Religious Persecution

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the platinum anti-discrimination statute. Title VII of that Act applies to companies of 15 or more employees (including state and local governments) and bans employer discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, or national origin. One tiny little catch: Title VII does not apply its ban on religious discrimination within “a religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society with respect to employment [i.e., hiring and retention] of individuals of a particular religion to perform work connected with the carrying on by such corporation, association, educational institution or society of its activities.” Religion, for purposes of the Act, is defined as “all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that he is unable to reasonably accommodate to an employee’s or a prospective employee’s religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.”

So why the legal lesson, Dekom… we’re getting’ bored. Well, let me ask you if you would work for an employer that makes you sign the binding Lifestyle pledge as a condition of employment to reject homosexuality, premarital sex, adultery, drug use and public drinking near the employer’s place of business, a document that also mandates that staff be active in a local church. How about at a place where you have already been working for years? Wanna keep your job? Gotta sign. Why, because the employer is a small Baptist school in Georgia: Shorter University [pictured above], and the pledge was introduced last October to faculty and senior staff contracts with a requirement that these agreements be accepted in order to continue working at Shorter.

The result: “In an anonymous survey in April, only 12 percent of faculty and staff said that they planned to stay at Shorter University, a 139-year-old Baptist school, reports Inside Higher Ed. More than 50 resigned before the new contracts were even distributed, and certain departments, such as science and fine arts, have been ‘eviscerated,’ according to Michael Wilson, a tenured librarian for the university who's worked there for 14 years.

“‘Through our policies, we seek to honor Jesus Christ,’ the university said in a statement. ‘We understand that there are those who do not agree with our beliefs. We are not trying to undermine their right to those beliefs, but want to be transparent about our own.’

“‘Where is today's American Taliban? At Shorter University,’ tenured Shorter professor Sherri Weiler wrote in the Rome News-Tribune. ‘Religious fundamentalism in any form (Muslim or Christian) is sheer lunacy in today's divided, fractured, and tormented world. True peace is only to be found in opening the doors, not closing the gates.’” AOLJobs.com, May 15^th [emphasis in the original].

Not all the students at Shorter are Baptists; it was simply the university they wanted to attend. For so many long-standing employees, the contractual pledge represented a position that many found unconscionable, one over which they were willing to give up their secure jobs that they had once expected to continue until retirement. Reality sank in: “Evangelical protestants, like Southern Baptists, are more conservative on social issues than any other religious group in the U.S. In fact, they're the only major religious group in which a majority think that gay and lesbian relationships shouldn't be accepted by society, according to a 2011 Pew Religion Research Institute survey.

“‘Our relationship with the Georgia Baptist Convention is that they are the sole member of our corporation,’ Shorter spokeswoman Dawn Tolbert explained to the Rome News-Tribune. ‘We are Shorter University Incorporated. We are owned by them.’ [Yet, t]he school only receives 4.2 percent of its $50 million budget from the convention… [T]here's a good chance that many students will be alienated [by this turn of events]. While 63 percent of older evangelicals oppose same-sex marriage, according to the 2010 General Social Survey, only 44 percent of younger evangelicals feel the same.” AOLJobs.com. And it’s all perfectly legal. How do you feel about this move and the university’s right to implement this policy… mid-stream… after many workers had been there for well over a decade?

I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps the rules being changed in after 139 years is the part that’s hard to swallow.