Should bringing your whole self to work include your religious beliefs?

The case for ‘the album and the mixtape’ approach.

[Source Photo: Adobe Stock]

In the United States, we recognize a separation between church and state, but does that delineation apply to work, too? That’s an earnest question from a self-identifying choirboy—literally, I grew up in church and I direct the choir—who has been asked throughout my career to leave religion out of my work. Do we need the Jesus reference in the deck? Do I have to use Bible scripture in that essay? Is the religious example in the class lecture necessary? It’s almost always polite but definitely unambiguous: ease up on the religious stuff because it likely doesn’t have a place here because the workplace is neutral. But is that really so?

The entire global workweek structure stems from Judeo-Christian theology. Saturdays and Sundays are considered “days of rest,” so many institutions suspend organized work to observe the Sabbath. The country shuts down for Christmas. We hand out candy in October because of All Hallows’ Eve, a pagan tradition with a Christian association. And once we’re in the office, we use words like evangelist, convert, mission, believers, devotion—religious vocabulary is so embedded in the discourse of marketing and management that we’ve stopped hearing it as religious at........

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