Guest Speaker: Worshiping at Work

But once you accommodate one employee's tradition, must you accept all of the others?

At the same time, we must also recognize, as Adam Smith did, that once you create competition in religion, no one religion can be allowed to dominate all others, whether in the public square or within the four walls of a single office.

Workplaces are not public in a legal sense and, because they are not, courts will generally allow companies room to find their own ways of accommodating the rights of believers. But workplaces are public in a social sense; they are composed of groups of people, and the larger the groups grow, the more likely there will exist religious differences among them. There is an implicit bargain here for private companies to accept. Make room for diversity and tolerance, and few will object to religious expression in the workplace. Confine the right to expression only to select groups, however, or use one faith to browbeat others, and those others will rightly object. The choice is up to each company.

For those who would prefer to confine their commercial activities to the sectarian, it is worth considering not just the First Amendment, and the teachings of Adam Smith, but also the articles of one's own faith. Companies that seek to exist in an environment where religious beliefs are muted are borrowing from the tendency in American life for all groups to withdraw from the larger community in favor of the comforts of those just like themselves. This impulse can be found among all groups, but it is particularly curious among evangelicals. When they perceive the larger world as secular and hostile to their faith, they undermine their own religiously inspired injunction to bring God's good news to the unconverted. Opting for what can be awkward and difficult over what is comfortable is, in this context, not merely a business decision. It is also, in a very real sense, a test of faith.

Alan Wolfe is the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College and the author of numerous books, including Does American Democracy Still Work? (Yale University Press, 2006).

Although his writings on other subjects are not as well remembered as his economic analysis, Smith also had much to say about religion. A leader of what came to be called the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith opposed established churches for the same reason he detested mercantilism: A government monopoly over religion would stultify efforts on the part of churches to work hard to get their messages across. The best religion, according to Smith--who came from a Protestant country, not a Catholic one, and preferred voluntaristic forms of faith--would be the one capable of surviving the rigors of free competition.

If we are to honor religious as well as economic freedom, we should, in the spirit of Adam Smith, allow maximum scope for people to express their faith and engage in their religious practices in the workplace. Not to do so would deprive them of their rights in ways not all that distinct from efforts to prevent businesspeople from exploring new ways to serve markets. A free society should always advance freedom of religion, no matter how difficult it may be to define what freedom of religion is.

But once you accommodate one employee's tradition, must you accept all of the others?

At the same time, we must also recognize, as Adam Smith did, that once you create competition in religion, no one religion can be allowed to dominate all others, whether in the public square or within the four walls of a single office.

Workplaces are not public in a legal sense and, because they are not, courts will generally allow companies room to find their own ways of accommodating the rights of believers. But workplaces are public in a social sense; they are composed of groups of people, and the larger the groups grow, the more likely there will exist religious differences among them. There is an implicit bargain here for private companies to accept. Make room for diversity and tolerance, and few will object to religious expression in the workplace. Confine the right to expression only to select groups, however, or use one faith to browbeat others, and those others will rightly object. The choice is up to each company.

For those who would prefer to confine their commercial activities to the sectarian, it is worth considering not just the First Amendment, and the teachings of Adam Smith, but also the articles of one's own faith. Companies that seek to exist in an environment where religious beliefs are muted are borrowing from the tendency in American life for all groups to withdraw from the larger community in favor of the comforts of those just like themselves. This impulse can be found among all groups, but it is particularly curious among evangelicals. When they perceive the larger world as secular and hostile to their faith, they undermine their own religiously inspired injunction to bring God's good news to the unconverted. Opting for what can be awkward and difficult over what is comfortable is, in this context, not merely a business decision. It is also, in a very real sense, a test of faith.

Alan Wolfe is the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College and the author of numerous books, including Does American Democracy Still Work? (Yale University Press, 2006).

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