S. Air Force, he married Barbara and joined the fast-growing five-and-dime chain TG&Y, working his way up to area supervisor for Oklahoma City.

David loved retail and had a natural gift for moving merchandise. “I saw potential that TG&Y was not capturing,” he explained. He grew TG&Y’s pet department by selling 10-gallon fish tanks below wholesale price. The tanks were loss leaders. The stores more than made up for them on sales of fish, equipment, and accessories.

He also saw an opportunity to produce picture frames for the store’s craft department. With $600 in borrowed capital, David and a partner bought a frame chopper and materials. They enlisted their families in making the frames. David and Barbara’s children—Mart, Steve, and Darsee—earned 7¢ for each frame they assembled. Before long, they were struggling to keep up with orders.
In 1972, independent of TG&Y, David and his partner opened a 300-square-foot store for their frames and other craft supplies. Hobby Lobby struggled at first, but its product mix proved ideal for Christmas decorating. The little store finished the year with a small profit. From there, Hobby Lobby grew and grew. David bought out his partner in 1973, and in 1975, he opened a new store and resigned from TG&Y.

Today, Hobby Lobby is the nation’s largest privately held arts-and-crafts store, with 479 stores in 40 states and 18,000 employees. Sales top $2 billion annually. The company has a massive manufacturing and warehouse operation in Oklahoma City. And Hobby Lobby’s business model has proved resilient during the recession. “When economic times are bad, people tend to make and craft even more of their gifts, rather than buy them ready-made,” David writes.

There have been a few hiccups along the way. Cash sluiced around Oklahoma during the oil boom of the ’70s and early ’80s, and David admits that they got sucked in. “We had been born as an arts-and-crafts store, but now we were loading up [on] all kinds of upscale merchandise,” he recalls. “We were coasting high on a false sense of security.” When the price of oil collapsed, and Oklahoma’s economy with it, Hobby Lobby’s high-end goods stopped selling. The company lost $1 million in 1985.

“Dad would say he wasn’t sure how we were going to make it,” says Steve. “He would say that was the worst time and yet at the same time the best time, because he would say that that’s when he gave the business over to God and said, ‘I can’t make it. And if it’s going to make it, You are going to have to make it happen.’” The Greens re-focused on their core arts-and-crafts merchandise, secured financing, and ended the year in the black.

Working on Purpose

“I graduated high school and started working for my dad,” smiles Steve Green. “I still do.” Steve has worked in virtually every corner of Hobby Lobby. He mowed lawns, painted buildings, and unloaded trucks in high school. He worked as a liaison between stores and the corporate office. “I worked in buying,” he recalls, “I’ve been over our international department, legal department, accounting department, information systems department.” Steve ultimately worked all the way up the corporate ladder and is now president of Hobby Lobby. “I currently spend most of my time in the real estate department overseeing our growth and new store expansions.”

A deep sense of purpose animates Hobby Lobby. “My father was a son of a pastor,” says Steve, “so he was born in a Christian home, and most of his siblings went into the ministry.” The Greens see Hobby Lobby as a ministry of their own: first, in retail as a form of service; second, in the way the company treats its employees; and finally, in the way it employs its profits.

The Greens believe that they serve their customers by “offering an exceptional selection and value.” “We ask that all employees see themselves as servants,” David explains. “Our stores serve the customers. If everything is working as it should, the staff will feel honored and fulfilled, and the customers will be pleased.”

Hobby Lobby is also the Greens’ ministry to their employees. Like Chick-fil-A—another privately held company owned by evangelical Christians—Hobby Lobby closes on Sundays. That was not always the case. It wasn’t until 1998 that Hobby Lobby first experimented with Sunday closures in its three Nebraska stores. Then David had a revelation: “It was as if God was saying to me, ‘Oh . . . so if you’re blessed, you’re going to be obedient, but if the numbers don’t work out for you, maybe not?’” By 2000, all Hobby Lobby locations were closed on Sundays. “Our decisions are long-term,” Steve explains. “We believe that it has been good for our company. I think that it has attracted better employees, because they like the idea that they’re going to be able to get off on Sundays to worship and be with their families.”

Being privately held allows Hobby Lobby much greater flexibility to use company resources for philanthropic ends. “We are wholly owned by the family,” explains Steve. “We get together as a family and we make those decisions. If we want to close on Sundays, we can do that. There’s a lot of benefit in not having to worry about being a publicly traded company, dealing with the pressures created by the stock market.”

Family ownership also allows the Greens to minister directly from Hobby Lobby’s profits to support Christian and humanitarian ministries around the world. “If everybody agrees that we want to help support a particular ministry, we can do that.” The Greens don’t make a distinction between personal philanthropy and Hobby Lobby’s corporate philanthropy. “Most of the giving is done as a family through the business. We don’t have a separate family foundation. It’s a business decision that we make as a family.”

Sharing God’s word, Steve explains, is the common denominator in the Green family’s giving. “Most of our business decisions are long-term, so we bring that same thought to our charitable giving, which has led us in many cases to God’s word. Much of our giving has been spreading God’s word around the world through different ministries, and the Bible project happened to be a very good fit. There are other humanitarian things that we do as well, but what seems to be at the core of this is sharing God’s word and encouraging people to consider it.”

“It Just Fell into Our Lap”

At the moment, the Greens’ Bible collection and “Passages” are Steve’s top philanthropic priorities—so much so that he is devoting half of his time to them. But the Greens’ philanthropy extends to much more. For example, they support ministries that bring the gospel message to people who haven’t heard it. They support Wycliffe Bible Translators, which is seeking to make the full text of the Bible available in every language. (Although the narrative of “Passages” culminates with the King James Bible, it wraps up with a pitch for Wycliffe.) They also support OneHope, which, Steve says, “takes the four gospels, harmonizes them, puts all the stories in chronological order without repeating them, and distributes that to kids in 100 countries around the world.” Another ministry, Every Home for Christ, seeks to bring “a gospel message to every home in the world.”

The Greens likewise work to tell the story of evangelistic efforts. For instance, Mart Green has long been fascinated by the story of Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, and three other young American missionaries. In 1956, they were murdered in Ecuador by the Waodani Indians—a tribe they were trying to reach with the Christian gospel. Saint and Elliot’s widows, Rachel and Elisabeth, continued their husbands’ work with the Waodani, eventually seeing widespread Christianization among the tribe. Mart founded a nonprofit film company, EthnoGraphic Media, which in 2006 released End of the Spear, a drama based on the lives and deaths of the young missionaries—and the reconciliation of Saint’s son Steve with his father’s Waodani killer.

The Greens have also been very active in supporting Christian colleges, but not necessarily on purpose. “I think some of that kind of just fell into our lap,” Steve explains. “The biggest one has been Oral Roberts University.” In 2007, the Tulsa-based university found itself embroiled in a nasty scandal involving personal and financial misconduct by its president and his wife. The Greens had no personal connection to ORU, Steve explains, “but from what we were reading in the papers, it looked like they were getting ready to close their doors. We hurt for that. We don’t need fewer institutions that are teaching on a biblical basis.” In 2008, the Greens gave $70 million to ORU, including over $50 million to retire its debt. Mart became chairman of the board and imposed a plan for financial recovery and governance reform.

Much of the Greens’ support for Christian higher education has been through property deals—$300 million worth of deals for 50 institutions, notes David. The family gave a $10.5 million facility to Liberty University for a law school, and made $5 million worth of renovations to a campus that they gave to Zion Bible College. In 2009, the Greens bought an idyllic 224-acre campus dotted with Romanesque revival buildings for C. S. Lewis College, a non-denominational Great Books college planning to open next year in Northfield, Massachusetts. Steve considers the property a bargain. Hobby Lobby will spend $6 million on its purchase and renovation; when they turn the deed over to C. S. Lewis College, it may be worth as much as $30 million.

