How Religious Discrimination is Perceived in the Workplace: Expanding the View (2)Am I Old Enough to be Taken Seriously? (3)All 3 Microaggression readings – 1 REACTION TO A

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Original Article

Discrimination in the workplace has been extensively stud- ied, with particular attention paid to an employee’s sex or gender, race, and age (Bobbit-Zeher 2011; Hirsh and Kornrich 2008; Pager and Shepherd 2008; Roscigno 2019; Roscigno et al. 2007). However, religious discrimination in the workplace is less well understood (Ghumman et al. 2013) and perhaps a “neglected diversity dimension” (Gebert et al. 2014:543). This is unfortunate not only because nearly three quarters of Americans consider religion important in their lives (Brenan 2018) but also because reported incidents of religious discrimination in the workplace are rising (EEOC 2021a). Additionally, a growing number of people in the United States identify as nonreligious, or with non-Christian religions, and within Christianity there is growing racial and ethnic diversity (Pew Research Center 2015). As the reli- gious landscape in the United States continues to diversify, the workplace is one place where people from different reli- gious backgrounds are likely to interact. Yet with increased religious diversity comes the potential for conflict between groups. As Ghumman et al. (2013:449) noted, religious expression in the workplace may theoretically “be connected to the mistreatment of certain other protected groups” because one’s “sincerely held religious beliefs” may conflict with workplace diversity policies that seek to protect

LGBTQ+ people, women, and religious minorities in the workplace.

Between fiscal year (FY) 1992 (the first year the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began reporting such data) and FY 2020, charges of religion-based discrimination in the workplace filed with the EEOC increased by 73 per- cent (from 1,388 cases to 2,404) (EEOC 1997, 2021a).This growth dwarfs the changes in other sources of discrimination in the same time frame, such as sex (1.8 percent decrease), race (25 percent decrease), and national origin (14 percent decrease). Although charges of religion-based discrimination represent a relatively low proportion of overall charges (3.6 percent as of FY 2020), their historical growth illustrates the need to study religious discrimination more fully.

Although U.S. employment law makes it illegal to dis- criminate on the basis of religion (1964 Civil Rights Act,

1070920 SRDXXX10.1177/23780231211070920SociusSchneider et al. research-article2022

1Rice University, Houston, TX, USA 2UT Health, Houston, TX, USA 3Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, USA

Corresponding Author: Rachel C. Schneider, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, MS-28, Houston, TX 77005, USA Email: [email protected]

How Religious Discrimination is Perceived in the Workplace: Expanding the View

Rachel C. Schneider1, Deidra Carroll Coleman2, Elaine Howard Ecklund1 , and Denise Daniels3

Abstract Although religious discrimination in U.S. workplaces appears to be rising, little is known about how different groups of employees perceive discrimination. Here, the authors draw on 194 in-depth interviews with Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and nonreligious employees to examine perceptions of religious discrimination in the workplace. The authors identify several common modes of perceived discrimination, including verbal microaggressions and stereotyping, social exclusion and othering, and around religious holidays and symbols. The authors also find that Christians tend to link perceived discrimination to personal piety or taking a moral stand in the workplace, while Muslims, Jews, and nonreligious people tend to link discrimination to group-based stereotypes and describe a sense of being seen as religiously foreign or other. This study reveals the value of studying groups alongside one another for the fullest picture of workplace religious discrimination and points the way toward further sociological research of how both majority and minority groups perceive discrimination.

Keywords religious discrimination, workplace, microaggressions, Christians, Jews, Muslims, nonreligious

