Grace Forum with Carolyn Chen: Work Pray Code

Silicon Valley is known for its lavish perks, intense work culture and spiritual gurus. Over the past forty years, highly skilled workers have been devoting more time and energy to their jobs than ever before. They are also leaving churches, synagogues and temples in droves—but they have not abandoned religion. Are tech companies bringing religion into the workplace in ways that are replacing traditional places of worship, blurring the line between work and religion and transforming the very nature of spiritual experience in modern life?

Each year the cathedral chooses a theme for inspiration and reflection, and in 2022 our theme is connection. Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation about what can happen when work becomes religion, and the workplace becomes the institution that connects us.

About the Guest Carolyn Chen, a sociologist, is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she grew up in Pennsylvania and Southern California. Carolyn received her A.B. from Brown University, and her Ph.D. in Sociology from UC Berkeley. She previously taught at Northwestern University in the Department of Sociology, as well as in the Program in Asian American Studies, where she served as Director. Chen’s research focuses on religion, spirituality and work in the new economy, as well as Asian American religions. She is the author of Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience (Princeton 2008) and co-editor of Sustaining Faith Traditions: Religion, Race and Ethnicity among the Latino and Asian American Second Generation (NYU 2012). She has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and spoken on National Public Radio. She is Co-Director of the UC Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, and a founding member of the Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI), a scholarly community committed to the advancement of public knowledge of Asian Pacific American religions. Carolyn and her family live in the Bay Area.

About the Moderator The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.  

About The Forum  The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.