When the Workplace of Personnel Administration isn’t busy overseeing mass firings, it’s busy determining methods to pressure a really slender, very conservative model of Christianity on these federal workers it hasn’t but sacked. OPM’s newest steerage to all company heads, titled “Protecting Religious Expression in the Workplace,” is a permission slip for evangelicals to foist their spiritual views on everybody else.
That’s not an exaggeration. The memo explicitly says it: “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.”
Demonstrators rally in assist of federal employees outdoors of the Division of Well being and Human Companies on Feb. 14 in Washington.
Who doesn’t love the thought of going to work at a shattered, decimated authorities company solely to be buttonholed by an evangelical weirdo telling them their spiritual beliefs, or lack thereof, are incorrect? Completely what everybody desires from their job, and by no means entangling church and state.
Bosses can get in on the motion too. A supervisor can publish a message inviting “each of his employees to attend an Easter service at his church.” Supervisors are additionally welcome to do the entire bit about telling workers their views are incorrect and why they need to “re-think” their spiritual beliefs. Absolutely no non-Christian worker will really feel in any respect coerced by having their boss inform them they need to convert.
What different cool issues can occur in Donald Trump’s courageous new world? A park ranger can pray with a tour group. Veterans’ Affairs docs can pray over sufferers. Safety guards and different front-facing workers can cowl their desks with crucifixes, a Bible, or rosary beads. It’s unclear how this doesn’t look, to a member of the general public, like official authorities endorsement of Christianity.
And it truly is simply Christianity. There’s no point out of, say, having the Quran or a Tibetan prayer bowl on that imaginary safety guard’s desk.
In some way, all of that is really about “restoring constitutional freedoms,” per OPM director Scott Kupor, who’s making it his mission to smash the remaining obstacles between church (Christian solely, thanks!) and state. This isn’t even the primary spiritual liberty memo Kupor has issued since taking the reins on the OPM two weeks in the past. On his first day on the job, he issued a memo all about how federal employers have to permit spiritual folks—however solely spiritual folks—to telework, get comp time, have versatile schedules, and time without work for journey so as to adhere to their spiritual beliefs. Anybody else who desires to telework is a lazy sod who must be fired, nevertheless.
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On the similar time, the administration is actively hostile to folks whose religion compels them to point out care to others. Trump greenlit efforts to let Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers arrest folks in church buildings and continues to relentlessly battle spiritual teams who sued on the premise that it burdens their free expression of faith to have ICE goons stomp into their locations of worship. Per the administration, that’s superb as a result of it’s by no means coercive and completely wouldn’t trigger individuals who worry arrest to not attend church or require religion leaders to compromise their religion by not sheltering immigrants.
Besides that’s precisely what is going on. Two Catholic bishops have already issued dispensations, telling folks they don’t have to attend Mass in the event that they worry hurt over the potential for immigration raids. Bishop Alberto Rojas of the San Bernardino diocese, about an hour away from Los Angeles, has pleaded with the administration to cease terrorizing folks, saying.
Don’t count on federal employees to have the ability to sue to cease this, on condition that something that hits the Supreme Court docket docket will seemingly result in a Trump-friendly conservative majority enthusiastically endorsing the federal government’s proper to pressure faith on you at work. The court docket has steadily, relentlessly eroded the boundary between church and state, and doesn’t seem to have any intention of stopping.
Let’s hope federal workers get pleasure from having their places of work draped in crucifixes and a boss who gained’t cease speaking about how it’s essential to come to their megachurch and get saved.