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Title VII), subsequent EEOC guidelines also require employ- ers to make reasonable adjustments to the work environment that will allow employees to comply with their religious beliefs, including making scheduling accommodations (EEOC 2021b). Furthermore, EEOC guidelines clarify that behaviors creating a hostile work environment on the basis of an employee’s religious identity are considered harass- ment and are illegal under Title VII. This includes harassing behaviors from customers, which employers are responsible to prevent (within reason) and address. Yet there may be other more subtle behaviors not reflected in official legal frameworks that may still be perceived by employees as neg- ative or unfair treatment due to their religion or nonreligion. Although things such as teasing, name-calling, offensive comments, and social othering fall into murkier legal terri- tory, these kinds of behaviors can still be detrimental to employee well-being and mental health, job satisfaction, and morale. Scholars call these more subtle or covert forms of discrimination microaggressions (Sue 2010). Religious microaggressions, specifically, are subtle everyday behav- iors that are interpreted as “denigrating, invalidating, and prejudicial” (Cheng, Pagano, and Shariff 2018:255) or expe- rienced as “demeaning” or “negating” (Cheng, Pagano, and Shariff 2019:327) by members of a religious or nonreligious group. When repeated over time, these behaviors can make employees feel devalued or excluded.

Given that the topic of religious discrimination remains understudied in workplace discrimination research, and that experiences of religious discrimination, including microag- gressions, may meaningfully affect employee well-being and organizational dynamics, in the present study we seek to illu- minate the ways diverse employees perceive religious dis- crimination and othering in the workplace. In particular, we are interested in understanding how religious majority and minority groups’ perceptions of religious discrimination align and diverge. We draw on data from a national study of faith in the workplace.

Religious Discrimination in the Workplace: Expanding the View

Although research on religious discrimination in the work- place is relatively limited, a number of studies have looked at the specific challenges Muslims face in the workplace, espe- cially during the hiring process (Acquisti and Fong 2020; Bartkoski et al. 2018; Wallace, Wright, and Hyde 2014; Wright et al. 2013). Discrimination in hiring of Muslims may be further amplified by the sex of the applicant and the wear- ing of religious identifiers such as the hijab (Ghumman and Ryan 2013; King and Ahmad 2010). Moreover, other reli- gious groups such as Sikhs who “look Muslim” may be vul- nerable to discrimination because of racialized conflation of religion with ethnicity and/or national origin (Considine 2017; Joshi 2006). Additional studies have focused on per- ceptions of discrimination, finding that Muslims who engage

in religious activity more frequently (Ghaffari and Çiftçi 2010) and who believe religion is important to their lives (Padela et al. 2015) are also more likely to perceive religious discrimination in the workplace.

In contrast to what is known about experiences of dis- crimination among Muslims, less is known about the experi- ences of other minority religious groups in the workplace. Although not explicitly focused on the workplace, a recent thread of sociological research has illuminated the work- place as a site of perceived discrimination for atheists (Hammer et al. 2012) and nonreligious people broadly (Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartmann 2006). For example, Cragun et al. (2012) found that nonreligious people “who hold more pronounced views are more likely to report discrimination” (p. 105), and those who self-identify as “atheist” or “agnos- tic” are three times more likely to report workplace discrimi- nation compared with those who label themselves as “nones” (p. 116). Notably, however, there has been almost no exami- nation of perceived religious discrimination in the workplace in relation to Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews, with the excep- tion of studies by Scheitle and Ecklund (2017, 2018, 2020), though audit experiments on hiring discrimination have looked at Christians, Jews, and atheists alongside Muslims (Wallace et al. 2014; Wright et al. 2013).

The fact that Muslims receive significant attention in workplace discrimination literature may speak to the fre- quency and intensity with which Muslims experience dis- crimination in the workplace vis-à-vis other minority religious groups. Indeed, Muslims report higher levels of religious discrimination than other religious groups. Although only 1 in 100 Americans identify with Islam (Mohamed 2018), Muslims represented 23.3 percent of all complaints of religion-related discrimination to the EEOC in 2017, the last year for which these data are publicly available (EEOC 2018). Furthermore, limited focus on other minority religious groups may be attributable to their small numerical size: Hindus and Buddhists each constitute 0.7 percent of the U.S. population, and Jews constitute 1.9 percent of the U.S. population (Pew Research Center 2015). At the same time, there are twice as many Jews in the United States (1.9 per- cent) as there are Muslims (0.9 percent).