“We’re involved in buying and giving real estate when we’re able to buy it at a very good price,” Steve explains. “That was an opportunity. It’s not been an intentional one, but it’s been, I think, one that God has directed us to.”

“One Thing Led to Another”

“My brother runs a Christian bookstore chain [Mardel, an affiliate of Hobby Lobby],” says Steve. “He commented many times that it would be neat to create a Bible museum. By the time an opportunity arose, the idea had been pretty thoroughly discussed in our family.”

When the moment came, it was in the form of a gospel of Luke, written in gold ink on purple vellum. “An opportunity presented itself at a very good price,” Steve says. The family that owned the artifact ended up changing its mind, but the Greens’ inquiry triggered interest in the world of biblical antiquities. “So we started looking for opportunities,” he continues, “and one thing led to another, and we have the collection we have today.”

The collection came together “at lightning speed”—in less than two years. “Our intent was not necessarily to do that,” Steve admits, “but as we started acquiring items, other items became available, word got out, and so people started presenting us with opportunities.” The Greens had an unlikely assist from the economy. “There were people who were struggling because of the economy and in need of cash,” Steve explains, “and they elected to sell a collection or a Bible.” Other collectors decided to sell because of the Greens’ vision for the museum. “I think there are some who might have been motivated to sell because we would share with them what we would love to do with the artifacts.”

The family worked closely with Scott Carroll, a biblical scholar with a long career of acquiring and studying ancient manuscripts. Steve Green joined Carroll on several acquisition trips, meeting dealers and attending auctions. “I tagged along and was just soaking in all the information Scott was sharing,” Steve says. “Then he would present the opportunities. We would discuss them, and I would decide to make the offers.”

“We don’t consider ourselves collectors,” he adds. “That’s not our nature as a family. It was more of the purpose that we had and the vision for the museum. A collector may have a little different mindset from what we might have; for us, it was the opportunities that presented themselves.”

“A Museum, Not a Ministry”

“Passages” is a prelude. After it closes in Oklahoma City in October, a selection of the exhibit will be displayed in the Vatican City. “Passages” will tour major cities for the next few years while the Greens’ ultimate goal—a museum of the Bible—comes to life. “‘Passages’ is a way for us to be able to start telling our story while we’re waiting for that permanent museum,” Steve Green explains.

That museum is perhaps as ambitious a project as the collection it will house. “We want to be a resource where the story of the Bible can be told in a very scholarly way that will also create an interest in the Bible,” Steve says. Like “Passages,” the museum is planned to be interactive, “attracting a wide spectrum of people, from children to scholars.”

It is not, however, planned to be evangelistic—at least not directly. “It’s a museum, not a ministry,” he adds. “But if we do the museum right, it will minister to people as a byproduct. I think it’ll be evangelistic in the sense that the evidence is very compelling that this book is unlike any book out there.” Even so, the museum will be deliberately non-sectarian. “Passages” includes artifacts from the Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant traditions; significantly, it will make a prominent stop at a museum in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. The eventual Bible museum will feature, among other things, the world’s largest private collection of Jewish scrolls (including Torahs that survived the Spanish Inquisition and the Shoah) and items that document the contribution of Jews and Roman Catholics to the King James Bible. “The idea of it being non-sectarian was really a decision based on the history of the Bible,” Green explains. “We didn’t make that decision. That decision was made because the history runs through the traditions of Judaism and Catholicism and Protestantism.”

The museum will also allow the Greens to expand beyond the story told in “Passages,” with its culminating focus on the King James Bible. One of Steve’s favorite artifacts in the collection is a Bible published by Robert Aitken in 1782—“the first and only Bible commissioned by the U.S. Congress,” he explains. The Aitken Bibles were commissioned by Congress in response to the shortage of Bibles from Britain during the American Revolution. “It gives the picture of the environment of the founding of this country,” Steve says, “and I think that today there’s probably a different picture viewed, but this is a way of going back and seeing maybe what the attitude at the time might have been.”

In keeping with its scholarly ambitions, the museum will house a research program: the Green Scholars Initiative. The initiative will allow undergraduates to collaborate with leading researchers to study and publish items in the collection that have not yet received scholarly attention. “This,” Steve concludes, “is a way of getting some of that information out quicker and at the same time mentoring students to have a love for the scholarly work—and it may give them a passion to pursue that opportunity as a vocation.”

“This Place Is Like a Tree”

Steve Green is currently scouting sites for the Bible museum in three cities: Washington, New York, and Dallas. (Washington would have the highest attendance, he says, but that is not the only factor in the decision.) With “Passages” touring and his hands full with planning for the museum, Steve does not envision any other big philanthropic projects soon.

He grins. “But we may wake up and read the paper and feel we need to get involved in a project.” One thing is certain: the Greens will continue to do both business and philanthropy as a family.

Steve and his wife, Jackie, have six children. Mart has four. Following in their father’s footsteps, Steve’s two adult children work for family enterprises: one for Hobby Lobby and one for the Green Collection. Not all family members are obliged to join the business, of course. “If they feel this is not what their calling is and they want to go do something else, then they’re free to do that. But if this is what they feel their calling is, as I did, we want to provide the opportunity.”

The next generation is also learning to participate in the family’s giving. “They don’t vote necessarily on the bigger family decisions,” Steve says, “but they are able to have a little bit that they are directing themselves, to give them a sense of the decision-making that the family goes through.” For example, some of the third-generation family members are supporting Christian orphanages overseas.

Ultimately, the Greens view Hobby Lobby, and the philanthropy it makes possible, as a work of long-term stewardship and investment. “If you want to work here, you’re welcome,” David Green tells his kids and grandkids. “But you’ll only get what you earn. This place is like a tree that can bear fruit if it’s taken care of. In the final analysis, it doesn’t belong to you, or even to Mom and me; it belongs to God. We all have to give it our best attention so that the tree stays strong and healthy for decades to come.”

His words call to mind those of another David, some 3,000 years ago. “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,” sings King David in Psalm 1. “He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.”

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This article was originally published in Philanthropy‘s Summer 2011 issue.

“It was so scary,” Fedak explains. “It’s not like I haven’t been through bear markets before. But this one was different. I don’t think people realize how close we came to the system breaking down. I felt like everything I had learned about the markets and investing over 40 years wasn’t working as it should.”

“I literally did not sleep through a night from Labor Day of 2008 until probably April,” she says. The daily bad news of the financial crisis kept her awake, fretfully watching business news on TV. Fedak knew first-hand how dire things looked for the financial markets; at the time, she was vice chair for investment services at Alliance Bernstein. All the while, her anxiety about the capital markets was compounded by another set of worries.

“I began to realize that capitalism was being vilified, in ways we haven’t seen since the Great Depression,” adds Fedak. “The rhetoric was terrible. ‘Something has to be done to support capitalism,’ I realized. ‘What can I do?’”

After all, she reasoned, “capitalism has been very good to our country and our citizens. And I could see that from a very personal perspective.” Her grandfather emigrated from Russia at the age of nine. He started out selling pencils and newspapers on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He bought a luggage store, which Marilyn’s father and uncles grew into a wholesale business. Growing up in Yonkers, Fedak taught herself to touch-type and started working as an office clerk at 14; she saved enough to pay for her first two years at Smith College.

In 1984, Fedak joined Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., which was then a smallish firm with 200 employees and $1.8 billion under management. (For more on the Bernstein story, see Philanthropy, Fall 2010.) Fedak prospered as an investment manager at Bernstein. In 2007, she was included in Fortune’s list of the 25 highest-paid women in business. “All along the line, I’ve loved to work, to be judged on the basis of my own merits,” Fedak says. “In the investment business, you get a report card every day. You see how your portfolio performed against the markets.” When Fedak retired to an emeritus role at the end of 2010, Alliance Bernstein had 4,500 employees and nearly $500 billion under management.

