From the WSJ Opinion Archives
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
Door-to-Door Faith
The co-founder of Amway shares a faith in more than his products.
Richard DeVos believes that religious faith, private enterprise, charity and commercial life are connected in a straightforward way: "Freedom is a gift from God," he tells me. "With freedom, we can show compassion. And compassion breeds success."
Mr. DeVos certainly knows success. He is the co-founder, with his childhood friend Jay Van Andel, of Amway Corp., the international direct seller of cleaning products, cosmetics and other household items. The two men started the company in their Grand Rapids, Mich., homes in 1959. Still in the DeVos and Van Andel families today, Amway has grown into a $6 billion conglomerate operating under the parent firm Alticor. The success of Amway and its related companies has made Mr. DeVos one of America's wealthiest men.
Among the forces behind his financial success, Mr. DeVos maintains, is his faith. He is a life-long practicing member of the Christian Reformed denomination (a group of Calvinist evangelicals). His deeply held beliefs are evident in all areas of his life, particularly his philanthropy and business practices.
Mr. DeVos tells me that when he was married 53 years ago, his wife, Helen, informed him they would be tithing their income, according to biblical teaching--10% to charity and no excuses. They have never deviated from this rule, he says, even during the early years of their marriage when they faced financial hardship. They have also always practiced the habit of giving 50% of their charity to explicitly Christian causes. Over the years the couple has donated nearly $400 million to charitable causes in health, education, the arts, public policy and--especially--religion.
The DeVos Foundation has made major supporting grants to the schools the couple attended, as well as to churches, missions and Christian schools in Michigan and Florida, where they currently reside. They also gave $1.8 million in 2004 to establish the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, to study the interplay between religion and public policy in America. So prolific has been their giving that today, in New York, the William E. Simon Foundation will award the DeVoses its prestigious Philanthropic Leadership Prize, begun in 2001 to recognize "charitable giving . . . that not only achieves positive results, but also, in the words on Andrew Carnegie, 'help[s] people to help themselves.' "
The philanthropy of the DeVoses has fulfilled more than just their duty as Christians. The book of Proverbs, as Mr. DeVos notes, teaches that "one man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty." For some this is jut a metaphor for rewards in Heaven. But for Mr. DeVos, it is a promise of prosperity on earth as well. "God blesses a generous heart," he observes, "when you give, he makes the pot fuller."
If his faith is what animates Mr. DeVos the most, freedom is a close second--economic freedom. For him, free enterprise is a philosophical North Star, a guide to unparalleled opportunity. Like all freedoms, he believes, free enterprise is a gift from God that will help to enable the fullest development of the individual. It is at the very heart of Amway's business model: Anybody--rich or poor--can start a business selling Amway products. To do so--through direct sales, buyer networks and multilevel marketing--requires dedication and hard work but little capital and a great deal of dedication and effort. This model has blessed not only Mr. DeVos and his family but also, he tells me, the thousands of people who have sold Amway products over the years and prospered.
Predictably, Mr. DeVos's rock-solid evangelical and free-market views--and the philanthropy with which he backs them up--have not made him many friends on the political left. The National Center for Responsive Philanthropy (a liberal philanthropy watchdog group) recently singled out the DeVos Foundation as part of a small group of foundations that finance the "right wing policy juggernaut," supposedly to the detriment of "civil rights, tax equity, affirmative action, gay and lesbian rights and so many other concerns of ordinary Americans."
At age 80, though, Richard DeVos has no interest in changing course. He has retired from the day-to-day leadership of his family's business, but he keeps busy. He manages his philanthropy and maintains a hectic public-speaking schedule to spread his message of Christian values and free enterprise as far as he possibly can. Given the stakes--America's faith and its devotion to liberty--he has no plans to stop.
Mr. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, is writing a book on American charity.
