Christian Science in International Business
Sir Val Duncan, OBE, a lifelong student of Christian Science, is Chairman and Chief Executive of The Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation Ltd., one of Britain's most dynamic multinational businesses. He is a Director of the Bank of England. In a recent conversation in London he was asked to describe the relationship between his religion and his career. Repeatedly the discussion focused on the natural parallels between spiritually expansive and inspired thought and globally expansive, innovative modern-day business. A report on this informal discussion follows.
Sir Val's telephone rang, interrupting breakfast. The caller was about to fly half around the world on company assignment, and he had to start early.
Within hours, Sir Val explained, this colleague would be in touch with Australia and Japan. And, from London, Sir Val himself would be coordinating the trip with the work of RTZ affiliates in California.
"The point," he said, "is the need these days to embrace the whole planet in thought."
Could you develop the concept?
"Well, if Christian Science is offering a chance to affirm the presence everywhere of God, of Mind, of Principle, then business, which today is reaching out to every corner of the planet, is natural arena for evidence of helpful and rewarding human enterprise."
In a recent speech at a seminar in the Council of Foreign Relations in New York City, Sir Val brought out some points of longstanding personal conviction.
• It is the objective of businesses to serve mankind as well as make a profit—"for you won't do the latter without the former."
• Governments and industrialists talk far too much about power and not enough about service.
• The recognition that fundamentally men are the same, though in different stages of development, can help to lift the level of achievement far above our expectations. Moreover, such recognition is enormously worthwhile as a contribution to the harmony and well-being of nations.
• Our motives in business and our social conscience are a vital element in the world. Today we are seeing in business increasing examples of the emergence of the whole man. We're seeing some examples of the industrialist who is a long-term thinker, a natural conservationist, concerned with the conservation of the human family in health and prosperity and with their enjoyment of the good earth God has provided.
• There is a big difference between a corporation which has no soul and one that has a soul.
Did this sound a bit "far out" to that audience?
"It was interesting, that speech, because, while I was preparing it, it occurred to me to say these things and to base many of them on fundamentals of Christian Science.
"One or two industrialists, including a French-Canadian, wrote to me afterwards. Without knowing the source of the ideas, they found them avant-garde and interesting."
But there are—at least widespread in public thought—some very strong negative arguments about world conditions. How do you cope with these?
"Take a current economic view like 'stagflation.' There's an attempt, in purely material terms, to remove the stagnant elements and the inflationary elements in order to get our economies moving forward.
"Now, if you start metaphysically at the other end of the argument, and think in terms of you and everybody spiritually reflecting all good and representing positive human qualities—service, for example—you talk a totally different language from anybody on the 'stagflation front.' You see that a nation's true wealth is its men and women, not its raw materials, machinery, and equipment. And so it is with a corporation. All the material assets imaginable will dissipate if badly managed; but a true sense of service and of the quality of what you are doing will produce progress and growth, however low down in the league you started. You are attacking the problem from a position of your basic strength as an individual or organization. You are recognizing the quality of what you do as all-important.
"Because you are performing a service, you don't apologize for the profits you make out of it. You are concerned with what you do with those profits. This, again, is something one wants to think about metaphysically.
"You find that you can chart a course, alert to what the false mortal belief is, but be making plans to help defeat its gloomy prognostications.
"You can make people feel that even though it seems they are in fog, they can, by adjusting thought and effort, prove the presence of sunshine.
"For instance, I had an occasion to talk to the Prime Minister of a country whose policy towards my corporation was thought by many of my colleagues to be most unfair. That country's public press had mounted a campaign against one of our subsidiary corporations. I said to the Prime Minister, 'Your people seem rather angry with mine and mine with yours. Why don't we raise our mental sights above all this and do something together?" His response was warm.
"At other times something has seemed to be quite offensive. Then I've used Mrs. Eddy's reference, 'The very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares.' Science and Health, p. 574 ;
"I've worked with this many times when one just had to lift thought and say 'so be it; there's a wider plan than I can currently see.'
"I'm absolutely positive that nothing but trust in God's plan genuinely quiets one—humble cooperation, if you like. Mrs. Eddy is quite right and persuasive in warning about self-will, self-justification, and self-love (see Science and Health, p. 242). They are forces that really need to be smothered. And it's not always easy. But we've got to see them as impersonal suggestions."
One day not long ago, Sir Val encountered a turbulent situation in the course of his company's annual meeting for shareholders. He had given special advance thought to the power of God, understood as the Mind in command of all events.
As the newspapers reported it, one man rose to complain about company policy in a particularly controversial part of the world. Another shareholder hooted him down with: "You've only got one share anyway." But Sir Val gaveled them both to silence: "It's irrelevant whether anybody owns one share or ten million. You are all shareholders and entitled to a view."
Some clapped. The objectors persisted. But so did the chairman, with his calm responses. He won such support from those present that shareholders even clapped when he announced profits would be down. Next morning a financial page headline read: "Sir Val soothes savage breasts."
"I don't go around telling people I'm a Christian Scientist," he says. "But I don't hesitate to tell them if it seems a good thing to do." When asked for an example, he said, "I once spoke out with one of our employees who was going through a very difficult time with his children. I think it helped.
"All my life's experience leads me to believe that the quality of what we do is all-important, not the figures or quantity. Science supports this. In business, there is always the temptation to want to grow for growth's sake. A grain of Christian Science reveals this as phony. If the quality of your work is high, you will grow.
"You know, Christian Science assures us of protection and guidance as we relate thought to God's support for man. It says, Don't be afraid. When I'm obedient along these lines, I have never regretted the consequences. It's always seemed to me afterward—'Thank You, dear God. That was right.'
"The more I go on, the more I realize there is no answer to the world's problems without acknowledgment of the one God. I glimpse gratefully and a little more clearly the promise of Mrs. Eddy's marvelous statement: 'One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, "Love thy neighbor as thyself;" annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry,—whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed.'" p. 340.
