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Will they outlaw evangelism next? (7/94)
    The following is from Christian Crusade Newspaper, P.O. Box 977,
    Tulsa, OK 74102, in its 42nd year of publication. We can
    be E-mailed on America On Line as Christcrew, on Compuserve
    at 72204,541, and via the Internet as [e-mail] .

by Keith Wilkerson, editor
       What if they made a law against witnessing about Jesus?
       What if some faceless bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., made it a
crime to share your faith with people at work?
       What if some pencil pusher elected by nobody wrote a federal
regulation that could get you fired for wearing a cross at work?
       Believe it or not, somebody within the Clinton Administration
tried. It almost became a federal regulation on June 13.
       Only because astonished and horrified Christians besieged
Washington, D.C. with telephone calls and letters did elected
lawmakers call for a Congressional investigation.
       The new regulation against giving your Christian testimony on the
job had been written quietly and without publicity by the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission.
       Somebody tipped off former Nixon aide Charles Colson, now the
head of Prison Fellowship International. He checked into it, found the
rumor to be true, and alerted the leaders of some of America's largest
religious groups.
       As a result, the U.S. Senate voted 94-0 to ask the Clinton
Administration to shelve the new rules -- which the bureaucrats
claimed would end "religious harassment."
       Unfortunately, the Senate's unanimous request does not have the
force of law. The Clinton Administration may go ahead anyway --
contrary to the wishes of elected lawmakers.
       "I fear that the overall impact of the proposed guidelines will be to
create a workplace in which religious freedom is stifled and employers
are put into an untenable position,'' said Sen. Howell Heflin, D-Ala., on
the floor of the Senate.
       Lawyers for the Clinton Administration's Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC) tried to downplay concerns. They
said that Senators and 90,000 letter-writers and concerned callers were
all over-reacting to the proposed rules. The new rules would protect
us all from religious nuts, not end freedom of religion, the lawyers
complained.
       However, nobody seemed to think their new regulations were a
good idea -- except for the American Atheists and a Jewish group.
       In testimony before the U.S. Senate, "Can the EEOC guarantee
that the communication of the Christian gospel will never, under any
circumstances, be deemed to be actionable harassment?'' asked
Michael K. Whitehead, the general counsel for the Southern Baptist
Convention's Christian Life Commission.
       "Southern Baptists and other religious groups can never support
ambiguous and elastic standards which would permit an exercise of
bureaucratic power over a person in the workplace who merely
shares his faith.''
       Dudley Rochelle, an Atlanta labor lawyer who represents
employers, said that if the new rules are adopted, she would have to
advise bosses and supervisors to ban all religion at work. That would
mean no witnessing, no conversation about Jesus, and not even
Christian calendars on the wall.
       She said the rules require "a workplace to be completely free of
religious expression." All Bibles would have to be removed from
desks, all religious magazines would have to be hidden from view, and
no discussion of faith could take place on the job.
       Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council, noted that the EEOC
rules could result in "situations where an employer with a Bible on his
desk might make a Muslim secretary uncomfortable and have
something like that lead to a lawsuit.''
       Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Constitutional law professor
Douglas Laycock of the University of Texas at Austin noted the tens of
thousands of letters that the EEOC had received "from people who
fear that the religious harassment guidelines will be used to suppress
all religious speech in the workplace." Senate hearings "lent credence
to the worst fears of the commission's critics," wrote Professor
Laycock. "The American Atheists claim that the only way to end
religious harassment is to create a 'religion-free' workplace, in which
employees would be forbidden to keep religious art, calendars or
books in their workplace, forbidden to hum or whistle religious
songs, forbidden to engage in religious conversations, and forbidden to
wear crosses, yarmulkes, or other religious clothing.
       "Already, Delta Airlines has actually tried to create a religion-free
workplace, directing that its employees 'should not possess or display,
in any manner, on company premises any material which may be
construed, by anyone, to have racial, religious, or sexual overtones,
whether positive or negative,'" noted the professor.
       Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., noted that the rules could
lead employers to bar all religious expression in the workplace,
violating our freedom of religion. "Under the EEOC's proposed
guidelines, an employee who wears a cross, Star of David or other
religious symbol, or who keeps a Bible on a desk could be accused of
religious harassment," he said.
       The new rules could make it risky for employers to even mention
their religious beliefs for fear of being charged with harassing
workers who might disagree, noted the Birmingham, Alabama Post-
Herald's Washington correspondent Thomas Hargrove, writing for the
Scripps-Howard news service.
       "The EEOC guidelines were supported by the American Jewish
Congress," he observed, "which said that Jews historically have been
subjected to a variety of subtle and overt harassments on the job."
       Hargrove quoted Ohio Democratic Sen. Howard Metzenbaum,
who is Jewish, as telling supporters of the Senate bill.
       "'I am having difficulty in understanding just what it is you find
objectionable. A broad brush has been used.'
