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Religion SAE
RELIGION IS AN INCREDIBLY INTERESTING domain to look at SAE, precisely because, for so many people, religion represents a deep, foundational way of seeing the world and how people should live in it. People believe deeply in their God or gods, their values, their communities, their practices, and their histories. Religion is central in many people’s lives, and this is largely true across the globe and throughout recorded history.
Of course, not everyone has religious beliefs. Many people are atheists who don’t believe there is a God. Many are agnostics, who don’t have faith in religion but also aren’t atheists. And even among those who do belong to an organized religion, there are varying degrees of belief. Some people are devout while others take part in many of the cultural practices but don’t strictly follow the tenets of the religion. In complex, diverse societies like the United States, this makes for interesting and sometimes conflicting interactions, even in places that are not explicitly religious such as school and work.
Following the guidelines in this book, we argue that it is critical that workplaces be spaces where people can feel equally valued and respected no matter what their religious beliefs. And we believe that most people want to be accepting of others and their religious beliefs. However, this is another domain where people who are part of the dominant majority religion don’t often have significant contact or experience with other religions. In the case of the United States, the dominant religion is Christianity in terms of numbers of people, but also in terms of influencing the culture, structuring work and school calendars, etc. Because of this, non-Christians may often be faced with subtle acts of exclusion communicating, “You are not normal,” “You don’t belong,” and “You are invisible.”
It may be natural to think that these SAE based on religion wouldn’t be frequent in the workplace, but you may be surprised to hear how common they are, largely because of the way that religion forms the foundation of how even non-religious spaces are organized in the United States. In the following chapter, we give some examples of SAE that people may experience in the workplace in order to build understanding for the different realities that people experience. In these examples we explain some of the ways that addressing these religious SAE has turned out, and we propose some ways that it could go better, using the SAE accountability system described in chapter 3.
EXAMPLE: Yom Kippur: Why it’s critical for individuals and leaders to speak up for SAE accountability
Let’s take the example of David, a Jewish man working at a large company headquartered in the mid-Atlantic. This company would be considered progressive when it comes to diversity and inclusion. They take it very seriously. And yet, SAE still happen. David’s job is high pressure. He works a lot on several different teams and several projects. Meetings that he needs to attend are constantly being scheduled, in addition to regular standing meetings.
Every year, David takes Yom Kippur off from work to fast and attend services with his family. Yom Kippur is generally considered to be the most holy day of all the Jewish holidays. It’s blocked off on his shared calendar as a day off. David is somewhat resentful that he must use one of his vacation days to celebrate his holiday, but as a Jewish person, he is used to that, and he understands that it’s hard to accommodate the holidays of every religion. He notices that the company calendar lists the holiday, which is nice, and David is hopeful that at least people will keep that in mind as they schedule meetings and think about deadlines.
Unfortunately, this year that doesn’t happen. He notices that important meetings get scheduled for that day. David is then faced with three options. First, he could email the organizers of the meetings and ask that they reschedule. One of the meetings in particular involves a lot of people, and David really doesn’t like to make waves like this. He knows people are busy, and he hates to give the organizers the extra work of finding a different day for the meeting. He knows he could do it, but he doesn’t like that option.
Second, he could just miss the meeting; that’s certainly an option. But he also doesn’t like that option. He is trying hard to do a great job on this new project, and that meeting is a critical early-stage meeting. He knows that people will understand if he explains that he must miss it because of Yom Kippur. But he also knows, realistically, that people will hold it against him a little bit. He has seen it before in the way that people look at him or roll their eyes a little when he explains about missing work that day.
He really feels as if his only option is the third one—to try to join the meeting virtually from home, even on his day off. One of the meetings on his calendar he will just have to miss, but this other one he could likely join after services but before heading to his aunt’s house for break-the-fast dinner. It’s not a great option either, as he really likes to unplug and concentrate on his family and his religion during this day, but it feels to him as if he must make this tradeoff. It makes his identity feel less important than others’, and he speculates about how people would respond if it was ever suggested that they do a meeting on Christmas, for example.
This year, David is frustrated enough about the situation that he does talk openly about it with some people at work. He’s just making casual conversation. But one day he happens to be talking about it with someone who’s on the D&I council, and this person sees that David is not feeling included at work because of the situation. The D&I council person, Shannon, sees this as important and writes the chair of the council and the chief diversity officer. Both of these people take the concern seriously and quickly get in touch with David and Shannon. They ask about which meeting was specifically causing a problem. Within 24 hours, that meeting has been rescheduled.
Was this a good outcome? Was it good for David? Was it good for others at the organization? Did it build more of an inclusive culture at the organization? These are important questions to consider, especially from the point of view of what individuals can do about SAE and what HR or leaders can do about SAE when they happen. David at first felt a mix of emotions. On the one hand, he was certainly relieved and grateful that he could take the day completely off to observe the holiday without interruption. And he was appreciative of the swift action taken by his colleagues. He felt as if they were concerned about him and took care of him. However, he also felt bad that he had put people out, and he felt out of the loop.