Fedak sees capitalism through the lens of her experience at Bernstein. At its best, the free market produces a “virtuous cycle,” but it has to be rooted in trust and the rule of law. “Trust and predictability are everything.” She leans forward to make her point. “Capitalism is based upon the idea that, implicitly or explicitly, you’re making contracts with people all day long, and if you can’t trust that the laws in place will prevail and that the other person is going to fulfill their side of the bargain, well, then no transactions are going to take place.”

And that is why Fedak is not so concerned about bubbles. “It’s human nature,” she explains, “and you don’t want to put so many obstacles in place that you eliminate them, because some very good things come out of bubbles. A lot of the technologies we have in 2011 were born out of seeds planted in the tech bubble of 1999.” What worry her are government intrusions that disrupt the virtuous cycle. She points to what happened in the Chrysler “bankruptcy,” when junior creditors (including politically favored employee unions) were moved ahead of senior debt holders in line to be paid. “This was one of the biggest catalysts for me in this project,” Fedak explains. “I walked in and said to our bond guys, ‘How do you value a bond today? How do you have any faith in your standing as a creditor?’ You need trust and you need predictability.”

But most of all, she was increasingly worried about what she sees as the lack of understanding of how capitalism works and its benefits among young people today. “I’ve known so many young people in the investment business who didn’t see the moral benefits of the system,” she explains. “They haven’t been taught how the free markets interact with our institutions, personal liberties, and social mobility.”

Fedak decided that she wanted to work with college students, to teach them about the very real virtues of free markets. Working with the Center for the American University at the Manhattan Institute—which she and her husband, Michael, a physician, have supported for decades—she launched the Marilyn G. Fedak Capitalism Project.

“We seek to encourage colleges and universities to expose their students to the linkages between our country’s economic system and our political institutions, liberty and democracy,” she explains. “We believe that such an understanding is critical for the future leaders of our country to ensure the preservation of all that has made the United States such a great country.”

Fedak and her Manhattan Institute colleagues are currently developing their plans. Among their ideas thus far: sharing course syllabi and using multimedia platforms to distribute lectures. She is also intrigued by the possibility of creating course content for law and business students. “Something like 70 percent of law courses are about business, but many of these kids have no understanding of the business world, much less how capitalism really works.” Other ideas include a course reader on capitalism that professors could use, or a business-school counterpart to the Federalist Society. “Let’s try a lot of different ideas with relatively small amounts of money behind them,” Fedak says, describing her approach, “then see which ones are worthy of larger funding.”

In the end, Fedak hopes that future leaders will see and appreciate capitalism’s inherent virtues. “The flexibility, the mobility, the serendipity that one has in a free-market environment is quite extraordinary if you think about it relative to the way socialism works, or even more closed political and economic environments around the world.”

Fedak is joining the ranks of many donors who are promoting a return to the first principles of free enterprise. And through these efforts, these donors hope to make a long-term investment in strengthening the American economy.

“Capitalism Is a Moral System”

John Allison was chairman and CEO of BB&T when the financial crisis hit. Based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, BB&T Corporation is one of the nation’s largest banks. It was experiencing what he calls a “flight to quality”—as venerable but precarious financial institutions tottered, BB&T’s sound management was making it a refuge in the storm.

Even though BB&T was healthy, it was told to take some medicine: the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Under TARP, all of the nation’s largest banks—healthy and failing alike—were supposed to accept government money in exchange for equity warrants. “TARP was a rip-off for healthy banks like BB&T,” says Allison. “We had to pay high interest rates for money we didn’t need. It cost us over a hundred million dollars.”

“I was personally, adamantly opposed to TARP,” he adds, but “we were under intense regulatory pressure.” BB&T was forced to take TARP money and give the government a stake of the bank. “I didn’t see how bad it was going to be,” he explains. But he’s referring not to the extent of the crisis but to the government response. To Allison, the financial crisis was not a wake-up call. Instead, it confirmed his core principles.

“Government policies really caused the financial crisis,” he explains. “We haven’t had a failure of markets.” He points to a series of government policy decisions, from the Federal Reserve’s low interest rate and inverted yield monetary policies to the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that exacerbated what would otherwise have been a normal—and much-needed—correction.

Thus, Allison argues, what America’s business leaders need to do is return to free-market principles. Allison modeled this kind of leadership, even when it appeared to intrude on the bottom line. After the Supreme Court’s infamous Kelo decision, BB&T was the only major bank not to provide financing for projects that used land seized through eminent domain for private purposes. “We thought that was a violation of a principle that is necessary for a free society,” Allison says. The bank’s decision “turned out to be great economics, which doesn’t surprise me at all.”

“Far more important than the economic issues are the philosophical issues,” says Allison. “The real causes of the financial crisis are philosophical: a combination of altruism and pragmatism. Pragmatism is what we tend to teach in our business schools: do what works. A lot of things that work in the short term are very destructive in the long term.”

“I’ve been a student of economics for a long time,” he continues. “But my real intense interest began with Ayn Rand.” He picked up a copy of Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal and read it during his senior year at the University of North Carolina. He was hooked. “Atlas Shrugged was a tremendously powerful book for me. For me and for many people I’ve talked to, it was a huge a-ha! It was an argument from an entirely different perspective.”

What Allison found in Rand was an imaginative expression of something inherent to the free market system: a moral framework. “Most people realize that capitalism produces a higher standard of living,” he explains. “But it is perceived by most people as amoral, if not immoral.” His voice rises a bit. “Capitalism is a moral system—the only system that is consistent with man’s nature as an independent thinking being who needs to be free in order to be innovative and productive.”

For Allison, capitalism’s morality is rooted in human nature. Man has rational capacity, and a capitalist system allows him the greatest freedom to exercise that capacity for creativity and innovation—and to be rewarded accordingly. “It is, in a very deep sense, a just system,” he explains. That people tend to thrive more in capitalist economies, not to mention enjoy more freedom, is just the icing on the cake.

Like Fedak, Allison witnessed the morality of capitalism up close over the course of his career. He joined BB&T after graduating from college, and he worked his way up in the ranks. He became CEO of BB&T in 1989, and began the company’s transition from a small regional bank into the nation’s 10th-largest financial holding company, growing BB&T’s assets from $5 billion when he became CEO to $152 billion when he retired at the end of 2008.

Amid the growth, Allison put his stamp on BB&T’s corporate charitable giving. Like much corporate philanthropy, BB&T’s giving a decade ago was going to good causes, but it wasn’t particularly strategic. “The money that was being spent wasn’t going to promote the well-being of our company or our country,” he explains. “We needed to focus our contributions on something that will matter, and we think that presenting the concepts that undergird capitalism is essential for both BB&T’s well-being and the well-being of the society in which we live.”

Allison’s approach: small, active centers on college campuses, designed to give the best and brightest college students an introduction to ideas they weren’t likely to get in their other classes. “One of the principal goals for BB&T is to encourage a rational discussion of the fundamental moral principles underlying a free society and free markets,” he says. “The best way to have the biggest effect in the long term is by impacting future leaders.”

Allison started at Duke, where he earned his MBA and later served on the board of the business school. “I had long argued that business schools needed to do more on leadership and ethics—at an individual level, at the business level, and at a societal level. The people at Duke got interested in that idea.” And thus was born Duke’s Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace. Next came a program exploring the ideas underlying a free society in the philosophy program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dozens of other centers followed. Today, BB&T supports 65 university centers—serving nearly every major college and university in the bank’s core operating areas in the southeast. The centers are housed in a wide spectrum of academic departments, although most of them are in economics departments and business schools, where they reach future business leaders, entrepreneurs, and job creators. Last year, nearly 25,000 students participated in some way in a BB&T-supported program.

BB&T today contributes about $6.9 million per year to the centers. (Although Allison retired as BB&T’s CEO at the end of 2008 and as chairman a year later, he remains at the helm of BB&T’s charitable support for these centers.) When it launches a new one, it usually makes a 10-year commitment, ranging from $500,000 for a small college to $1.5 million for a major university. “The university makes a profit on it because they’re leveraging their existing faculty,” says Allison.

