By Joshua Arnold

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor outlined robust protections for “each Federal employee’s right to engage in religious expression in the Federal workplace” in a government-wide memo issued Monday. “Agencies should allow personal religious expression by Federal employees to the greatest extent possible unless such expression would impose an undue hardship on business operations.”

The memo outlined five broad categories of permissible religious behavior, including:

• “Display and Use of Items Used for Religious Purposes or Religious Icons … including but not limited to bibles, artwork, jewelry, posters displaying religious messages”;
• “Expressions By Groups of Federal Employees … in both formal and informal settings alone or with fellow employees, so long as such expressions do not occur during on-duty time”;
• “Conversations Between Federal Employees … including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views, provided that such efforts are not harassing in nature”;
• “Expressions Among or Directed at Members of the Public … as a private citizen,” which may not be suppressed “merely because the employee is a government employee,” although different rules apply “when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties”; and
• “Expressions in Areas Accessible to the Public,” which “should be treated in the same manner as if those expressions are made in areas inaccessible to the public as their rights to free expression are not limited upon entering a public facility.”

Essentially, the guidance stipulates that religious Americans do not have to check their religion at the door when they enter government employment. They can faithfully accomplish a non-sectarian job, without suppressing their sectarian beliefs.

Media Mayhem

This commonsense guidance ignited an immediate furor from the mainstream media. “Trump administration urges federal employees to talk religion at work,” read The Washington Post headline. Media spin is expected, but this headline is downright false; a vast ocean of meaning, intent, and constitutionality differentiates the verbs “allows” and “urges” in this context.

Other news outlets focused on the guidance allowing federal employees to politely share their faith with others. “Trump memo allows federal workers to persuade coworkers their religion is ‘correct,’” hyperventilated The Hill headline, apparently outraged at any religion making such an absolute claim. In their title, News of the United States (NOTUS) preferred a word connoting forcible conversion, “Trump Admin Memo Allows Religious Federal Employees to Proselytize at Work.”

Government Executive kept the word “proselytize” but inserted a more sinister spin in the subtitle, “Supervisors can solicit employees to attend their church, OPM says in new guidance.” On this point, Federal News Network quoted federal employment attorney Jim Eisenmann, “Supervisors are in a special position in the federal workforce. They hold power and control over employees, employee assignments and employee performance appraisals.”

This remark reveals a cynical secularism seeping through the federal workforce, tinged with anti-Christian, Marxist ideology. While it’s true that supervisors exercise authority over subordinate employees, that is not equivalent to “power and control” over them. The notion that all human relationships turn on power dynamics comes from critical theory, and it is fundamentally incompatible with the freedom and equality which Scripture establishes and on which America is built.

Ironically, Eisenmann admitted that federal policy often holds supervisors to be less free than other employees. “In the past, supervisors had to be very discerning and careful about having any discussions about religion or having religious displays in their offices,” he said. “They were discouraged from doing that because people could perceive it a certain way, and it could lead to complaints of religious discrimination.” In other words, Eisenmann admits that federal government workforce policy suppressed the religious expression of supervisors based on fear of the perceptions of others.

The purpose of the OPM’s most recent guidance is not to burden the freedoms of federal employees with unnecessary restrictions, even the rights of supervisors. “The constitutional rights of supervisors to engage in such conversations should not be distinguished from non-supervisory employees by the nature of their supervisory roles,” Kupor directs. “However, unwillingness to engage in such conversations may not be the basis of workplace discipline.”

Consistent Policy

When evaluated at face value, the supposedly sinister schemes of this guidance all seem … well, pretty normal. The media is right that religion must not be used as a basis for discrimination within the government, but that also excludes discrimination against religious practice, too.

Any imagined abuse of religious expression can and should be dealt with through normal HR policies, not through categorically banishing religious expression from federal office buildings.

