The Christian Law Association receives hundreds of calls and emails every year from employees who have been discriminated against by their employers because of their religion or who have been warned that “religion has no place in the workplace.”  These calls involve issues such as religious convictions against working on Sunday, reading or distributing religious literature at work, displaying religious posters and symbols in private work areas, religious messages in email signature blocks, employee Bible study and prayer groups, modest dress for women, employee training programs, and witnessing to and discussing religion with fellow employees while on the job.  Some employees have even been terminated for talking about Jesus at work.  Such suppression of religion in the workplace would have been unthinkable in America even 50 years ago.

In the mid 1990s, there was a strong push by anti-religious forces in the United States to drive religious speech, and particularly Christian messages, entirely out of the workplace.  Those efforts failed in 1994 when the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) rejected guidelines that would have made religious expression in the workplace illegal in the same way that sexual harassment is illegal.  Although the EEOC did not take this discriminatory action against religious beliefs and expression, discussion about a ban on religious speech in the workplace was given much greater coverage in the news than was the eventual abandonment of that idea.  This has left many employers and employees confused about what the law really says and just how much religion should be permitted at work.  Complaints about religious discrimination made to the Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) began to increase as a result of this confusion and incidents relating to religious discrimination had risen 30% by 1999.

Today, although calls to our Christian Law Association offices show that religious issues continue to be a serious problem for many employers and employees, religion remains one of the special classifications protected in the workplace under Title VII of the federal civil rights law of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-1ff), along with race, color, sex, and national origin.  The law is clear that discrimination on the basis of religion in the workplace is illegal.  Nevertheless, the topic of religion, and particularly witnessing by employers or employees, continues to be greatly misunderstood in many employment situations.