Rachel Ferguson, Ph.D., is a professor of business ethics, assistant dean of the College of Business, and director of the Free Enterprise Center at Concordia University Chicago. She is also a board member for LOVEtheLOU, a neighborhood stabilization ministry in North St. Louis; the Freedom Center of Missouri; and ReThink315. Her new book, co-written with historian Marcus Witcher, is Black Liberation Through the Marketplace: Hope, Heartbreak, and the Promise of America.
You have a gift for relating a very personal religious commitment to issues of poverty, racism, criminal justice, and social flourishing in general. How important was faith in your upbringing and how important is it in your day-to-day?
I grew up the daughter of an evangelical minister in the “Jesus Movement,” so it was pretty important! What that means for my perspective is that, not only were questions of faith totally central to everything in our lives, but we also had a multiethnic congregation that crossed class barriers. I spent my Thursday nights picking up inner-city kids for Bible study and basketball. Various people lived with us when they needed a place to stay, including numerous bluegrass musicians and my two “foster” brothers (not official foster kids, just teens in crisis). My foster brothers were in and out of the criminal justice system for some years, and so I got a firsthand experience of jail visits, collect calls, court dates, etc. It was a very exciting—if a bit chaotic!—way to grow up.
Interestingly, I might say that my day-to-day life now is determined by faith in a much deeper way than it was in my family home. I’ve been influenced quite a bit by Dallas Willard and the spiritual formation movement. I relate deeply to his critique of the tradition I grew up in. We believed sincerely, we read our Bibles and prayed, and we evangelized! But we didn’t really understand what Jesus was talking about when he referred to the kingdom of God. We thought it was something a long way off rather than the life of the Spirit that He invites us into right now. We also did not regularly practice other spiritual disciplines (probably because they seemed too Catholic) such as fasting, silence and solitude, simplicity, etc. This meant that we were often “white-knuckling” the Christian life rather than learning how to draw on His grace more and more as we respond to the “still, small voice.” It’s hard even to hear that voice when one rarely gets quiet to listen.
After spending more than four years undergoing a major spiritual transformation in my 30s, I find that God has changed me from the inside out. Rather than just trying to do the right thing, I pursue becoming the woman God intends for me to be, so that the right things flow more and more naturally out of my character. When I stumble, I return to meditation on a few central truths: the goodness and (agape) love of God, my identity as His precious child, and the new kind of life He has given us. This is a life based not on power, or image management, or the pursuit of pleasure, but on dying to those things. This new life is built entirely on trusting Him, based on a clear vision that the kingdom of God—being in His will—is a treasure so precious that giving up everything to get it is still an amazing deal. It was only after this transformation that I felt my moral imagination come alive in a way that allowed me to conceptualize and write my book.
When I stumble, I return to meditation on a few central truths: the goodness and (agape) love of God, my identity as His precious child, and the new kind of life He has given us.
Speaking of which, in Black Liberation Through the Marketplace, which you wrote with Marcus Witcher, you draw attention to how Black entrepreneurs and on-the-ground Black institutions have been defying the paternalism of the left and the indifference of the right. What drew you to focusing on the Black community specifically, and did you have any concerns that critics would accuse you of a kind of paternalism, as in, What do two white people have to say to the Black community?
What drew me into the Black American experience in particular was really a combination of two things: 1) My childhood experience had left the plight of the Black American male as a kind of nagging question in my mind as I pursued understanding and defending classical liberalism. 2) The eruption of activism after the unrest in Ferguson brought that old nagging question to the fore—especially as I both lived and worked quite close to Ferguson. It occurred to me that in spite of the fact that the classical liberal tradition has a ton of insights on questions of race and discrimination, it is not thought of as a resource in this area. Therefore, I thought it would be helpful to gather together into one place a classical liberal account of what happened to Black Americans, as well as boosting a few of the central recommendations that a classical liberal political philosophy would make for repairing all that’s been lost for that community.
When I mentioned moral imagination earlier, what I meant is that finding our identity in Christ loosens the grip that other identities have on us—including political ones. This allows us to consider issues one by one, rather than as part of a political platform. It also allows us to see where our opponents have gotten something right and to critique our own failures without fear. Finally, the hope that comes with faith allows us to envision pathways forward that seem impossible right now. In a time of rising political polarization, nothing could be more relevant than a keenly developed moral imagination.
As for us being white, I’ve definitely heard people say they were asking themselves that question prior to reading the book or attending a talk I gave. But what I’m hearing after the fact is that they dropped that concern as they absorbed our approach. I have a theory as to why this is. It seems to me that a person can fall off the horse on one side or the other when it comes to handling race in America. One extreme claims that racism is so powerful that it’s determinative. Many people refer to this as the “victimhood narrative,” and of course it runs the serious risk of infantilizing Black people and undermining their agency.