He was worried about how the situation had been handled and how his name might have been used. Did the council chair reprimand the meeting organizer? David certainly didn’t want that and would have been especially mortified if they had done it while using him as the reason. He was apprehensive now about his interpersonal relationship with that person. Was it going to be awkward? He didn’t know if he should bring it up or not. By not including him in the conversation, trust and understanding weren’t built among the employees involved.
And there was another reason why David was not thrilled with how the situation was handled. While David was individually taken care of, he didn’t feel as though the deeper issue was addressed. He imagined there were lots of other religious minorities who had the same or similar issues, and their situation hadn’t been improved at all. He felt as if an opportunity had been missed to (1) create understanding so that this kind of thing could be avoided in the future and (2) make all religious minorities feel valued, even though their holidays were not going to be company-wide days off.
What are the lessons? How could things have gone differently using the SAE accountability system? David, as an individual, was reluctant to speak up originally and say something to the organizer of the meeting. He saw speaking up as just something negative that would have created work for people who would have unconsciously held it against him. However, if his whole organization had been trained and practiced speaking up as an opportunity to learn, grow, build trust, and create inclusion, he would have felt less anxious about saying something. He would have known that his speaking up was part of a larger endeavor and journey that the organization was doing together. When he spoke up and was positively rewarded for it, he would have felt trust being built with meeting organizers and would have felt that he was helping to create a culture of inclusion that could potentially carry over to people of all sorts of marginalized identities.
Shannon, the D&I council member, also felt that her colleagues in D&I missed an opportunity. She wondered what would have happened if the D&I office had worked with HR to send a communication out to the entire organization. A month before the holiday, they could have sent an email saying something to the effect of, “Yom Kippur is the most holy day for Jewish people, a day when people don’t eat or drink anything and a day when people atone for their sins throughout the year and are cleansed. While we don’t mark this as an official company day off, we ask that you appreciate that many of your colleagues will be taking the day off, and we ask that you try to avoid scheduling important meetings for this day.” A clear communication like this would help prevent meetings from being scheduled in the first place and would therefore make it so that individuals didn’t have to figure out how to respond to the SAE on their own. It communicates a message of inclusion to the entire organization.
Similarly, a message like this could go out in advance of the most holy and most celebrated days of all major religions. While you can never address all holidays for all religions, communicating about the most important ones creates a culture of inclusion and an understanding that helps everyone adapt to the organization calendar, which is specifically organized around holidays of the dominant religion.
EXAMPLE: December holidays
Ari finds the December holiday season to be full of subtle acts of exclusion. It begins in early December as the office gets decorated. There is a nod toward Hanukkah, as a little lighted menorah is placed on the counter, but of course the decorations are almost exclusively celebrating Christmas, as is the music being played in the lobby. Ari is used to this and even understands it from a “numbers” perspective.
There are more Christians in his workplace, and Christmas is a much bigger deal to Christians than Hanukkah is to Jewish people. It’s more the stuff that people say that he considers the subtle acts of exclusion. As Christmas gets closer, lots of people end conversations, calls, and emails with “Happy holidays!” or “Hope you have a great holiday!” But many also just say, “Merry Christmas!” and every time, he tries to decide whether to just go with it or to explain that he doesn’t celebrate Christmas. People making assumptions that everyone celebrates Christmas makes him feel invisible, but he also doesn’t want to have conversations about it all the time.
One example really sticks in his mind. It was December 24th during a year when Christmas and Hanukkah were overlapping (they don’t always overlap because Hanukkah follows the Jewish calendar). Ari and his team had a hard deadline to get a report finished before the Christmas holiday, so they were working late and finally finished around 5:30 p.m. Ari and his colleague headed out to the parking lot together. As they were saying goodbye, the colleague gave an awkward smile and said, “Happy Hanukkah,” but with a sort of rising tone as if it were a question. Ari said, “Thanks!” (feeling considered) and then the colleague said in a very earnest voice, “But seriously, man, Merry Christmas,” and put out his hand for a handshake.
This SAE really made Ari feel invisible, as his true identity (the one that celebrates Hanukkah) was treated as not quite real or even a curiosity in the mind of his colleague. As Ari tells it, it’s not that he felt so bad about it in the moment, and in fact he tells the story often and gets big laughs out of it. This is important to realize, as initiators may hold onto a subject’s response of “It doesn’t bother me” or “I’m not offended” to rationalize or excuse the SAE. Subjects have learned to cope with SAE in a wide variety of ways, including working hard to not let SAE bother them and not getting in big discussions about them every time. Initiators need to understand that one subject’s brushing off of an SAE does not make it fair game to continue doing that SAE.
Regarding this example, it’s clearly not just Jewish people who experience these SAE communicating that their religious identity and beliefs are not visible or valid. People treating anyone’s religion or faith (even Christians) as not really real would be considered subtle acts of exclusion.
EXAMPLE: An atheist’s dilemma: Prayer before work meetings
Sebastian works at a small company with strong values and a tight leadership, all of which is fairly religious. They are all Christian, and they believe that Christian values underlie the mission of the organization and the guidelines for how to treat one another at work. Team meetings at the organization begin with a short prayer. Sebastian really enjoys the work that he is doing, and he believes in the mission. But he is a committed atheist and doesn’t feel comfortable with the praying in the workplace.