In fact, the scandalized media were themselves forced to admit that “the OPM guidance doesn’t differ significantly from that of past administrations,” as The Post put it. “For example, [a] 1997 guidance from the Clinton administration called for agencies not to ‘suppress employees’ private religious speech in the workplace while leaving unregulated other private employee speech that has a comparable effect on the efficiency of the workplace.‘” As everyone knows, America’s “Christian nationalist” sentiments have never run stronger than in the Clinton White House.

In a significant sense, OPM’s latest guidance did not even constitute a new policy. Instead, the memo aligns with earlier executive orders issued by President Trump and “builds on OPM?s July 16 guidance on reasonable accommodations for religious purposes and provides illustrative examples of protected religious conduct.”

These policies, in turn, merely implement Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which “prohibits discrimination in employment because of an individual’s religion,” the memo explains. It then cited the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in EEOC v. Abercrombie and Fitch, “Title VII does not demand mere neutrality with regard to religious practices — that they be treated no worse than other practices.” Instead, it “gives them favored treatment.”

Novel Examples

Where the OPM memo broke new ground was in providing examples of what free religious expression should look like. Some examples provided are relatively innocuous, such as an employee wearing a cross or keeping a Bible or rosary on her desk.

Other examples contemplated specific scenarios that likely occurred. For instance, “A group of employees may form a prayer group and gather for prayer or study of scripture or holy books at the office while not on duty hours,” the guidance suggests. “An employee who requests his supervisor prohibit his coworkers from gathering in an empty conference room for prayer should politely be told his coworkers’ conduct will be allowed to continue as it is permissible.” What an oddly specific example!

Other examples have elicited negative responses, even though they are, in fact, sensible. For instance, “A park ranger leading a tour through a national park may join her tour group in prayer.” Or, “A doctor at a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital may pray over his patient for her recovery.” The negative response is an instinctual recoil against any government agent engaging in any religious activity (an instinct that studiously ignores everything from prayers in legislative chambers to public officials campaigning in pulpits). But then common sense kicks in. If that government agent is also deeply religious, is the government really going to tell them not to pray over a sick patient or erupt in adoration at magnificent natural wonders?

Yet another category of examples has become the target of the media criticism mentioned above. “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,” the guidance states. “However, if the nonadherent requests such attempts to stop, the employee should honor the request.”

Again, “An employee may invite another to worship at her church despite belonging to a different faith.” Or, “On a bulletin board meant for personal announcements, a supervisor may post a handwritten note inviting each of his employees to attend an Easter service at his church.”

With scaremongering words like “proselytization,” the media seeks to create a negative impression of forced or coerced conversions, or at least an environment where a lack of religious belief makes an employee disfavored. That is a distortion. In reality, the OPM guidance seeks to get the government out of the business of policing employee speech, so long as that speech is polite and respectful.

Commonsense Protections

If this is a “Christian” policy, that is only because Christians do not believe that forced conversion is possible. Real conversion involves a change of heart, which means it can only occur when someone becomes convinced, deep down inside, that his views are wrong, and he needs to change them. Coercion cannot effect such a change; only persuasion can (alongside the unseen transformative power of the Holy Spirit, Christians will add).

What left-leaning media failed to grasp is that the Trump OPM is not arbitrarily thumbing the scale in religion’s favor. Instead, the OPM is accommodating the reality that many Americans sincerely hold religious beliefs and seek to live accordingly — the very reality that the First Amendment seeks to accommodate.

Accordingly, Kupor provided three reasons for issuing the guidance. “The Federal workforce should be a welcoming place for Federal employees who practice a religious faith,” he began. “Allowing religious discrimination in the Federal workplace violates the law. It also threatens to adversely impact recruitment and retention of highly-qualified employees of faith.” No one who opposes this reasoning has any right to claim that “diversity is our strength.”

“Federal employees should never have to choose between their faith and their career,” Kupor declared. “This guidance ensures the federal workplace is not just compliant with the law but welcoming to Americans of all faiths. Under President Trump?s leadership, we are restoring constitutional freedoms and making government a place where people of faith are respected, not sidelined.”

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.