Opinion | What Would Jesus Do About Inequality?

I’m not ready to be cynical about the faith and work movement. I have spoken to too many younger evangelicals who have come of age in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and are showing signs of disillusionment with traditional white evangelical politics — because the Christian right has fallen well short of St. Paul’s command to “share with the Lord’s people who are in need” and because it glorifies a profit-obsessed rat race that sucks even the winners dry. Dave Blanchard, one of the founders of Praxis Labs, an organization that supports Christian entrepreneurs, told me: “The line of taking Milton Friedman for everything he has to offer is falling out of favor. We’re in a time when we’re interrogating capitalism — a reformation project that shouldn’t be confused with socialist approaches.”

The Praxis website says it fosters “redemptive entrepreneurship.” I wondered how that mission differed from the feel-good secular communitarianism of companies like Whole Foods, whose statement of “core values” promises that “customer satisfaction, Team Member happiness and financial health continue to flourish together.” Or is it a Christian version of Google’s corporate command, “Don’t be evil”? (That smug motto won’t cut much ice with the 50 state attorneys general now investigating Google for suspected antitrust violations.)

The aim to simply avoid evil “should be the entry point, but it isn’t very aspirational,” Mr. Blanchard said. “It doesn’t ask the entrepreneur, who is mostly coming from a position of agency and power, to go beyond ethics and think actively about how their venture is an opportunity to help everyone else in the world.” His organization has supported more than 150 businesses and nonprofits, which have generated 5,100 jobs in 43 countries and annual revenue over $303 million.

Jessica Nam Kim first thought of starting her own business in the late 1990s, while she was an undergraduate at Brown. She won a student business competition and raised a million dollars during her senior year to start a baked goods company. She currently runs a start-up called ianacare, which connects family caregivers with resources and support networks. She had a fellowship at Praxis in 2013, and said the program helped her figure out what makes “redemptive entrepreneurship” different.

“A lot of things are broken in social entrepreneurship. If you’re not empowering the people you’re saving to be self-sustaining, then you have a savior complex that’s not sustainable. We take it a step further when we call it redemptive,” she told me. When she first created ianacare, she faced the temptation to “create a product that would disempower caregivers, making them fully dependent on the solution.” She added: “We said no — we have to create a sustainable structure that would empower them. We have a free mobile app to mobilize practical help from friends, family, co-workers, neighbors and churches. Through this coordination we hope to lift that burden.”

Ms. Nam Kim does not shy away from the political context of her industry. “With policy, we talk to the Paid Leave organization” — which aims to win paid family leave for all Americans — “every quarter. Their main focus is lobbying, and there’s only so much you can do at smaller companies. We need to collaborate, to see how we can partner to make our voices louder in Washington,” she said. The fact that Ms. Nam Kim is a business owner — not an activist — makes it easier to start conversations about policy ideas that are controversial in conservative Christian circles. “There is so much baggage, if you’re under the political umbrella,” she told me. (Paid family leave happens to be Ivanka Trump’s pet cause, and one area in which conservative evangelicals may be growing more open to government intervention.)

If this new evangelical approach to faith and work has a headquarters, it is Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, founded by Tim Keller, its longtime pastor. In 2002, the church — one of America’s most influential congregations — hired Katherine Alsdorf to found the church’s Center for Faith and Work, one of the first of its kind in the United States.