Guest Speaker: Worshiping at Work
Bringing religion into your company can be a test of faith--but not in the way you might expect.
Published December 2006
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLEToday more workplaces are seeking to accommodate religion, and that's probably a good thing. The market, as ever, certainly can use a bit more morality. But while rising health insurance premiums and frivolous lawsuits are more frequent topics of conversation among business owners, the free exercise of religion at work can be just as explosive a topic. The number of federal discrimination claims filed against employers relating to religion has been rising, and novel court cases work their way through the system all the time. General Motors recently won a lawsuit filed by a worker who wanted to establish a Christian employee network. His request was turned down by the automaker even as it approved networks established by employees belonging to various ethnic groups, as well as gay and lesbian workers.
Though many lawsuits, like the GM case, involve a religious employee and a reluctant employer, there are also plenty of examples of disputes that center on a religious business owner running afoul of employees or perhaps customers. In Houston recently, a landscaping business that quotes Scripture on its website (Ephesians 5:25--33) refused service to a gay couple. When word got out, the business received so many angry calls that the owners issued an apology. So were they within their rights to refuse service to that customer?
If you run a company in America, you probably have no idea what is permissible and what is not when it comes to matters of religion. Such confusion ought not to be surprising. We live in a country in which the meaning of separation of church and state has never been clear, even to judges who routinely pronounce on the matter. Is it any wonder, then, that the separation of church and company is murky, too?
As a matter of law, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution contains two religion clauses, one preventing its establishment, the other guaranteeing its free exercise. There are no significant cases involving the Establishment Clause growing out of workplace issues, for business firms are very much in the private sector, where the ban on an established church does not apply.
A free society should advance freedom of religion in the workplace, no matter how difficult it may be to define what that means.
The trouble starts with the guarantee of free exercise. No one can tell you exactly what this religious freedom means: Some people think it protects their right to witness their faith at the coffee machine. Others believe they have the right not to have someone accost them on the factory floor describing the wonders of God. Though the bounds are not clear, groups such as the International Coalition of Workplace Ministries diligently coordinate workplace evangelization and train clergy to lead these efforts.
There are good reasons companies may want to accommodate religious concerns; faithful workers are frequently good employees, at least if they live by their religious precepts. There nonetheless exist problems facing entrepreneurs who want to embrace religion in the workplace. The biggest of these is that, in reality, there is no such thing as religion. There are, instead, religions--many of them. Once you accommodate one employee's tradition, must you accept all of the others?
The prison system has dealt with this issue. Facing an upsurge of interest in Islam among inmates and recognizing that the newly converted tend to be model prisoners, many wardens thought it would be wise to allow Muslims to pray five times a day, to furnish them with rugs, and to let them engage in ritual cleansing. Once Muslims were accommodated, however, prisons were petitioned to permit Buddhists to be vegetarian, Sikhs to wear turbans, Wiccans to wear cloaks, and so on. Companies committed to recognizing religion in the workplace can similarly expect a multitude of requests as they grow and their work forces diversify.
Setting policies that embrace religious pluralism can be particularly troubling to a boss who wants his or her business to reflect personal religious convictions, people such as those landscapers in Houston. There's the issue of how, as an employer, you should relate to your workers. Evangelicals, for example, see the act of spreading the good news to the unconverted as a real part of their religious tradition. But what if an employee does not want to be saved, at least not as the business owner understands and defines salvation? And what about customers? If there's plenty of business to be had simply by marketing yourself through a Christian business directory, for example, what's the point of making an effort to go beyond that audience?
One thinker who can help us through the thicket of workplace issues is Adam Smith. In The Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776, the great theorist of free enterprise described the benefits of breaking up the monopolies enjoyed by government-supported cartels. Unleash the entrepreneurial power of the market, Smith urged, and efficiency and progress would follow.
