Recent events in Grand Island, Nebraska, should illustrate for many Christians exactly why many of us object to official accommodation of their religious beliefs. First, Muslim employees at a meat packing plant there complained that workplace policies prevented them from participating correctly in Ramadan. Here is what happened next:
The Grand Island plant and United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 22 announced a compromise that would allow Muslims to take breaks to pray and eat shortly after sunset.
Then an estimated 1,000 non-Muslim workers, including Hispanics, whites and Christian Sudanese refugees—walked off the job on Wednesday. They were protesting what they viewed as unfair treatment favoring the Muslims.
The compromise was withdrawn.
(Boldface added.) Christians often demand accommodation for their own practices and then employ angry rhetorical histrionics when they are denied that accommodation. Here is an example:
August 18, 2008 will be remembered as a day of infamy because of a California Supreme Court ruling that “physicians’ constitutional right to the free exercise of religion does not exempt businesses that serve the public from following state law that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.” I’m seriously disturbed about it, and think it’s time for concerned citizens, whatever your political or religious stripe, to band together and protest the latest California Supreme Court nonsense before a right of conscience is no longer allowed.
(Boldface added.) Why should Christian physicians be accommodated for their beliefs, but not Muslim meat packers? The Christians at the Grand Island plant object to special allowances for Muslim meat packers who wish to observe Ramadan, but how is it fair to let Christian physicians, who hold in their hands the health, even the lives, of their fellow humans to then deny those people health care services?
What is the solution? Accommodate everyone? Not likely. Christians don’t want to accommodate anyone but themselves. Muslims would rather muzzle free speech than let anyone “defame” their beliefs. No one with any power wants to accommodate non-believers by removing “In God We Trust” from our currency or “Under God” from our Pledge of Allegiance.
Americans need to recognize that, no matter what may have come before, no matter that the biggest historical tributary into our cultural river flows from the Christian West, we are a diverse society, with people of many different beliefs, and protecting or accommodating some of them—or even all of them—is a dangerous proposition. The things that draw us together are notably non-religious in nature, but distinctly human. We all need food, shelter, water, employment, participation, and other people.
The crisis on Wall Street and in the world economy affects us all, no matter our religious beliefs. When hurricanes and other natural disasters rip through cities, they don’t carve out disparate effects based on the differing beliefs of the people who live there. Everybody pays taxes and receives government services. Pretending that religious differences have a place in our governance and political system denies the fundamental reality that modern governments and political units are comprised of people who are drawn together for purely economic and geographic reasons and not because they share any religious beliefs.
While the events in Grand Island are frustrating, while many Christians are no doubt upset that California physicians cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, while religious tensions cause great anguish for many people, we need these events to draw out hypocrisy and awaken people to the fact that demands for accommodation for religious freedom are fine until the shoe is on the other foot.
(Credit: I discovered the Grand Island story through Professor Friedman’s blog Religion Clause.)
An interesting story from Nebraska. Was the plant doing anything to accommodate other religious beliefs, or was it only accommodating Muslim belief? It isn’t entirely clear from the story. If it’s the latter, then I can see why the non-Muslim workers might be offended. (E.g. if the plant was forcing Christians to work Sundays, Easter and Christmas, forcing Jews to work Saturdays, etc., but then making accommodations for Ramadan.)
However, I wonder whether perhaps there is something else going on here, including just tension with the Somali refugees in general… The story unfortunately doesn’t give enough history on this plant and the relations among workers before this controversy.
The specific problem in the story related to when breaks are taken during the day, not which days off work are given. Also, the general schedule of which days are “work days,” while having some historical roots in Christianity (and other historical roots in labor activism), is sufficiently part of secular culture in the United States that allowing people to have days off for Sundays, Easter, Christmas, and maybe even Saturdays as Sabbaths, is not really a religious accommodation anymore. (There is even a handy biblical argument, too: the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath—i.e., getting a day of rest after a week of labor addresses a basic human need and is not necessarily an act of theological devotion. But that is sort of beside the point.)
At any rate, I don’t think there’s really a meaningful comparison with Sundays, Easter, and Christmas, as you suggest, although there may be a stronger comparison with Sabbaths.
But my contention is not whether either the Christians or the Muslims at the plant had a valid claim of unfairness, based on all the relevant circumstances, but that the Christians made the claim at all. I do my best to follow conflicts over issues of law and religion in the United States, and a little bit globally, and one overarching and inescapable theme is that many Christians in the United States think not only that they should receive preferential treatment for the exercise of their beliefs, but that other beliefs do not deserve similar accommodation.