       "But," according to Hargrove, "Metzenbaum dropped his
opposition after he convinced Sens. Heflin and Hank Brown, R-Colo.,
to remove language from their bill that insisted that religious
harassment must be considered separately from other kinds of
harassment.
       "This is not an area that the EEOC has had guidelines on before,''
Sen. Brown said during the hour-long debate on the floor of the
Senate. He expressed concern over placing religion into the same
emotional powder keg that has developed over workplace sexual
harassment. "To equate a picture of Moses, or Martin Luther King, or
Christ with a pornographic picture is absurd.''
       Sen. Heflin said employer groups had expressed fear that the
guidelines would open businesses to an entirely new kind of threat
from civil lawsuits.
       "These guidelines, as worded, will create a tremendous burden for
employers who would be forced to make policies in anticipation of
employee reaction to almost every manifestation of religious belief,''
he said.
       Attorneys for the EEOC told the Reuters News Service that
although the guidelines would be revised, the matter is far from
settled.
       "Given the amount of controversy generated by this provision, it
is clear that the language should be revised to more accurately reflect
the intended meaning," Elizabeth Thornton, acting legal counsel for
the EEOC, told the Senate Judiciary courts subcommittee, which is
chaired by Heflin.
       "There is the need to do some clarification," she said.
       However, just revising the rules will not be enough, said 21
Republican senators. In a letter to the EEOC, they asked that the
reference to religion be deleted altogether, not merely revised.
       Professor Laycock suggested that the matter could be handled
very easily -- if that was the desire of the Clinton Administration.
       As proposed, the EEOC "forbid any speech or conduct that
'denigrates' or shows 'aversion' to any religion and creates an
'offensive environment' or 'otherwise adversely affects' any
employee," wrote the professor. "The provisions are to be interpreted
from the perspective of a reasonable person. But people of sharply
different religious views have equally different ideas about what is
offensive.
       "The guidelines do not distinguish expressions of religious faith
and disagreement about religious issues, which are constitutionally
protected, from personal attacks on other employees or persistent
harangues directed at an unwilling audience, which are not. The
vagueness of the guidelines invites large numbers of unjustified
charges, and the prospect of litigation over such charges encourages
employers to overreact and suppress all religious speech in the
workplace.
       "It is not hard to state much more precisely what speech is
harassment and what speech is protected."
       Here are six clarifications that the professor said could eliminate
much of the confusion caused by EEOC's rules:
       "1. It is illegal to demand that an employee engage in or refrain
from religious behavior. Attending church or joining your supervisor
in prayer cannot be made a condition of employment, promotion,
raises, or other job benefits.
       "2. Slurs, epithets, and negative stereotypes about the personal
characteristics of a religious group are generally illegal.
       "3. Persistent evangelism directed at the same individual,
continued after a clear request to end the conversation or not bring
the subject up again, may generally be treated as illegal religious
harassment. The speaker has a clear right to evangelize, and the target
has a clear right to end the conversation.
       "4. Affirmative expression of one's own religious faith or lack
thereof, not targeted at a particular individual, cannot be religious
harassment. Employees are free to wear religious clothing or jewelry,
hang religious calendars or art in their personal workspace, and refer
to their faith in ordinary conversation.
       "5. Serious argument for or against a religious or political
proposition cannot be religious harassment -- or any other kind of
harassment. This is true even if the argument rejects someone else's
religious teachings, even if the argument is made in forceful, colorful
or inarticulate terms, even if some co-workers find the speaker's
position offensive. Religious and political argument is speech of the
highest first amendment value. It would be a great improvement in
the harassment guidelines if this flap over religious harassment
resulted in a general clarification that serious argument is not
harassment.
       "6. Even with these substantive clarifications, the commission
should eliminate the multiple and overlapping generalities used in the
guidelines."
       However, it is yet to be seen if anyone at EEOC is interested in
being so clear. Such simple solutions were shrugged off by EEOC
attorneys at the Senate hearings.
       "At last week's Senate hearings, there was remarkable agreement
on what is protected speech and what is religious harassment," wrote
the professor. "This agreement spanned the political spectrum, from
the American Civil Liberties Union to the Southern Baptist
Convention.
       "What remains to be seen is whether the commission will state
these principles in plain language.
       "Or will it persist in vague generalities that unnecessarily
intimidate workers and employers and leave all the real answers to be
worked out in the courts through expensive litigation?"
       America will have to wait and see.

WHAT IS CHRISTIAN CRUSADE NEWSPAPER?
            Christian Crusade Newspaper is in its 42nd year, has
    a worldwide circulation and is published by Christian
    Crusade, P.O. Box 977, Tulsa, OK 74102.
            It is mailed to subscribers without charge as a result
    of the conviction of its founder not to put a price-tag on the
    gospel. For a free subscription, just ask.
            Although Dr. Hargis no longer travels, editor-in-chief
    Keith Wilkerson accepts speaking invitations. Both can be
    E-mailed on America On Line as Christcrew, on GEnie as
    K.Wilkerson3, via the Internet as [e-mail], and
    on Compuserve at 72204,541.