He feels as if he must hide his beliefs to go with the flow in the organization. He looked up the legality of this and found that it seems legal as long as they excuse people who don’t want to participate and as long as there is no retaliation or repercussion for not participating. And while he knows that they would not likely explicitly retaliate, he does feel as if his chances for being promoted to senior leadership would be lower if he were to speak up. He is truly at a loss for what to do.
The authors have seen this sort of situation not only at small companies, but also at large corporations where the leadership is perceived as culturally and religiously homogeneous and people are afraid that if they don’t conform, they will not be as likely to be promoted to senior leadership. In these larger companies, the SAE isn’t something as explicit as prayer before meetings, but is more subtle things that people say, such as making small talk by asking what church people attend, or asking what people did to celebrate Christmas or Easter.
In Sebastian’s case, speaking up as an individual without a leadership training component does in fact come with significant personal risk. While he could speak up tactfully and kindly about the praying, there is a decent chance that at least subconsciously this could impact the way that he is viewed by leadership. Before that happens, it’s critical that leaders understand just why inclusion is so important to their organization and how something like prayer can exclude people. As discussed in chapter 4, once leaders deeply understand why inclusion is important, why their organization will benefit from diverse perspectives, and what their role as leaders should be, they will be able to assess organizational practices like this one and understand its impacts on inclusion. Even seemingly inclusive modifications like praying without specific mention of any particular religion will still be an SAE to people like Sebastian who are atheists.
EXAMPLE: Religion, politics, and Islam
Zara is a practicing Muslim woman who wears a hijab to work at her large office in Minneapolis. She is in her twenties and didn’t experience life in the workplace immediately after September 11, 2001. Since she started her job five years ago, she has always encountered SAE in the workplace, as people ask her questions about her hijab and her religion that make her feel as if she doesn’t belong, she is a threat, and she is a curiosity. With the election and presidency of Donald Trump, Zara has simultaneously found more support from people, and also more subtle acts of exclusion. And the SAE that she encounters are different and more confusing than ever.
One day she walked into John’s office for a meeting. On his desk was an American flag and a framed picture of President Trump. She found it hard to concentrate on what they were discussing, looking at that photo and checking in with her feelings. This was early 2017, not long after Trump had signed an executive order banning foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the country for ninety days.
This was popularly known as the Muslim ban. Zara herself was born in the United States and has family in Somalia, one of the countries listed on the ban. She feels strongly hurt and excluded. And yet, she also feels confused. Her colleague hadn’t said anything offensive to her. He simply had a picture of the president of the United States on his desk. She didn’t know if he endorsed those particularly damaging things that the president had said or done that not so subtly communicated that she and people like her were a threat.
Zara didn’t say anything about this to John. In fact, she didn’t say anything about it to anyone at the office. She honestly felt such a strong mix of anger, confusion, sadness, and dread that she was really struggling to work with John or others that she knew or suspected to be supporters of the president. She logically knew that there were many varied reasons that people may have had for supporting a politician. She also logically knew that many people support a president no matter what they say or what party they are from. And yet to her, what was happening with the travel ban felt unprecedented and, frankly, as if it went against the company’s as well as the country’s values. She didn’t know how John could be so clueless about how she would feel with that picture staring back at her. Or maybe he did know and just didn’t care. Either way, she felt incredibly uncomfortable, as if she didn’t belong in her own workplace.
This felt different. There were many other SAE over the years that Zara and other Muslims she knew had spoken up about at work. When catered lunches for company functions heavily contained pork, they spoke up and the company happily provided plenty of non-pork options at future lunches. When Zara and a couple of others requested a dedicated prayer space so that they could pray during the workday, they were met with some subtle resistance but eventually were able to secure a clean space. During these other instances, it felt that the SAE being communicated were “You are not normal” and “You are a burden.” Those felt bad for sure, but nothing compared to the “You are a threat” SAE that Zara occasionally feels, now more than ever.
Even diversity and inclusion practitioners like the authors struggle with the best way to approach SAE like this. We all know that it’s important to respect people’s political beliefs. And we know that political beliefs have certainly always impacted different groups in disproportionate ways. And we know that people in high political office have often said things that were offensive or subtle acts of exclusion. Yet, what’s a D&I practitioner to do with the political statements that are directly contrary to the values of diversity and inclusion? It is especially during these times that we recommend following the SAE accountability guidelines in this book.
These are critical for bringing people together during such polarizing political times and connecting over challenging conversations rather than growing farther apart. We won’t pretend that will be easy to do, but following guidelines such as assuming good intent, replacing defensiveness with curiosity and empathy, and listening actively are our best hope for truly connecting across these polarizing differences in ideology.
In conclusion, religion can be challenging because of the way it encompasses deeply held beliefs about some of the most serious issues humans grapple with—mortality, faith, culture, how to be a good person, etc. A minority of people can’t even get to the place of respecting other religions’ right to exist, in which case they are unlikely to be concerned with understanding these subtle acts of exclusion. But we believe that most people respect the beliefs of others and will be willing to learn and grow.