NEWS FEATURE: Employees carrying faith to work

c. 1997 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Bank employees gather in prayer before the start of their workday. An Orthodox Jew wears his yarmulke to work and keeps kosher, even at office celebrations. A heavy-equipment operator refuses to work Friday evenings or Saturdays because of his Seventh-day Adventist faith. Work and religion generally are thought […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Bank employees gather in prayer before the start of their workday. An Orthodox Jew wears his yarmulke to work and keeps kosher, even at office celebrations. A heavy-equipment operator refuses to work Friday evenings or Saturdays because of his Seventh-day Adventist faith.

Work and religion generally are thought to belong to separate realms. But, consciously or not, overtly or not, whether it is welcome or not, many people bring their faith to work every day.


Workplace prayer groups are springing up across the country. Business people who used to gather at restaurants to pray now are assembling in office conference rooms. Companies are hiring chaplains to attend to the spiritual and emotional needs of their employees.

Evangelical Christians are declaring their right to express their faith at work, in much the same way their children are fighting for the right to pray in public schools. Religious minorities also are declaring their right to adhere to customs of dress and observance.

The federal government is paying heed.

Congress is considering the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, which would make it tougher for employers to refuse to accommodate the religious practices of workers. And President Clinton recently unveiled guidelines clarifying the religious rights of federal employees. It is perfectly permissible, stated Clinton _ a Southern Baptist _ to keep a Bible or Koran on one’s desk, or to wear a Muslim headcovering or a Jewish yarmulke to work. Employees even may proselytize, as long as those they are addressing do not object. Moreover, managers must at least try to accommodate workers who wish to observe the Sabbath and other religious days. “Religious freedom is at the heart of what it means to be an American,”Clinton declared.

Just before the workday begins, a handful of people _ a clerk, a vice president, a teller trainer _ gather in a meeting room at the PNC Bank building in Camp Hill, Pa. While most other employees are still on their way in, the group’s members bow their heads and pray. The scene is repeated each Friday at 7:15 a.m.

Regular prayer with co-workers answers a need for community and solace in workplaces haunted by insecurities, said Jim Adams, head of the Center for Progressive Christianity in Cambridge, Mass.”They’re finding their certainty there.” The banking industry is particularly illustrative of the personal turmoil marking many U.S. workplaces this decade. Mergers, including one involving PNC, have cost jobs.

David Balinski, a vice president for realty services at PNC, said the group wouldn’t have existed 10 years ago. More recently, though,”people began saying, `There’s really a lot of pain going on in the company. Let’s get together and pray.”‘

Many people _ they are dubbed”seekers”by sociologists _ are on a quest for spiritual sustenance. It is not surprising this quest also is being pursued in the workplace, said Krista Kurth, adjunct professor at University of Maryland University College and co-founder of the Maryland-based consulting practice Renewal Resources. “This isn’t about imposing one religion on other people, but about allowing for the conversation of spirituality to take place: What’s important? Who are we as individuals?”said Kurth.


She may make the distinction, but others do not. And that worries Arthur P. Brief, a professor of business and psychology at Louisiana’s Tulane University, who recently hosted a symposium on business and religion.

He can see tremendous good in encouraging a dialogue on spirituality in the workplace, but, he said,”I’m also fearful of having others’ religious values inflicted on me.” In Kurth’s view, the introduction of spiritual values to the workplace must be voluntary. It should not be a subject for performance reviews. And it should transcend religious dogma.

Some have found the demands of religion and the workplace to be irreconcilable.

Rudy Marschner, a heavy-equipment operator who lives near New Bloomfield, Pa., has been turned away by prospective employers repeatedly in his 20-odd years of working. He believes it is because he tells employers up-front that he will not work on Friday evenings and Saturdays.

As a Seventh-day Adventist, Marschner observes the Sabbath from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday. “I try to do what God wants me to do,”said Marschner.

Barry Morrison of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith said concerns about religious accommodation _ getting time off for the Sabbath and religious holidays _ are the most common of the employment-and-religion-related complaints he receives.

Federal law requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for the religious practices of their workers. But courts have narrowly interpreted the law, letting companies off the hook if they faced more than minimal expense.


The Workplace Religious Freedom Act would change that. Sponsored by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., it would require accommodations for a worker’s religion unless they would pose”significant difficulty or expense.” According to Gallup’s Princeton Religion Research Center, 58 percent of American adults say religion is very important in their lives. Thirty-two percent say it is fairly important. A scant 9 percent say it is not very important.

But Sheldon H. Nahmod, distinguished professor of law at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law, believes most Americans want to keep religion separate from work.

He says the demand for religious expression in the workplace is being fueled by religious conservatives, as part of their broader agenda to bring religious values into every aspect of public life.

Bradley P. Jacob, former executive director of the Christian Legal Society, disagrees.

People simply are trying to reverse the efforts of the past several decades to”divide the universe into religious stuff and secular stuff, and say if it’s religious, you have to keep it at home,”Jacob said. “People who are serious about a religious world view … can’t turn that on and off,”said Jacob, now the associate dean of Geneva School of Law, a new Christian law school being established at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pa.

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Religious discrimination complaints _ though still only a tiny fraction of the cases handled by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission _ increased 43 percent in the past five years.

Lewis Maltby, director of the Worker Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, believes many problems can be avoided if some basic principles are followed.


Silent religious expression at work should never be a problem, he said.”If you want to wear your yarmulke to work or hang a crucifix in your office, you’re just being who you are. Even the boss.” Proselytizing may be another story.”You certainly have the right to try to talk to a co-worker about their faith. But if the co-worker says `Leave me alone,’ that’s the point where you’ve got to stop,”Maltby said.

If it’s the boss who’s proselytizing, the situation is even touchier.”Even with the best of intentions, it’s probably inherently coercive,”Maltby said.”Who wants to tell the boss to shut up?” (END FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

Though American working life still runs according to a Christian schedule, increasing numbers of workers adhere to faiths other than Christianity. That diversity is transforming the American workplace.

Nabila Audi, who recently left an actuarial position at Penn National Insurance in Harrisburg, Pa., for a similar one with the state, said her experience as a Muslim in the workplace has been good.

At Penn National, which has had a prayer group for almost a decade, her colleagues lent her moral support during the sacred month of Ramadan, when Muslims who are able are supposed to abstain from all food and drink, including water, from dawn to dusk. In return, Audi used to bring in traditional Muslim foods after holidays and desserts at Christmas.

Islam reveres Jesus as a great prophet, and marking his birth in that way was no problem for her, she said.


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Lee M. Siegel, chief economist at the Pennsylvania State Treasury, wears a yarmulke to work. He has never hidden his Orthodox Jewish faith _ not at his state job now, not in his previous work as an academic.

For him, certain things are non-negotiable: He scrupulously observes the Sabbath, so he leaves work by sundown Fridays and never works on Saturdays; he keeps kosher, even if that means having just a bit of salad and some coffee at a business lunch; he makes it clear to colleagues he does not answer his home phone on the Sabbath or on religious holidays.

His colleagues now tell him when he is immersed in work and the Sabbath is approaching.”They remind me, `You have to go,”‘ he said with an appreciative laugh.

MJP END RNS

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