Praying For Profits

When Deborah Williams received the devastating diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease last spring, she needed spiritual support. She also needed a haircut. She got both at Classic Body Image Salon & Day Spa, a Christian beauty parlor in Blacksburg, Va. When Williams told owner Cindy Griffin about her illness, Griffin, 35, and another hairdresser ushered her into a massage room where, Williams says, “we all just held hands and we cried and we prayed together.”

Griffin, the salon owner, says the business was her calling. “The Lord just kept putting in my heart that this is what I needed to do,” she says. Still, when she first opened her salon in 2000, she shied from identifying the business as Christian. “It’s risky because we’re a small community,” she says. “You might turn people off if they think, At that salon, they’re going to preach Jesus to me.” In recent years, as her clientele solidified and evangelical Christians gained prominence nationwide, she grew bolder. She had Scripture stenciled on the walls and named the adjoining café Java Garden (as in Garden of Eden). The salon plays Christian rock, displays Christian magazines and forbids cursing or gossip. Stylists halt haircuts to pray with clients. The dose of religion is paying off. She serves 1,000 clients a month, grosses $540,000 a year and moved the salon to a 4,300-sq.-ft. space in February. Haircuts and massages are competitively priced, but prayer–her most popular service–is free.

As the 88 million Americans who call themselves born-again Christians rise in politics, culture and society, so too do they in business. Emboldened by a sympathetic White House, Christian business owners are increasingly meshing prayer with profits–marketing to the like-minded, proselytizing to the unbelieving. Whether the enterprises are new or established and coming out of the religious closet, their numbers are exploding. Listings in the Shepherd’s Guide, the nation’s leading Christian business directory, have more than doubled in five years. Michael Zigarelli, dean of the School of Business at Regent University, a Christian school in Virginia Beach, Va., estimates that there are 500,000 to 600,000 “Christian owned and operated” businesses in the U.S. today–10% of all corporations.

Christian businesses were once easy to spot only if they belonged to the $4.2 billion industry of producing and marketing Bibles, CDs and other explicitly Christian products. Large corporations with Christian foundations–the Curves fitness chain, Chick-fil-A, Servicemaster–have quietly tucked religious principles in mission statements or employee guidelines. But the new breed of Christian entrepreneurs advertises its faith loud and clear, often in its names and logos. There are Christian banks, car dealerships, gyms, plumbers, financial planners, mortgage lenders, moving companies, building contractors and Internet-service providers. As more Christians hang their beliefs on their shingles, secular observers are raising concerns about the rights of consumers and employees. Some question the wisdom of limiting markets by faith. “Capitalism worships the market, on which there aren’t supposed to be any restrictions,” muses Alan Wolfe, a Boston College sociologist and the director of the Boisi Center on Religion and American Public Life. “It’ll be interesting to see if it works. Are we witnessing a big change or a fad?”

Christian entrepreneurs feel confident that their time has come. “In these days the Lord is trying to wake up people, and I think he’s raising more people that are Christians in businesses,” says Griffin. “He’s given Christians favor because they do listen to him.” Philip DeLizio, a real estate broker in Glen Burnie, Md., felt the time was right to join a network of Christian real estate agents: “Ever since 9/11, I think America as a whole has become maybe a little more religious or spiritual. I’m not going to say that was the reason we went into it, but the Christian community became more of a presence. We got the idea that since we have something in common with these people, why don’t we try to work with them.” Steven Skow, ceo of faith-based Integrity Bank, has been encouraged by President Bush’s emphasis on Christian values: “We’re starting to see faith become popular, right up to our leader, the President of the U.S.”

Since biblical times,moneylenders have mixed markets with ministry, and Skow, 57, wanted to do so long before he had Bush’s endorsement. A 1991 Promise Keepers stadium revival inspired him to begin Bible-study groups at the bank he ran in Minnesota. When the bank was sold in 1998, Skow decided to open a Christian bank. He and his wife researched 122 high-growth markets and came down to Las Vegas and Alpharetta, Ga. They chose Georgia. “I didn’t want to go to Sin City, but it’s too bad now when I think of it,” says Skow. “It probably would have been a good choice to convert a lot of people.” He raised $10 million in capital and opened in November 2000.

Skow begins every business day praying with the top officers at his Integrity Bank. At the main branch in Alpharetta, a wood carving of the Prayer of Jabez hangs over the entryway, and Bibles are stacked up in the boardroom. But to attract customers, Integrity doesn’t rely on prayer alone; it offers higher-than-average interest rates on CDs and checking accounts and reimburses atm fees charged by other banks. Some 10% of the bank’s real estate loans are to churches–which don’t get a special deal. Integrity, with $590 million in assets under management, went public in August 2004, its stock shooting up 108% to $24 in late July. “We’ve been blessed with fast growth and profitability,” says Skow, who earned $215,000 last year. “It’s not me–it’s the people and God’s will that have made this thing successful.”

The Christian brand doesn’t hurt. Skow keeps albums full of letters from customers, evidence of the powerful loyalty that a Christian affiliation inspires. While many Christian entrepreneurs want to do good for their fellow Christians, advertising faith is also a clever branding strategy, says James Twitchell, author of Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld. “It’s all part of a narrative that you buy or sell,” he says. “How else do you separate interchangeable products–and what is a more powerful brand than faith?”

