Woodstock Business Conference/Seton
Hall Chapter
Why the Conference?
Everyone searches for meaning in life. The search is not limited to the private dimension of family, friendship, and person development; but also includes the world of work and profession. Often the search is accelerated by feelings of agitation, restlessness, sleepless nights. This search may lead thoughtful men and women of faith to sense an apparent gap or chasm between faith experience and experience in the marketplace. They may come to a gulf between moral expectations and actual experience in life in the corporation and a sense of disquietude. After a period of serious reflection, a person may see the knowledge born of faith that we are loved by God as inconsistent with the sometimes harsh experiences of life in teh day-to-day world.
Is peace of mind possible? Is this gap bridgeable? Is the apparent discrepancy between what we profess in faith and what we see and do in business either necessary or inevitable? Helping business leaders to answer these questions, to navigate in troubled waters, is what the Conference is all about.
Conference participants take care to identify values consistent with their religious commitments, to the end that their decisions and actions will be based upon ethical principles informed by and growing out of their religious faith. Religion in general, and particularly the Judeo-Christian tradition, contributes in a number of significant ways:
*thousands of years of prayerful reflection have produced a rich
treasure of thought directed to practical resolution of questions of
right and wrong;
*the motivational power of religious conviction sustains morally
correct behavior;
*a picture of the world emerges from which it makes sense for
people to take the dilemmas of moral action seriously and make
the effort to do the right thing;
*a way of life is presented which is more comprehensive and
demanding; and,
*a community of believers opens access to a much deeper range
of values than those expressed in the conventional wisdom of the
day.