Faith at work
Friday, May 27, 2005 11:06 PM PDT
By Los Angeles Times
Printable version
E-mail this articleDULLES, Va. -- In an auditorium on America Online's rolling campus, a glorious expanse of the heavens is projected on a big screen. Reggie Evans, a former Redskins running back turned emissary of Christ, has come to spread the Holy Word in the secular corridors of one of the biggest, richest Internet companies in the world. He has brought along some football cards and a stack of Bibles.
About 75 Christian workers listen as Evans advises them to carry out their work as if Jesus were sitting next to them. But when he suggests that they knock on a colleague's cubicle and propose, "Here's a Bible, maybe we can read this together," even the most devout among them know they will not be following his advice.
"My eyes rolled back when I heard that," said Jack Clark, a technical project manager and member of a recently formed employee group called Christians@AOL, which had invited Evans to speak. "We're not here to convert people."
Pushed primarily by evangelical Christians, faith is finding a growing presence in corporations that for years have been resistant to religious expression, including such giants as AOL Inc., Intel Corp., American Express Co., American Airlines Inc. and Ford Motor Co.
But it is an uneasy, risk-prone experiment. An evangelical movement emboldened by its strength in the 2004 presidential election, and pressing hard to advance its agenda in the battles over abortion and same-sex marriage, is finding that it must accept limits to secure a place in the corporate world.
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 the threat to workplace harmony. Proselytizing, which can be seen as intrusive and a possible violation of harassment laws, is not permitted.
In return, some companies let workers share Bible verses on the company listserv, advertise religious events on the company intranet and invite inspirational speakers such as Evans to read Scripture in the corporate auditorium.
Even with those limits, however, the introduction of religion is changing the workplace atmosphere. Although it frees Christians such as Clark to bring their "whole selves" to work, it troubles many who are unaccustomed 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."
One AOL executive who recently passed through the company's glass lobby stopped short when the electronic bulletin board -- which usually lists snow days or changes in the dental plan -- advertised a seminar called "God at Work."
"It really required a double take," said the executive, speaking on condition of anonymity because his comments were not authorized by the company. "I looked at it the way you slow down for a car wreck."
Since the 1980s, employers have allowed workers with common interests -- including gays and lesbians, military families, and people of shared ethnic backgrounds -- to form "diversity groups." Some companies say the policy has helped the bottom line: Recruitment, retention and productivity have improved as employees have begun to feel more connected to the workplace.
So when Christians started asking to be included in the trend, many companies saw it as an extension of an idea that already had served them well. Some offered not only access to corporate facilities, but also budgets that could run into the thousands of dollars.
"There are intangible benefits," said Tiane Mitchell-Gordon, AOL's director of diversity and inclusion. Companies profit, she said, when their workers are highly engaged.
Yet other companies 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, although 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," said David W. Miller, executive director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. "We are watching corporate America in the throes of this. It's the great laboratory."
By law, employers must accommodate reasonable religious expression, but they also must protect against discrimination or harassment, including unwanted proselytizing, said Chris Anders, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington who specializes in religion in the workplace.
Coca-Cola, based in Atlanta, and General Motors of Detroit say they do not recognize groups that promote a "particular religion or political belief," saying such groups foster divisiveness.
But Ford allows eight faith-based groups, saying they foster cohesiveness.
Ford initially balked at the idea, fearing some employees would feel excluded if others gathered around a single religion. But three years ago, the company came upon a rather unusual model -- allowing faith-based groups to form but requiring them to work together as part of an interfaith network. The network now represents Buddhists, Mormons, Hindus, Jews, Muslims and evangelical Christians, among others.
"It's a great danger many companies and groups will face in the workplace environment," said Joe Lewis, 54, a Jewish representative on the network's board of directors. "If a (manager) likes to have a prayer breakfast and is of a particular faith, others may feel intimidated and excluded.
"Ford, with its commitment to diversity, has found a way around this problem."
The network tries to make sure all faiths feel accommodated -- that Muslim workers have a place for foot-washing and prayer, that Christians can punctuate e-mails with a Bible verse or that the proper cake is served to a Jewish employee during Passover.
Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., known as Freddie Mac, says it recognizes affinity groups built only around "unchangeable and immutable human differences," such as race, gender or sexuality. The company includes in that definition adoptive parents and military spouses but not religion.
Without formal approval, however, a Christian group meets regularly at Freddie Mac. It is permitted to use empty conference rooms and copiers but does not receive a stipend or hold corporation-wide events.
That reduced status has left Randolph Maxwell and his Christian colleagues feeling like second-class citizens.
"I think it's discriminatory," said Maxwell, 47, director of treasury business operations. He believes his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was cured miraculously and has committed his life to Christ as a result.
There are enough examples of religious fervor gone awry to give corporations pause.
In February, an American Airlines pilot on a Los Angeles-to-New York flight reportedly alarmed passengers when he asked Christians to raise their hands and called those who didn't raise their hands "crazy."
Several years ago, a Hewlett-Packard Co. employee was fired after posting Bible verses at his cubicle that appeared to condemn gays and lesbians.
But those wary of bringing faith to the workplace worry more about the potential for subtle abuses, such as the unspoken pressure to join a prayer group that a supervisor leads, or the awkwardness of knowing the colleague at the next desk is waiting for you to see the light and ask to be saved.
"There's a fine line to walk between sharing your values at work in a positive way and feeling the workplace would be better if everybody shared your values," said the Rev. Thomas Sullivan, director of spiritual life at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., outside Boston. "As soon as you get into the second realm, you start having uncomfortable people."
At Ford, workers say the 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.
"I thought it would have hurt him deeply, and I didn't want that," Dunnigan said.
"Before this, I didn't know about Islam, and now I know a little bit. You find out that people value family, integrity, high morals, and you say, `Wow, I believe that, too.'"
Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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