More Co's Allowing Employees to Praise the Lord at Work
Pushed primarily by evangelical Christians, many companies are allowing employees to sing the Lord’s praises only according to strict rules – at lunch and on breaks, and only to those who want to listen – to minimize complaints from their colleagues, according to a Los Angeles Times report.
The Times said that an evangelical movement emboldened
by its strength in the 2004 presidential election is being
forced to accept limits to secure a place in the corporate
world.
In exchange for that acknowledgement, some employers permit
workers to share Bible verses on the company listserv,
advertise religious events on the company intranet and
invite inspirational speakers to read Scripture in the
corporate auditorium.
The new workplace religious reality troubles many who
are not used to seeing a Bible on a desk or hearing a
supervisor respond to a casual “How’s it going?” with an
earnest “I’m blessed.”
According to the Times report, when Christians started
asking to be allowed to gather in company owned facilities,
many managers saw it as an extension of an idea that
already had served them well when extended to other worker
groups with common interests. Some employers also have
budgets for the events that could run into the thousands of
dollars, according to the newspaper.
“There are intangible benefits,” said Tiane
Mitchell-Gordon, AOL’s director of diversity and inclusion,
to the Times. Companies profit, she said, when their
workers are highly engaged.
Workplace Comity
Yet other firms worried about the effect on workplace comity, not to mention potential lawsuits on grounds of religious harassment. Coca-Cola Co. and General Motors Corp., among others, have refused to recognize religious employee groups, though they allow workers to organize around race, sexual orientation and gender.
“There is a spectrum ranging from proactive
corporate leaders who are saying we need to think about
this and find appropriate ways to embrace it, and others
who say this is a complete hornet’s nest,” David Miller,
executive director of the Yale Center for Faith &
Culture, told the Times. “We are watching corporate
America in the throes of this. It’s the great
laboratory.”
By law, employers must accommodate reasonable religious
expression, but also protect against discrimination or
harassment, including unwanted proselytizing, said Chris
Anders, legislative counsel for the American Civil
Liberties Union in Washington, which specializes in
religion in the workplace.
Similarly, federal workers have broad rights to religious
expression under guidelines issued by President Clinton,
as long as it does not affect workplace efficiency or
could be seen as government endorsement of religion. That
means federal workers may wear religious head coverings,
keep a Bible or Koran on their desk or talk about
religion if co-workers do not object, the Times said.
At Ford, workers say an interfaith religious group has
helped them forge a new unity. Dan Dunnigan, 46, the
network’s chairman, said that after a rough start,
employees of different faiths had come to understand one
another – so much so that when the group received a piece
of hate mail about Islam, he took care of it himself,
writing back a thoughtful defense without ever showing it
to his Muslim colleague.