Catching up on some reading in the area of innovation and education, one link led me to another, and I came across Steve Ballmer’s recent email to Microsoft employees announcing “a far-reaching realignment of the company that will enable us to innovate with greater speed, efficiency and capability in a fast changing world.”

Nice enough, I thought. Bold. Ambitious. And so I continued on, and a few paragraphs later read that “[t]he evangelism and business development team will drive partners across our . . .”

Wait. Evangelism? At Microsoft?

O me of little faith. Ballmer’s email revealed that Microsoft has a “Business Development and Evangelism Group.” According to Ballmer, that group will “focus on key partnerships especially our innovation partners . . . and our broad work on evangelism and developer outreach.”

Intrigued by this appropriation of Christian language, I did a little searching and found that the use of “evangelism” is more common and has a far longer history than I would have imagined. This 2011 Forbes article discusses the work of IBM’s “Vice President of Social Business Evangelism.” I also found a paper published in 2006 by Growth Resources, Inc., with the title, “Technology Evangelists: A Leadership Survey.” In that article, Frederic Lucas-Conwell, Ph.D, writes that a “technology evangelist serves as an ambassador of organizational technologies, interacting with prospects, partners, users, producers and other members of the organization.” According to Lucas-Conwell,

Technology evangelism requires a commitment to the product or service being sold, as well as to the company and its management. A technology evangelist is attached to a cause that embodies a vision, makes people feel better, generates impressive effects, initiates selfless actions, and polarizes people to act positively. 
It is not original to observe that many companies have religious-like followings. When people camp out overnight to be one of the first to own a new iPhone, there is something more at stake than ordinary consumerism. But what do these companies intend by conceiving of marketing as evangelizing? Is it a gimmick, or something more? Evangelizing in its Christian context involves more than just gaining a follower. Evangelizing hopes to shape worldviews and belief systems. It involves conversion. In a Christian framework, evangelizing seeks to draw people to Christ, to see Him as the “way, the truth, and the life.”
 
What, then, are we to make of the evangelizing of Microsoft or Apple or IBM, or any company that employs the word? To what end is their prosletyzing? The mere purchasing of products, or some greater allegiance? 

Matt Emerson's essays have appeared in a number of publications, including America, Commonweal, and the Wall Street Journal. The Catholic Press Association named his September 2012 essay "Help Their Unbelief," published in America, as the "best essay" in the category of national general interest magazine for 2012. He is the author of the book Why Faith? A Journey of Discovery (Paulist Press 2016).Articles:Fruitful Searching (Jan. 5-12, 2015)Preambles for Faith (May 13, 2013)Help Their Unbelief (Sept. 10, 2012)Posts at The Ignatian Educator