For somebody whose desktop collection includes the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Bhagavad Gita and a dozen or so Bible translations, the recently published guidelines on religion in the federal workplace offer a nice, paternal pat on the head.
“An employee may keep a Bible or Koran on her private desk and read it during breaks,” declare the guidelines.
It is not just grunts who find comfort and guidance in the new federal rules, either. Here’s one for the bosses:
“A supervisor may post a flier announcing an Easter musical service at her church, with a handwritten notice inviting co-workers to attend.
“BUT, a supervisor should not circulate a memo announcing that he will be leading a lunch-hour Talmud class that employees should attend in order to participate in a discussion of career advancement that will convene at the conclusion of the class.”
Make a note: Easter flier, yes; Talmud-linked career advancement, no.
The guidelines, 19 pages in all, recently were announced with great fanfare by President Clinton. The rules apply to civilians in executive branch federal offices around the country. Proponents hope they will serve as a model for private employers as well.
It is true, the guidelines sound more like a remedial course in common sense than the collected pronouncements of Solomon.
And, as some critics have noted, there are enough qualifiers (“religious messages may not typically be singled out for suppression”) that any serious tussle will end up in the courts anyway.
But it would be hard to find a religious leader who does not believe the new guidelines are an improvement over the last government attempt to find a place for religion at work: the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s 1994 rules on workplace harassment.
The 1994 EEOC rules were so vague, and vaguely menacing to religious expression, that some lawyers believed they would effectively prohibit a worker from keeping a Bible on his desk or even wearing a cross as jewelry.
More than 100,000 people wrote letters to the EEOC pleading that they dump those rules. With additional encouragement from Congress, the agency abandoned its bureaucratic handiwork.
Considering the uproar, the Clinton administration deserves some of the credit it claimed for wading back into those waters, however meekly.
But what was more impressive about the 1997 federal workplace rules was the coalition of religion leaders who came together to write them and then nudge the political mechanism into gear.
Craig Mousin, director of the Center for Church/State Studies at DePaul University’s College of Law, was at the Aug. 14 White House announcement. He recognized most of the faces in the room.
Some were board members of the center. Others were frequent visitors, participants in seminars on the intersection of faith and law that date to the center’s founding in 1982.
For many of these leaders, from Steven McFarland of the Christian Legal Society to Elliot Mincberg of the People for the American Way, from Rev. Oliver “Buzz” Thomas of the National Council of Churches to Marc Stern of the American Jewish Congress, the DePaul center provided an unusual opportunity to step down from their soapboxes and figure out what they had in common.
The answer was, more than they thought.
In 1993 those groups helped form an unprecedented coalition that guaranteed passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The RFRA sought to reverse what supporters saw as the stealthy creep of government power over religious practice.
The 72-member RFRA coalition brought together organizations of Orthodox and Reform Jews, Sikhs and Muslims and American Indians, Evangelical Christians and Unitarian Universalists, along with unlikely partners such as Americans United for Separation of Church & State.
“People started realizing that `neutral’ laws can be hostile to religion,” Mousin said. “Neutral laws tended to kick religion out of the marketplace and workplace, but once you kick religion out, you’re not being neutral.”
This summer the U.S. Supreme Court struck down RFRA as unconstitutional. Many people wondered whether the coalition would ever come together again.
Then, just a month later, 33 members of the original coalition signed on to support the federal workplace rules. Similar groups are forming to try to revive RFRA’s goals and tackle far more complex issues such as religion and parental rights in schools.
In short, the momentum for accommodating religion in public life seems to be growing, not faltering. And the proof may now come not only in presidential pronouncements but also in the occasional, non-threatening flier on the bulletin board.