The Christian pitch won over Nancy Pitz, 56, a manager at Northrop Grumman. She liked the equipment at This Is It! Christian Fitness for Ladies in Pasadena, Md., and going there fit her schedule. But what really grabbed her were the King James Bibles and the wall that read, “And herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men.” A bulletin board in the lobby posts a prayer list with such intentions as “safe and healthy weight loss”; the sound system plays hymns mixed to an aerobic beat. The gym is “about the individual and his or her relationship with God,” says Pitz, working out on the adjustable hydraulic machine. “It’s very exciting.”

This Is It! is the year-old brainchild of Irene Trammell, 39, an $80,000-a-year software saleswoman who walked into a loud, flashy gym one day and heard a voice telling her to start her own. She has marketed heavily to Christians with listings in the Shepherd’s Guide and ads on a local Christian radio station. Gym membership has grown to 221, with each person paying $29 to $49 a month. While most members are Christian, Trammell insists her doors are open to those of other faiths–or no faith. She does, however, reserve the right to proselytize among members. “If I feel so moved, I will absolutely share the Gospel with them and encourage them to convert,” says Trammell. She says she waits for the right moment and asks, “If something were to happen and the Lord took your life, are you 100% sure you would go to heaven?” She proudly recalls converting one woman in the sauna, two on the machines and another in her office during a weight-loss consultation.

Religious hard sells like Trammell’s can “absolutely risk alienating” non-Christians, says Irene Dickey, a Christian branding expert. When Mark Gadow of Preston, Md., registered his Christian Faith Driving School at the Department of Motor Vehicles, a worker there urged him to change the name. Gadow, a burly former policeman, persisted, painting giant fish on the sides of his Hyundai Tiburons. But when he dropped off applications at a public school, he later found them tossed in the trash. And one student angrily denounced God in class.

With 4 out of 5 Americans calling themselves Christians and 40% of the population born-again, however, the possibility of alienating customers is “a risk business owners feel they can afford to take,” says Dickey. It often pays off. Despite early setbacks, Gadow’s driving school has expanded to three locations; he was even able to persuade the angry student to return to church. But some Christian entrepreneurs want it both ways. In 2002, Maryland real estate broker Philip DeLizio, 47, joined the Christian Real Estate Network. Launched by Orange, Calif., broker Bart Smith to connect Christian home buyers with Christian agents they could trust, the network now has 400 agents, 50 loan officers and 100 inquiries a month. DeLizio opened his Maryland Christian Real Estate–right next door to his Re/Max office. “If someone comes in on the Re/Max side, we don’t say, ‘Let’s bow our heads in prayer first.'”

Consumers offended by a business’s religious bent can take their dollars next door. Employees don’t have that freedom. Bosses break no laws by expressing their faith, hosting prayer picnics or painting passages from the Bible on the walls. What they can’t do, says Washington lawyer Eric Siegel, is create hostile work environments for nonbelievers or discriminate by religion when hiring or firing. In 2004 courts found that Hewlett-Packard was justified in firing an employee who posted antihomosexual passages from the Bible on his cubicle and that Cox Communications could fire an evangelical Christian worker who criticized the sexual orientation of a lesbian subordinate during a performance review. Large companies, mindful of lawsuits and public scrutiny, are more likely to establish policies for practicing religion in the workplace, says Wolfe of Boston College. Smaller companies are more “tempted” to let religion dictate company practices, such as the hiring of homogenous staffs.

To some extent, homogeneity is a result of self-selection: Christians are more likely to apply for and remain in jobs at Christian businesses. Owners like Griffin say they make their faith clear in the interview. “I say, ‘Look, I’m a Christian. We do talk about Jesus here. We do pray with clients. And if you don’t feel this is something you can handle, you might not feel comfortable in this environment.'” When she had a biblical mural installed at one location, a stylist stopped showing up at work. “She said Jesus was staring down at her, and she didn’t like it,” Griffin says. At Integrity Bank, Skow says, “we do not discriminate,” adding that “we have hired probably a handful of people who had a weak following with the Lord. Through osmosis in our organization, however, they are now strong believers, and that’s a fact.”

It’s also a fact that starting a business requires a profound leap of faith, and there Christian entrepreneurs may have a distinct advantage. When millionaire businessman and Cuban immigrant Aurelio Barreto III, 46, dreamed up a chain of mall stores selling cool Christian stuff for teens, even other Christians rolled their eyes. Undeterred, Barreto named his venture C28 (for Colossians 2:8) and has opened six stores since 2001. The loud music is Christian alt-rock, the graffiti on the floor is a blue cross and the toe rings say JESUS NEVER FAILS YOU. “When you walk in here, it’s happy,” says customer James Persinger, 19. Barreto admits he’s not always happy contemplating the balance sheets: C28 has eaten up $1.9 million of Barreto’s money and has yet to turn a profit. Though store sales are jumping and profits are in sight, Barreto brightens most when he reports that 1,512 souls have been saved at his stores. For a Christian business owner, no number can improve that bottom line. –With reporting by Paige Akin/Blacksburg, Melissa August/Pasadena, Md., Deborah Edler Brown/Riverside, Calif., and Greg Fulton/Alpharetta