When Allison launches a new program, he looks first for a faculty member who’s passionate about the idea. “Execution is almost totally driven by the faculty member’s interest in doing this,” he explains. “We won’t do it unless we find a faculty member who’s genuinely interested.” That professor’s interests often drive the focus of the program—the campus centers range in topics from public choice to broader questions of morality. Much like the capitalist system they seek to explain, the centers are neither centrally planned nor administered. “Our goal is not to indoctrinate students, but for them to hear—often for the first time—an ethical defense of free markets,” says Allison.

The centers do share some elements in common: a course on the moral foundations of capitalism; distribution of classic books on free enterprise (such as F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action, and Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom); and a seminar, lecture, and debate series. Faculty members design their own syllabi for the moral foundations course, but they don’t select the readings in a vacuum. “One of our goals is to network faculty,” says Allison. “Universities are definitely silos, but there’s some real thinking going on when we get top-flight intellectuals from philosophy talking to economists, and top-flight economists talking to political scientists.” One of the places this happens is at the BB&T-sponsored summer conference for faculty at Clemson University. At several universities, BB&T has also partnered with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation to cultivate social science and economics Ph.D. candidates with an appreciation of capitalism.

Another common element of the BB&T programs—and one that is occasionally controversial—is the inclusion of Atlas Shrugged in the curriculum. According to Allison, Rand inspires a uniquely hostile response from the left. “I think it’s because Rand provides a secular, integrated defense of capitalism,” he explains. “The left likes to believe that they own all the secular arguments. They’re scared of Rand. She poses a far bigger threat, because she challenges a lot of the fundamental premises on which statist arguments are based, on their own terms. If she wasn’t having an effect, they wouldn’t pay any attention to her.”

Atlas Shrugged is also unique among capitalist classics in that it’s a well-plotted novel that—excepting the dense monologues that run up to 90 pages—zips along like a train gliding on Rearden Metal. “That’s one of the reasons I really encourage Atlas,” says Allison. “For many students, a novel is a much more compelling presentation than an economic argument. They might not totally agree with Rand, but that’s not the point. It’s the book that helps them think in a different way, separate from an economic argument.”

“Integrating Theology and Economics”

Like John Allison, Robert and Patricia Kern believe in the urgency of making a moral case for free enterprise. The Kerns, however, bring to the conversation a different perspective and a different set of priorities. “We’re striving to connect the topic of economics with the concerns and culture of faith-based communities,” explains James Rahn, president of the Kern Family Foundation. “That’s not in contrast to a more secular, libertarian approach, mind you. We are taking a different perspective, looking at the same fundamental issues, but through different lenses.”

“In the second half of the 20th century, the case for free enterprise was taken over by people with a utilitarian moral theory,” says Greg Forster. He is program director for American history, economics, and religion at the Kern Family Foundation. The Kerns, Forster adds, have great respect for those, Friedman and Hayek among them, who have made this case. But, adds Forster, “there is a shallowness to the utilitarian view of the universe and human life, which is evident in its understanding of economic systems. If the case for free markets is shackled to this reductionist anthropology and morality, it’s not going to be persuasive to people who start from a faith-based perspective.”

Although “free markets have performed better than any other system devised,” Forster continues, “no social system can maintain itself over time unless it is constantly infused toward renewal. There is more than morality at stake here. This is about our understanding of the whole universe and our place in it, and there is a spirit that needs to infuse the social system. If you want to talk about that, you have to go beyond morality and talk about theology.” Hence, Forster explains, the Kerns believe in making the case for the free enterprise system’s roots in the Judeo-Christian moral tradition: centered on the freedom of the individual—and the individual’s relationship to God.

Robert and Patricia Kern, now in their 80s, met while they were undergraduates at the University of Illinois—Robert, in the school of engineering—in the 1940s. In 1959, they founded a generator company in a rented garage in Wales, Wisconsin. He produced electrical generators and grew the firm—later known as Generac Power Systems—into one of the world’s largest producers of engine-driven generators, with a specialty in 5-to-500 kW systems for emergency and stand-by residential and light commercial uses. Kern grew Generac to nearly 2,100 employees before he sold it, using the proceeds to establish the Kern Family Foundation.

The Kerns have also been active in the life of their church. Robert is the son of a Baptist minister, and Patricia served for 22 years on the board of a Baptist seminary—including 6 years as chair, the first woman to do so. Both Kerns have a strong sense of the unity of their vocations in the world and their callings as Christians, and they believe that today’s evangelicals need a better understanding of the role of economic activity in a life of Christian discipleship. Through the Kern Family Foundation, the Kerns have worked to promote K–12 education reform, engineering education, and pastoral education.

The Kerns’ approach to reviving faith-based economic understanding works through higher education, with two prongs: Christian undergraduates and evangelical seminarians. These two prongs reflect the Kerns’ beliefs about vocation: that all people have a calling to use their gifts in service to others, and that the church is to urge its members to find this calling.

In 2009, the Kern Family Foundation launched a major effort to reach evangelical college students through the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). AEI president Arthur Brooks brought to the think tank a trademark interest in the connection between economic and moral well-being. “Arthur really understands that economics is not about whether we get an extra quarter-point of growth in GDP this year,” explains Forster. “Economics is about people living into their callings and making a contribution to the common good. What Arthur has done is gather together several other superb economists at AEI and build a project that translates economics into a language that speaks to those concerns, and particularly that speaks to the spiritual hunger that evangelicals have to know what God wants from their working lives.”

That project is called the Common Sense Concept, and it taps into the Kerns’ concern that evangelical young people no longer see the connections between following God and serving others in a free marketplace—indeed, that they are increasingly attracted to leftist arguments for “social justice” and its resulting dependencies. AEI’s outreach includes a series of short books for college students written by AEI scholars. Steve Hayward offers a biblical perspective on humans and the environment. Financial expert Alex Pollock writes on booms and busts, proposing that the roots of financial collapses are a consequence of human moral failings. Finally, Arthur Brooks and Peter Wehner argue for the morality of democratic capitalism. “They lay out the case for why free enterprise is morally good, but also requires the vigilance of people infusing a moral spirit into it,” says Forster.

AEI also hosts a lecture and debate series for college students and young professionals. Last year at Wheaton College in Illinois, Brooks debated liberal minister and commentator Jim Wallis on whether capitalism has a soul. “We didn’t think we’d be able to get something as good as a debate between Arthur Brooks and Jim Wallis,” says an impressed Forster. “It was a smash hit from our perspective.” At AEI’s Washington headquarters, “new monastic” and peace advocate Shane Claiborne debated microfinance leader Peter Greer on loving one’s neighbor in the 21st century.

“Theology lacks in itself the empirical understanding of human nature that we get from economics,” Forster says, explaining the other prong of the Kerns’ work. “There needs to be a dialogue between theology and economics. The theologians need to take into account how economics really works, and the economists need to take account of how human beings really work.”

To this end, the foundation has worked closely with the Acton Institute, which Forster calls “the premier organization dedicated to research integrating theology and economics.” The Kern Family Foundation is helping Acton to become a more influential resource for and participant in evangelical theological debates. The Kerns also support field learning, new courses, faculty projects, and other ways of infusing economic thought into the curricula of 13 evangelical seminaries. “We think this is really essential to the future of the church,” says Forster.

The Kerns’ efforts to seed the Judeo-Christian moral tradition of vocation into Christian colleges and seminaries are one part of their work in higher education. As an engineer who became a successful entrepreneur, Robert Kern also hopes to “instill the entrepreneurial mindset” into future engineers, says program director Tim Kriewall, who oversees the Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN). KEEN is a network of 18 small, private colleges and universities—comprising more than 13,000 engineering undergraduates—that share the Kerns’ vision for entrepreneurial engineering.

