Not long ago the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s HR department, released new guidelines for religious activity in federal offices. We thought they were so inappropriate, counterproductive, and counter to established federal employment policy that we put together our own guidance for federal employees on this topic.
We took a little time to make sure the legal guidance is correct, and then most federal employees stopped going to work anyway. The shutdown won’t last forever so at some point nonreligious employees will be confronted with coworkers or SUPERVISORS who try to proselytize them. We think this information will be useful for them. You can find it here.
Our guidance should be of interest to everyone else too because the new OPM guidelines cover how federal employees interact with the public. Examples from OPM include park rangers who join visitors in prayer and VA doctors who ask if a patient wants to pray. (Both OK). If you finally get through to Social Security after an hour on hold and you’re asked if you’d like to start with a prayer (my example), this should help.
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I’m guessing some readers here attended a No Kings rally last weekend. I missed them because I was at the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s annual conference, but they were clearly a success overall. Republican leaders tried to set the narrative in advance. The second-ranking Republican in the Senate, Senator Barrasso of Wyoming, put out a statement and gave a Senate floor speech titled “The Radicals Hold the Reins of Today’s Democrat Party.” He needed a couple of examples of those radicals and one of the two in his statement/speech, out of about 200 supporting organizations, was our coalition member, American Atheists.
“All these rallies are going to be led by the far-left activists, and all will be calling on the Democrats to keep the government closed. And the Democrats in this body are beholden to every single one of these far-left activist groups. Groups like ‘Hashtag Resist Trump” and ‘American Atheists.’” It’s pretty clear Barrasso needed examples of groups that he thought would offend/anger Republicans and he thought atheists fit the bill.
I’m looking to get a meeting to explain to Barrasso that upholding the goals of Jefferson and Madison concerning religion doesn’t make people radical. And maybe mention that only 53 percent of Wyomingites (I looked that word up) definitely believe in God or a universal spirit. Depending on how the meeting goes.
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PRRI, the Public Religion Research Institute released its annual American Values Survey this week. There’s way too much to summarize here but I’ve got a few highlights. Under “What is Truly Important to Being American, By Party,” we find that on several issues such as believing in individual liberties and in the Constitution, there’s not too much divergence between parties. But when we get to believing in God, 78 percent of Republicans but 41 percent of Democrats say that’s important to being truly American. The national average is 57 percent. Being a Christian gets about the same divergence between parties.
PRRI found that thirty-two percent of Americans prefer that America be made up of Christians. Thirty-seven percent of all Americans think discrimination against Christians has become as big a problem as discrimination against minority groups. That number goes up to 51 percent when you ask White Christians and down to 16 percent when you ask the religiously unaffiliated.
You can guess which side of these breakdowns senators like Senator Barrasso land on. But I’m guessing he would be surprised that 47 percent of his constituents don’t say that they definitely believe in God or a supreme being, which is 27th highest among the states. (From How Religious Is Your State.)
Sometimes lobbying just starts with education and breaking down preconceptions. After that you get to policy questions and bills to support or oppose. Come to our lobby day in March and see how it works.
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