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Home / Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, Volume 4, Number 4

Disruptive Religion: The Case of the Catholic Worker-Priests (1943–1954)

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This article suggests that religion can act as a force of creative disturbance in organizations by enabling structural inequalities associated with established managerial practices to be challenged and generating radical alternatives to them. Using the example of the French and Belgian Catholic worker-priests (1943–54), who entered factories to take up manual labour as an essential part of their ministry, the article reviews the influence of the movement, including its role in the development of liberation theology. It is argued that the approach adopted by the worker-priests has methodological implications for the developing study of spirituality in the workplace as well as having the ability to inform understandings of the potential for critical spirituality in contemporary organizations.

Keywords: Catholicism; Critical Spirituality; Liberation Theology; Worker-priests

Document Type: Research Article

Publication date: January 1, 2007

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  • The Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion (JMSR) now in its twenty second year, is the leading journal in this subfield of scholarship, housing the largest collection of academic work linking the disciplines of business, management and organization, religious studies, practical theology and philosophy, as well as the social sciences more generally. A truly interdisciplinary bridge journal, JMSR is highly regarded, listed in five categories by Scopus at the 96th percentile (Scopus 2024); at the top 10% of journals in its category (33/340) in Clarivate Journal Citation Indicator (Clarivate, 2024) and at 0.884 impact by Cabells (out of a maximum of 1.00). A hybrid journal, JMSR offers a Gold Open Access option to interested authors, but otherwise submission and publication are free of charge. JMSR thrives to fulfil its pivotal role as a bridge journal between business & management, the social sciences and the humanities, as the prime forum for disseminating empirical data, developing theory, reporting best practice, and for the exchange of ideas and debate.
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