“We’re trying to get people work-ready, so to speak,” Kriewall says, “so that when they graduate with a bachelor’s degree, they can make contributions to the firms that employ them without needing to go on to grad school.” The Kerns’ goal is not for every graduating engineer to be ready to start his or her own business, but rather for young engineers to adapt their talents to emerging opportunities. “It’s not about entrepreneurship; it’s about supporting entrepreneurially minded businesses,” Kriewall adds.

Like the Kerns’ programs on values and free enterprise, KEEN helps young people to understand their vocation—how, through their work, they can serve others and realize their callings. “We get out of bed in the morning to apply our God-given skills to help people,” Kriewall explains. “That’s what entrepreneurs do.”

The same moral imagination undergirds all of the Kerns’ efforts. “We’re talking about a curiosity level that leads you to understand what is taking place outside of the world that you’re living in, because your ideas can come from anywhere, and if you don’t have a breadth of natural interest, I don’t think it’s going to take you very far,” says Robert Kern. “There’s something new to be learned every day, and all of this, put together, wraps itself up in developing an entrepreneurial spirit.”

Investing in Influence

Back in her midtown office, Marilyn Fedak acknowledges that she is taking a different tack from John Allison and the Kern Family Foundation. Nonetheless, she is watching both efforts closely. Allison was “the very first person I spoke to,” she says, and she is intrigued by the Kerns’ efforts to reach evangelicals. But she intends to pursue a different strategy. “I really want to try to get to the future leaders of our society,” she says—students at Ivy League schools and America’s top law and business colleges.

While Fedak is just beginning to ramp up—and seek additional funding for—her project, Allison has reached the limits of what BB&T can do. It has a center at nearly every major college and university in its operating area. “The big opportunity I’m focused on is how we can take these programs out of the BB&T footprint,” he says. “We have a proven program that has been very successful, but we shouldn’t do it with BB&T money.” To expand the programs, Allison has created the Fund for Inquiry into the Morality of Capitalism, administered by the Center for Excellence in Higher Education. His goal: 200 new university centers in the next 10 years.

One of the difficulties of funding in the realm of ideas is that it can be hard to identify clear outcomes. Allison, Fedak, and the Kerns measure their work, but they are limited by the goals they hope to achieve. As Greg Forster puts it, “We want to build a basis for generational culture change.” These donors are not just exposing students to the benefits of capitalism; they hope to make the case for the rightness of the free enterprise system.

On this point, all four donors agree: For the economy to become healthy again, future leaders will need to understand why free enterprise is a moral good. They will need to understand the failures of 2008 and 2009, and how to avoid repeating them. They will need wisdom—as well as recognition of the wisdom inherent to the market.

The storm outside Fedak’s windows gathers force; snow piles in curves along the windowsills. In the distance, the Empire State Building is barely visible. Fedak turns away from the window. She knows the storm will pass. She has work to do.

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This article was originally published in Philanthropy‘s Spring 2011 issue.

Reed is not only an avid aviatrix. With the gift of her airport and collection to Lake Erie College in Ohio, she has proven herself an avid philanthropist.

Reed first caught the aviation bug from her husband, Chuck, whom she married in 1966. She was an English teacher in Painesville, Ohio, and he was an Air Force veteran of the Korean War who worked for Avery International. (It later became Avery Dennison, perhaps best known for producing mailing labels and other adhesive office supplies.) Chuck held 20 patents in pressure-sensitive materials and applications, including the tabs used to secure disposable diapers.

“Aviation was his whole life,” says Gretchen. When he went on business trips, he flew himself. He encouraged his wife to take up flying, too, and she became a licensed pilot in 1969. Later that year, Gretchen went to the superintendent of the district in which she taught and proposed an aviation class for high school students. She taught that class until her retirement in 1995, introducing more than 600 young people to the pleasures and rigors of flying. When she started the program, she was the country’s only female high school aviation teacher.

In the late 1970s, the Reeds decided to build their own airfield. They bought 68 acres in rural Lake County, Ohio, and cleared land for the east-west grass runway; another grass runway followed in the 1980s. They also built hangars on the property, which they named Pheasant Run Airport. Gretchen moved the high school aviation program to Pheasant Run, and she and Chuck would fly with her students after school and on weekends.

“Restoring and maintaining aircraft was a long-time interest of Chuck’s,” says Gretchen. Pheasant Run allowed him to indulge the hobby. His handiwork is on display in the hangars at Pheasant Run, and includes a Fokker Dr.I, a reproduction of the triplane flown by Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron) in World War I; an Interstate L-6, an observation scout plane used by Gen. George S. Patton during World War II; and a Meyers OTW Army trainer produced from 1936 to 1944. The OTW was Chuck’s favorite, Gretchen says. “It’s a very responsive, tandem, open-cockpit old-fashioned airplane. Open-cockpit flying is a whole lot of fun. It sounds just like old airplanes are supposed to sound.” The OTW is so valuable today, Gretchen says, that she stopped flying it after only 35 hours, lest anything happen to it.

When Chuck’s health began to decline, the Reeds started talking about what to do with Pheasant Run and their collection. They had both loved teaching and having visitors at Pheasant Run, and the idea of a museum was appealing. (For example, both were involved with the International Women’s Air and Space Museum in Cleveland, where Gretchen is a trustee.) After Chuck’s death in 2008, Gretchen made concrete plans for the future of Pheasant Run, deciding to give it to Lake Erie College.

Lake Erie College, Reed says, was a “perfect fit” for her gift. Now co-ed, in the 1930s it was the nation’s only women’s college to offer an aviation class; Amelia Earhart visited the campus multiple times. “My initial thinking was that Pheasant Run would become an educational center and an aviation museum,” Reed says. “We’ve been working toward that goal ever since Chuck died.” The hangars are now cleaned up, organized, and ready for visitors.

“Pheasant Run will be first and foremost a center for preserving history,” says Lake Erie president Michael Victor. “But it will be more than that: it will be a center for teaching, and a learning center for aviation and avionics majors.” Reed’s gift—valued at over $3 million—includes additional adjacent acreage on which Lake Erie College hopes to build a longer runway and additional hangars. And Reed’s gift has opened the door for other gifts. “We’ve received interest from other aviation enthusiasts about donating their planes to Lake Erie College to add to the collection,” says Scott Evans, Lake Erie’s vice president for institutional advancement.

And as aviation returns to Lake Erie College, and as students once again take to the air from Pheasant Run, Gretchen Reed will see her and Chuck’s philanthropic vision take flight.

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This article was originally published in Philanthropy‘s Spring 2011 issue.

That otherwise unremarkable distance marks the journey of James B. Duke. Born on a small homestead, and interred in the chapel of the university that bears his name, Duke was a man of the Carolinas.

No matter what else he became, James B. Duke remained a man of the Carolinas.

Tobacco made him one of the richest men in the world, and he created a worldwide market for North Carolina’s signature crop. In his career’s second act, he harnessed the power of Carolina streams, making possible the electrification—and the mighty textile industry—of the two states. And although he had a Fifth Avenue mansion in New York, although he had tobacco interests around the world and hydroelectric projects as far afield as Quebec, when he turned to philanthropy, he remained a man of the Carolinas.

On December 9, 1924, the Charlotte Observer broke big news for the Carolinas. Duke had established a significant philanthropic foundation. Duke’s attorney read the indenture of trust creating it, and “a hushed silence fell upon those present as the magnitude of the gifts began to dawn upon them.” The Duke Endowment was at the time a philanthropic legacy rivaled in size only by those established by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. But unlike Rockefeller’s and Carnegie’s foundations, Duke’s was intended only for the Carolinas. And unlike the open-ended charters of Rockefeller and Carnegie, Duke knew exactly what he wanted to fund: hospitals, orphan care, rural Methodist churches, three Carolina colleges—and Duke University, which he sought to turn into a world-class institution.