On the other end of the spectrum, the claim is that individual effort determines everything. This view misses the role of community and social capital in the success of any individual, but it also leans heavily in the direction of not being very interested in telling the truth about the past. What we do in the book is thread the needle between these two. It’s simply absurd to claim that convict leasing, eugenics, redlining, urban renewal, highway construction, union racism, the perverse incentives of the welfare state, the drug war, and the incarceration crisis has no effect on individual outcomes. Of course they do. But it’s also absurd to ignore the outstanding history of Black American institutions—the church, fraternal organizations, Howard, Hampton, Tuskegee, the National Negro Business League, the NAACP, literacy clubs, Black main streets, Black wall streets, the civil rights movement, and on and on. Black Americans took hold of their partial freedoms and ran with them, while successfully vying for full citizenship. Stories like those of Madam C.J. Walker, T.R.M. Howard, and John H. Johnson show that Booker T. Washington’s determination to build a middle- and upper-income Black class worked. And that kind of economic clout made a huge difference for the fight for political rights as well.
You are director of the Free Enterprise Center at Concordia University Chicago, assistant dean of the College of Business, and professor of business ethics, which is a mouthful. Free market economics is not exactly viewed favorably in the academy; in fact, it would appear to be an enemy to be destroyed. How is Concordia University Chicago different in that regard? How is your emphasis on free markets received by students in Chicago?
Concordia-Chicago is a very unusual place! As a Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod institution (a theologically conservative tradition), it’s quite countercultural in this regard. I was brought to campus specifically for the purpose of actualizing our commitment to the concepts in our motto: “Truth, Freedom, Vocation.” As for our students, I find much more openness than you might expect, and I have a guess as to why. Concordia-Chicago is majority minority, with a majority of students who are the first in their family to attend college. We’re an official Hispanic-serving institution. That means that a huge proportion of our students are far more focused on achieving the American dream and providing for their families (including extended family!) than they are on esoteric or revolutionary theories of politics and culture or the activism that tends to go with those things. On the last day of my Business Ethics class, I always ask my students what they feel called to in their vocations and why. I almost started weeping last semester as, one by one, they expressed the desire to marry, have children, help their parents retire, and get their siblings and cousins good jobs. It was so beautiful! So when I tell my students that business can do an incredible amount of good in the world, that making a profit doesn’t have to be about greed or pleasure-seeking, and that you can do your job in an ethically excellent way, they believe me!
While we arrest a whole lot of people, we actually don’t solve very many crimes!
You recently wrote a favorable review of Reforming Criminal Justice by Matthew T. Martens for Religion & Liberty Online. In light of the George Floyd riots and attorneys general apparently decriminalizing property crimes in big cities across the country, how do you get conservatives to see criminal justice reform as a priority—or even a thing? Wouldn’t their first reaction be to get even tougher on crime, à la Rudy Giuliani and William Bratton in the NYC of the 1990s?
To answer your question, I have to clarify something about our current situation, which makes the whole “tough” versus “soft” on crime question quite a bit more nuanced. While we arrest a whole lot of people (many of whom sit in jail for months waiting to be charged), we actually don’t solve very many crimes! This is referred to as a “clearance rate,” and it is embarrassingly low. We also have a serious problem with innocent people being convicted, due to the way that plea bargaining has crowded out the jury trial. By holding long sentences over people’s heads, we can get confessions of guilt from people who are just afraid of being punished for asking for an actual trial. We know this is the case because a significant number of exonerations have been for people who pleaded guilty! That means that criminals can relax in the knowledge that they probably will not get caught, while community members feel constantly harassed and unjustly imprisoned. It’s a terrible mix! The upshot of all this is that we MUST think deeply about the structure of our system, as opposed to a quick-fix mentality that just creates more laws or harsher punishments. That simply is not working.
To be clear, when criminals run amok because laws aren’t enforced, this constitutes an egregious failure on the part of our leaders. Notice that conservative criminal justice reform often refers to itself as “smart on crime” rather than either tough or soft. What we’re witnessing in San Francisco and the like is simply “stupid on crime.” Rather than figuring out ways to increase our clearance rates and unravel the power of the plea bargaining system, those leaders are just removing consequences for genuine crime, thinking that will make the incarceration rate go down. It completely misses the solution by misunderstanding the nature of the problem.
Finally, what book(s) have you read at least three times, and why?
Everything by C.S. Lewis should be read at least three times, but I especially recommend his best but least well-known work of fiction: Till We Have Faces. It’s a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche from the viewpoint of Psyche’s sister, who convinces her to bring the lamp into her marital bed. It’s absolutely riveting, as well as a deep rumination on sin and human psychology. I might also add that you simply will not believe that a man wrote this book. The sister is one of the most convincing female characters/narrators I have ever come across. Astounding. Cannot recommend enough!
