Permission to Proselytize

Back when I was a retired officer working as a contractor on the Air Staff at the Pentagon, I sat next to another contractor (from a different company) who was constantly pushing his religious beliefs on me. I repeatedly told him his comments were not welcome or appreciated, but his only response was to tell me that, although I was most likely going to hell for all eternity, he would "pray for me."

This guy was a self-important nuisance, utterly convinced that his religious beliefs were the only ones that were true and correct and that it was his job to convince me of the error of my ways. But that's all he was ... a nuisance. Today, if you are a federal employee who has the misfortune of working with a person like that who happens to be your supervisor, you could be in trouble not just in some imagined future, but in the intolerant present. 

One of what used to be the bedrock principles of the United States was the official separation of church and state in governance. The Founders had lived through the European wars of religion and seen the results of the oppression of one religion by another, and wrote their concerns into Article VI of the Constitution:

"no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States"

and as the first words of the First Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"

All of that changed with the guidance memorandum issued by the Office of Personnel Management on July 28th, titled "Protecting Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace." Under the guise of protecting Americans' First Amendment rights of religious belief and expression, Der Furor's administration has pandered to the "religious" right* by permitting ... and all but encouraging ... the intrusion of religious proselytization into federal offices.

The OPM memo attempts to sidestep the issue of religious beliefs affecting superior/subordinate relations when it says that

"The constitutional rights of supervisors to engage in such conversations [regarding religious topics] should not be distinguished from non-supervisory employees by the nature of their supervisory roles. However, unwillingness to engage in such conversations may not be the basis of workplace discipline." 

Riddle me this, Batman: do you really believe that a supervisor who believes her religious beliefs and attitudes are superior to those of her subordinate - to the extent that she tries to convince that subordinate change his beliefs to match her own - can be a fair and otherwise nonjudgmental boss?

Appendix 1 of the OPM memo gives examples of "permissible religious expression in the workplace." Here are two examples:

"During a break, an employee may engage another in polite discussion of why his faith is correct and why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs. However, if the nonadherent requests such attempts to stop, the employee should honor the request." And if the first employee declines to honor the request, what then? The overall tone of the memo suggests that the freedom of a religious employee to "engage" with others - even when that engagement is unwanted - takes precedence over a "nonadherent" employee's freedom to avoid such engagement. 

"A park ranger leading a tour through a national park may join her tour group in prayer." This implies that if a tour group should spontaneously break out in prayer, the ranger is free to join in. Can the ranger stop the tour herself and ask the group to join in prayer? Under this administration, almost certainly.

The First Amendment specifies two things: that the government may not establish a state religion, and that citizens are free to worship as they see fit. While it is arguably true that various forms of Christianity have predominated the religious character of the country, this is not because the federal government has "established" them, but because the majority of the citizens have historically belonged to Christian forms of worship. One wonders whether the drafter of the OPM memo would react the same way to complaints about Jews, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, or Satanists, rather than Christians, proselytizing in federal workplaces. 

I think I know the answer.

Have a good day. Observe the tenets of your religion, and respect the right of others to observe their own. Or not.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* I use the term "religious" advisedly, because the language and actions of many self-described devout Christians in this country bear only the most tenuous relationship to the actual teachings of Christ.