The story of Duke’s philanthropy is remarkable in two ways: first, for the way he identified, clarified, and documented his charitable purposes; and second, for the way his trustees have perpetuated those purposes. For unlike many foundations of Duke’s era, which spent the past century finding ways out of their founders’ designs, Duke’s trustees have sought to stay as close to his purposes as possible.

Smoking the Competition

Born in December 1856, James Buchanan Duke was named for the 15th President. His family—including his father, Washington, and his older brother Benjamin—called him “Buck,” and it seemed to suit him. He was a strong, sturdy child, eager for life.

The Duke family eked out a living on a small Piedmont farm. Washington raised his children in the Methodist church, and Buck grew up listening to circuit-riding preachers, hardworking evangelical entrepreneurs who wore themselves out in their ministries. “My old daddy always said that if he amounted to anything in life it was due to the Methodist circuit riders who frequently visited his home and whose preaching and counsel brought out the best that was in him,” he reminisced. “If I amount to anything in this world I owe it to my daddy and the Methodist church.”

By the end of the Civil War, North Carolina had been devastated—more than any other Southern state—and the Dukes were penniless. They made a new start with their one crop that had not been stripped away during the conflict: tobacco.

The small log outbuilding on the Duke family farm hardly bespoke great enterprise. In that 16 by 18 foot house, Washington Duke and his children beat, sifted, and packed the tobacco leaves, and Washington peddled the tobacco from a mule-drawn cart in eastern North Carolina.

In 1874, when Buck was 17, the family moved to Durham. The Dukes—Washington, Ben, and Buck in partnership—opened a tobacco factory there, but they found their potential in Durham limited by the fierce competition. Buck had a plan. “My company is up against a stone wall,” he said. “It can’t compete with Bull Durham [a popular rival]. Something has to be done and that quick. I am going into the cigarette business.” The Dukes were among the first cigarette manufacturers in the South, and they were the first to—at Buck’s recommendation—adopt machine production on a large scale. The risk paid off handsomely; the Dukes were able to produce far more cigarettes much faster than older methods.

To sell the growing surplus inventory, and build up consumer demand for the Duke brands, J. B. Duke pioneered national cigarette advertising. He used mass media, like tradable “cigarette pictures” and billboards. J. B.’s devout father was concerned about the suggestive pictures, and his competitors sniffed at “this damned picture business” that “degraded” the cigarette industry, but the advertising worked, and smokers across the country increasingly asked their local tobacconists for J. B.’s brands by name.

By 1890, J. B. Duke had become the nation’s leading tobacco magnate. Competition was fierce, with advertising costs accounting for about 20 percent of sales, and Duke, like many of his era’s industry titans, sought to limit competition and thus reduce costs. The Duke firm joined four others to form the American Tobacco Company, which accounted for upwards of 90 percent of the domestic cigarette business. Duke, who had orchestrated the merger, was at the helm of the new monopoly. By 1904, when American Tobacco incorporated yet more allied tobacco interests, it was involved in almost every single line of the tobacco business.

Tobacconist to the World

In 1901, Duke bought a major British tobacco company. His ambitions were increasingly global. This action alarmed many British manufacturers, who banded together, advertising with jingoistic jingles like “Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves/Britons to Yankee trusts will ne’er be slaves!” Duke fought the British to a stalemate with a generous bonus for tobacco merchants, but this approach was expensive, and as with his American competitors, Duke saw no reason not to join forces. The result, in 1902, was the British-American Tobacco Company.

William C. Whitney, a former Secretary of the Navy and a member of New York’s famous Whitney family, was one of Duke’s colleagues in the merger. He believed that Duke had more in mind than just cornering the British tobacco trade. “His keenest satisfaction from this international triumph,” Whitney said, “came to him in the knowledge that he had gotten an almost unlimited and more lasting market for the tobacco made by his own people on their small farms.”

The first decade of the 20th century brought a wave of sadness to J. B. Duke. Washington Duke died in 1905. Later that year, after less than a year of marriage, J. B. filed for divorce from his wife, on grounds of (her) adultery. In 1907, the federal government brought an antitrust suit against American Tobacco under the Sherman Antitrust Act, and the Supreme Court ordered the company dissolved in 1911. Duke’s two bright spots during this time were his marriage to Nanaline Holt Inman in 1907, and the birth of their only child, Doris, in 1912.

Although he remained very much involved in British-American Tobacco, J. B. never returned to the tobacco industry with the same ardor of his youth. For he had a new enterprise: the hydroelectric development of the western Carolinas.

Duke Power

Although water power had been used for centuries to operate mills, in the early 20th century using it for electrical generation was still a novelty. But as turn-of-the-century America developed, Duke would find, its thirst for electric power would be slaked most efficiently by river power. Hydroelectricity would not only provide cheap power to the textile mills that dotted the Carolinas, Duke observed; it would also see that electrification would spread across the Carolinas, helping the states to advance in their development. (Duke’s foresight put him a generation ahead of government efforts to electrify the Tennessee River valley during the Great Depression.)

“For many years I have been engaged in the development of water powers in certain sections of the States of North Carolina and South Carolina,” J. B. wrote in the indenture creating the Duke Endowment. “In my study of this subject I have observed how such utilization of a natural resource, which otherwise would run in waste to the sea and not remain and increase as a forest, both gives impetus to industrial life and provides a safe and enduring investment for capital.”

Duke brought his entrepreneurial talents to his new hydropower business. His physician presented him with the idea of developing the Catawba River and introduced Duke to a 32-year-old engineer named W. S. Lee. Duke entrusted Lee with full authority to begin purchasing property and building dams; Duke did not even give Lee a set of instructions. “It was his policy to designate one man to begin and complete a thing rather than start a debating society or hold a town meeting over it,” Lee recalled.

Duke’s next task was to persuade mill owners to use the new source of energy. Electricity was cheap, but it wasn’t an easy sell. “You must be drunk or a damned fool if you think I will bring electricity into my mill to kill my people,” replied one mill owner. Other owners saw it differently, believing—in the words of one—that “yes, Mr. Duke will make it a success.”

Duke’s Southern Power Company grew by the 1920s into the leading electric utility in the western Carolinas. (After his death, it was renamed Duke Power, and it still operates today as Duke Energy.) In 1924, Duke won from the North Carolina Corporation Commission approval for a rate increase that would allow Southern Power to maintain its growth and meet the Carolinas’ increasing need for power.

Duke’s interests in Carolina hydropower brought him even closer to home. He continued to maintain his mansion in New York and his farm in New Jersey, but he built a new house in Charlotte, where Southern Power was headquartered, and began to spend more time there. Moreover, one can see in the way Duke developed his power company—securing steady revenue and foregoing personal dividends—the beginnings of his “grand design” for philanthropy in the Carolinas.

“Philanthropy on a Princely Scale”

J. B. Duke’s philanthropy did not spring fully formed from his head in 1924. Rather, it grew organically out of his life and interests. Duke always attributed his family’s success to their Methodist faith, a creed that stresses hard work. His interest in orphans came from his own experience of being a half-orphan. And the Duke family had for many decades generously supported Trinity College.

It is true, however, that J. B. was not a philanthropic heavyweight in the early years of his career. For one, he thought it better for him to make money when the making was good. “I am going to give a good part of what I make to the Lord, but I can make better interest for Him by keeping it while I live,” he said. Furthermore, in the Duke family’s division of labor, Ben tended to handle the philanthropy.

J. B. Duke took on more philanthropic responsibilities when Ben fell seriously ill in 1915. He took a personal interest in the design of Trinity’s new campus, and he began having funds for “worn-out” Methodist preachers and their widows and orphans distributed through Trinity. J. B. began giving on a large scale several years before he created the Duke Endowment.

Of course, even if J. B. Duke had not indicated his philanthropic objectives prior to 1924, after the Duke Endowment was created, it was impossible to ignore them. His indenture of trust imbues his philanthropy with the same confidence he had in his entrepreneurship. First, he created a university as a memorial to his father and brother. “An institution to be known as Duke University” was to receive $6 million from the endowment up front. And, given the Dukes’ long connection to Trinity, J. B.’s next condition was only natural: if Trinity was to rename itself accordingly, it would receive the $6 million to fund a new campus and new schools of divinity, law, and medicine. “I have selected Duke University as one of the principal objects of this trust because I recognize that education, when conducted along sane and practical, as opposed to dogmatic and theoretical, lines, is, next to religion, the greatest civilizing influence,” J. B. wrote. He intended that Duke University attain “a place of real leadership in the educational world.”

He identified four areas of funding, and allocated specific percentages of the endowment’s payout that would go to each. Four institutions of higher education together receive 46 percent of the payout: Duke was to receive 32 percent; Davidson College and Furman University, 5 percent each; and Johnson C. Smith University (a historically black university in Charlotte), 4 percent. Duke allocated 32 percent for hospitals in the Carolinas, 10 percent for the care of orphans and half-orphans in the Carolinas, 10 percent for the construction and maintenance of rural Methodist churches in North Carolina, and, finally, 2 percent for the support of elderly Methodist clergymen and their widows. Unlike Carnegie and Rockefeller, Duke focused his largesse in just two states—to give elsewhere, he thought, “would be productive of less good by reason of attempting too much.”

In addition to his strict percentages, Duke included a statement of principles to guide his trustees. He selected hospitals because of their benefits for helping the sick and for improving mankind. “I very much hope that the people will see to it that adequate and convenient hospitals are assured in their respective communities, with especial reference to those who are unable to defray such expenses of their own,” he explained. As to orphans, he wrote, “nothing can take the place of a home and its influences, [but] every effort should be made to safeguard and develop these wards of society.”

And, of course, he provided for the needs of his beloved Methodist church. A colleague once suggested that he give more ecumenically, but Duke demurred. “No, that would be the biggest kind of mistake,” he replied. “Competition in religion keeps up the interest.”

Finally, part of his grand design was to connect his philanthropy with a stable company: Southern Power. He instructed his trustees to hold only stocks in that company (except for some government bonds) and to maintain control of it. This part of his design was thwarted after the Tax Reform Act of 1969 forbade foundations to own more than half of a company’s shares; by 1994, the endowment had sold off most of its Duke Power holdings.

Duke didn’t stop giving after he created the endowment. Before his death in October 1925, Duke decided to give even more—$7 million extra—to ensure the completion of Duke University’s new campus and growth plans. He took a special pleasure in the design of Duke’s grand Gothic West Campus. “Don’t disturb me now; I am laying out the university grounds,” he said to his nurse days before he died. “I am looking to the future, how they will stand and appear a hundred years from now.”

“Persons of Character and Ability”

Duke had thrived in business because of his eye for talent. “He was an extremely keen judge of men and of their character and ability,” writes Duke biographer Robert Durden. He delegated a great deal of responsibility to his trusted employees, and rewarded them accordingly, including offering them stock in his businesses. “I have only one instruction to give you,” J. B. told one new hire. “Don’t ask me to raise your salary. I always know what my people are worth to me, and I pay them what they are worth without being asked.”

J. B. brought this eye for talent to his philanthropy. He entrusted the Duke Endowment to his closest personal and business associates. Two of them were relatives: wife Nanaline and A. J. Drexel Biddle Jr., Ben Duke’s son-in-law. (Mary D. B. T. Semans, Biddle’s eldest daughter, chaired the endowment from 1982 to 2001 and remains on the board today.) The endowment’s first chairman after Duke’s death was George Allen, who had first come to American Tobacco in 1895 and who worked closely with Duke in his New York office. William Perkins, Duke’s chief counsel since 1914, had drafted the indenture. These and other trustees repaid Duke’s loyalty; 8 of the original 12 stayed on the board for more than 25 years, and Allen remained chairman until 1960.

Duke instructed his trustees to “make a special effort to secure persons of character and ability, not only as trustees, but as officials and employees.” Trustee selection has been an important way of helping to honor Duke’s charitable purposes. “Of the 15 trustees, we still have 3 family members. That’s not specified in the indenture, but that’s been the practice to have family representation,” says Eugene W. Cochrane Jr., the endowment’s president. “They offer a spirit of the family that’s been important to the endowment.”

Meeting 10 times annually ensures that the trustees engage with each other and with the staff. Duke intended for his trustees to commit a good deal of time, and he rewarded them accordingly. Compensating foundation trustees is controversial, but Duke put it into the indenture. His purpose was to recruit persons of “ability” for the board, and it underscores the trustees’ moral and fiduciary obligation to pursue Duke’s charitable intent. Today’s board, chaired by Neil Williams, consists of business executives, professionals, and academics with some connection to the Carolinas.

And every year, the trustees follow another practice instituted by Duke: reading the full text of the indenture aloud at a board meeting. Although this practice originates in Duke’s aural learning style, it brings trustees face to face with their duty as stewards of Duke’s philanthropy. “After the reading, there is always a time of reflection and comment about Mr. Duke, his ideas, and our mission,” Semans says. “This closeness to the founder renews us and gives us a sense of new energy.”

The Duke Endowment Today

In the 86 years since its creation, the Duke Endowment has distributed more than $2.7 billion. All of these grants fall into the same categories—and similar percentages—established by J. B. Duke. “One of the great things Mr. Duke did was limit us to a geographic area,” says Cochrane—this geographic focus has allowed the endowment, as Duke predicted, to have a greater effect.

More than anything else, the endowment has achieved J. B. Duke’s goal for Duke University: that it become a world-class national research university. Every measure indicates that it has: the university is currently ninth in U.S. News & World Report’s domestic rankings, 24th in the Times Higher Education global rankings, and 35th in the Shanghai global rankings. “Trinity was a small Methodist college,” says Cochrane, “and Mr. Duke said, ‘I want it to become a great university’—and it has.”

The endowment’s support for nonprofit hospitals accelerated their development in the Carolinas; in the endowment’s first several decades, North Carolina’s rate of growth in hospital beds per 1,000 people was almost double those of comparable states. In terms of quality, Cochrane says, these hospitals “match up very favorably” against those in other southeastern states. But even from the earliest days of the endowment, the trustees and staff did not fund hospitals qua hospitals, but rather hospitals as a means to the “object of good medical service.” The Duke Endowment’s work—including funding the first group health plan in the Carolinas and putting the states ahead of the curve in outpatient care—ultimately raised standards of medical care in the Carolinas.

The bequest for care of orphans and half-orphans was, for the first few decades of the endowment, used to fund orphanages, Cochrane says. By the 1940s, orphanages had given way to foster homes, and the endowment began to give assistance for foster care. The endowment also funds programs to encourage adoption. And since Duke specifically mentions half-orphans in the indenture, the endowment today supports programs that serve children at risk of neglect and abuse.

The endowment’s grants for higher education have remained remarkably stable. Duke, Davidson, Furman, and Johnson C. Smith have benefited greatly from J. B. Duke’s largesse. (During the Great Depression, some of these schools received more revenue from the endowment than from tuition, a remarkable advantage.) In the 1960s, for example, the endowment supported Duke’s ambitious plan to raise its faculty salaries to a level competitive with the Ivy League. “I’d like to think the endowment has been a major part in making those schools as strong as they are as compared to all private colleges in the Carolinas,” Cochrane points out.

The endowment has departed from the letter of the indenture in some places—as Duke might have expected when he allowed his trustees “uncontrolled discretion” to make grants “in like manner.” For example, Duke specified that the endowment should give hospitals $1 for each day of charity care rendered, which was at the time a generous contribution. Today, of course, $1 per day per bed isn’t even a drop in the bucket. So, Cochrane explains, the trustees looked at what charity care meant today. “It’s largely in rural medical clinics and medical clinics that serve underserved populations.”

Some of the changes in what the endowment funded came from changes in the needs within the areas Duke sought to fund. “For many years, the endowment primarily provided capital support. And that was probably the need in the early to middle parts of the 20th century,” Cochrane says. “In the 1990s, that began to change. The endowment began moving toward more program support.” Today, although the endowment still occasionally funds capital projects, it also supports programs with grants of three types: “Strengthening Organizations,” “Advancing Innovation,” and “Replicating Success.”

The endowment is also funding more across multiple program areas. One current grant—to improve the physical health of clergy, which is worse than the average North Carolinian’s—is a collaboration led by the endowment’s rural church division, with support from its health care division, and inspired by Duke’s expression of care for “worn-out preachers.”

“Duke Did That”

How will the Duke Endowment adapt in the future? Cochrane says the endowment is already thinking ahead. “Mr. Duke set up the indenture before you had health insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid,” he explains. Thus, the endowment’s original mandate for hospitals has been transformed. What does the current round of healthcare reform portend? “A lot of our dollars have been to help people without health insurance coverage. If the health plan stays in place, most of those people will be covered,” Cochrane points out. “You have all of a sudden all these people who have insurance and are therefore seeking health care—who’s going to provide it?”

“Our numbers show that there’s going to be a significant shortage in the health workforce,” he adds, “so we’re looking to see what we might fund in that area.”

The endowment is also working to bring highly effective national nonprofits to the Carolinas. “If you can identify those programs that really are proven,” says Cochrane, “why shouldn’t your strategy be to bring those programs into the Carolinas and replicate them here?” For example, the endowment has brought to 20 Carolina counties Nurse-Family Partnership, which provides first-time, low-income mothers with regular home visits from nurses, from pregnancy through infancy, helping parents provide a healthy home life.

In the days before his death, Duke was laboring over plans for a coal-fired power plant. He saw the need to adapt his vision of hydroelectricity and diversify sources of power. In so doing, he showed characteristic shrewdness. Likewise, his endowment continues to shrewdly meet the higher education, health, childcare, and rural church needs of today’s Carolinas, following Duke’s designs and desires.

“It is time I was beginning to think about a monument,” Duke said in 1923. “I want to leave something in the state that 500 years from now people can look upon and say that Duke did that.” Of the perpetual philanthropy of the Duke Endowment, Carolinians present and future can say as one: “Duke did that. And he still does.”

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This article was originally published in Philanthropy‘s winter 2011 issue.

One devout young man, satisfied that he led a worthy life, was told to sell all he had and give it to the poor. He went away sad, for he was very rich.

In a parable, a rich man built massive barns to store his bumper crops and went to bed happy in his wealth, only to die that very night. “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God,” concluded Jesus.

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other,” Jesus said. “You cannot serve God and money.”

More often than not, Jesus presents wealth as an obstacle to a life of faithful discipleship—just as the eye of a needle would obstruct a camel. His followers have since swung to extremes on how to understand Jesus’ teaching on riches, with some ignoring it (imploring their followers to live their “best life now”). Others have taken his teaching quite literally, giving away all they have and living in pious, monastic, or needy communities. What is the wealthy Christian to do?

The answer, write Paul Schervish and Keith Whitaker (a Philanthropy contributing editor) in their new book Wealth and the Will of God, is not to start from the perspective of wealth. They instead propose that the first question the wealthy Christian should ask lies along the lines of the first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “What is the chief end of man?”

Schervish and Whitaker inquire deeply into the thought of five seminal Christian thinkers—Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius of Loyola, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards—as well as Aristotle, that “master of those who know” who so influenced medieval Christianity. Each chapter is organized by what these thinkers had to say about ultimate purposes, capacities for pursuing those purposes, and deliberation about matching those capacities with ultimate ends.

(The authors’ reliance on the concepts of “moral biography” and the sociological concept of agency supply the book’s architecture. Unfortunately, they are the weakest elements of the book. But even though their academic tone will make it slow going for the general reader, Schervish and Whitaker have done donors a service by collecting and investigating these thinkers’ beliefs, and readers will find it a valuable comparative study.)

What are these ultimate ends? Expanding on Aristotle’s ultimate purpose of happiness—that is, the “activity of a soul in accordance with virtue”—Aquinas posits “final perfect happiness [that] can only come from the vision of the divine essence.” Ignatius offers the praise and service of God as man’s ultimate end. According to Schervish and Whitaker, Luther endorses “spiritual marriage,” the union of Jesus Christ and the church. Calvin emphasizes salvation from sin by grace alone. And for Edwards, the goal of life is for a Christian to “remanate”—Edwards’ word—God’s love to the world as it has been given to him.

And does having money get in the way of loving, praising, serving, desiring, and reflecting God? The thinkers represented are united in viewing wealth not as intrinsically detrimental because it does not belong—ultimately—to the wealthy person. As Calvin wrote, “the endowments which God has bestowed upon us are not our own, but His free gifts, and . . . those who plume themselves upon them betray their ingratitude.”

This is not to say that private property should be banned; Aquinas and Calvin alike make a strong argument for the recognition of private ownership. (“People have a natural authority over external things,” writes Aquinas, “since people have a reason and a will that can make use of external things for human benefit.”) The challenge for the rich Christian, especially for an entrepreneur or businessman who made his own fortune, is to view himself as a mere steward of wealth that he did not merit apart from grace.

One way to do this, endorsed by Catholic and Protestant thinkers alike, is to practice detachment. “We ought to use these things to the extent that they help us toward our end, and free ourselves from them to the extent that they hinder us from it,” writes Ignatius. “To attain this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things.” Ignatius spiritualizes Jesus’ teaching on poverty, urging his disciples neither to desire nor to spurn wealth, but merely to direct one’s longings toward Christ only. Indifference to wealth is rooted in Scripture. The Apostle Paul writes, “As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” Should God call one of his followers to material poverty, he or she would be able to accept the call joyfully.

So, if you are a wealthy but indifferent Christian, what do you do now? You can give it all back to God, since he is the source of the wealth in the first place. But should you “give back” to God in return for his grace? What, exactly, does the wealthiest Christian have that would add to God in any way? How could the corpus of even the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation add a speck to the beauty and glory of the Lord?

Jesus told the devout young man to give all he had to the poor. The thinkers whom Schervish and Whitaker marshal all offer various precepts for cheerful, loving disposition. Aquinas’ “order of charity” moves from God to oneself to one’s neighbor to one’s own body. Luther’s hierarchy of living encompasses first the church, then education, the aged and infirm, the homebound poor, “industrious newcomers to the city,” capital projects, and finally stores of food. (Luther’s counsel led the Wittenberg city council to form a “community chest” in 1522 to meet these needs.) Needless to say, the Christian tradition offers a wide range for philanthropic activity. Schervish and Whitaker’s purpose is not prescriptive. Rather, they offer wealthy Christians a theological and philosophical framework for discerning—for themselves—whether, why, and how they ought to give.

Ultimately, the Christian should find that giving comes naturally, “a grateful response to unmerited gifts from God,” as Schervish and Whitaker put it in their chapter on Calvin. And perhaps giving has a deeper wellspring, they write in their chapter on Edwards: “We give from our immersion in God’s overflowing generative love.” The grace of God transforms wealth. No longer an obstacle to following Jesus, it becomes a means of service to God.

“The poor have always been the favorites of God and His saints, but I believe that it is one of the special achievements of Grace to sanctify the whole of life, riches included,” says the fabulously rich Lady Marchmain in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited. “It’s very unexpected for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, but the gospel is simply a catalogue of unexpected things.”

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This review of Wealth and the Will of God: Discerning the Use of Riches in the Service of Ultimate Purpose, by Paul G. Schervish and Keith Whitaker, was originally published in Philanthropy‘s fall 2010 issue.