Research on religious discrimination among Christian workers is also limited. This fact is probably attributable to Christians being a religious majority in the United States as well as assumptions by scholars that those who are part of majority groups will be less likely to perceive discrimina- tion because of their relative social power. However, research suggests that under certain conditions, Christians may also perceive religious discrimination. For example, Scheitle and Ecklund (2018) found that religious academic scientists report discrimination in the workplace more fre- quently than their nonreligious colleagues do. Although this finding holds true for both minority and majority religions, it is especially true of evangelical Christians. Similarly, Yancey (2011) found that academic job candidates are

Schneider et al. 3

viewed more negatively when they identify as conservative Christian or Mormon. Hodge (2006) also found that Christian master’s degree students in social work were more likely to report religious discrimination if they were theo- logically conservative. These findings suggest that in spe- cific work contexts, such as academia, conservative or evangelical Christians may be especially likely to perceive religious discrimination.

Expanding the View on Religious Discrimination

The lack of comprehensive literature regarding different reli- gious groups’ experiences with workplace religious discrimi- nation makes it difficult to understand how different groups compare in the ways they understand and describe workplace religious discrimination. This, in turn, may impede nuanced understandings of common modes of religious discrimina- tion faced by employees in the workplace as well as risk overlooking salient differences between groups.

Examination of perceived religious discrimination in the workplace may be especially helpful for illuminating the ways religious microaggressions are experienced in the workplace. For example, broader studies of religious micro- aggressions have found that Muslims are often stereotyped as terrorists, encounter Islamophobic language, and have their religion pathologized or exoticized by others (Nadal et al. 2012), whereas for Jews microaggressions may include anti-Semitic stereotypes about being “cheap” (Nadal et al. 2010). Survey research also suggests that both majority and minority religious groups in the United States experience religious microaggressions under certain conditions. However, Jews and Muslims report higher levels of religious microaggressions than Christians (Cheng et al. 2019), and atheists report experiencing the highest incidents of microag- gressions compared with other nonreligious groups (Cheng et al. 2018).

Study of perceptions of religious discrimination is impor- tant for several additional reasons. First, regardless of objec- tive evidence or legal recognition of discrimination, if employees perceive themselves as being mistreated because of their religion, this may significantly affect their overall well-being. Psychology researchers have often noted the poor mental and physical health outcomes associated with perceived racial, gender, and sexual orientation discrimina- tion (Pascoe and Richman 2009), but less is known about the impact of religious discrimination on health. Given that Americans spend the majority of their lives at work, it is important to understand the extent to which religious dis- crimination is encountered in the workplace as the cumula- tive effects of such experiences could have serious implications on the mental health and well-being of religious and nonreligious employees.

In one of the few studies to date examining the relation- ship between religious discrimination and health, Wu and Schimmele (2021) found that religious discrimination is

detrimental to the self-rated mental health of all people of faith, regardless of the social location of the religious group. This suggests that individuals from both religious minority and majority groups may be negatively affected by perceived religious discrimination in the workplace. But it is also likely that religious discrimination may interact with and amplify other modes of discrimination in the workplace, such as racial or gender discrimination. Grollman (2012) tested the “double disadvantage” hypothesis demonstrating that indi- viduals who perceive multiple forms of discrimination have worse physical and mental health outcomes than those reporting only one form of discrimination. Although Christianity is a majority religion in the United States, many racial/ethnic minorities identify as Christians. This means that Black, Hispanic, and Asian Christians, especially women, may experience more negative impacts to their health and well-being when they perceive religious discrimi- nation because of the potential interaction with other forms of discrimination and disadvantage in U.S. society.

Second, there is evidence that one’s surrounding context may play an important role in whether employees are likely to perceive discrimination in the workplace, complexifying how we think about majority and minority status. Scheitle and Corcoran (2018) found that evangelical Protestants liv- ing in the West are more likely to perceive religious discrimi- nation at work than evangelical Protestants living in the South. One theoretical explanation for this is that these southern Christians “perceive themselves as in less conflict with their surroundings than their counterparts in other regions” (p. 297). Thus, if a religious person perceives con- flict between their religion and the surrounding environment (whether regional or work specific), they may be more likely to perceive threat and, eventually, discrimination. Scheitle and Corcoran also found that atheists and the nonreligious in the South are also more likely to experience religious dis- crimination in the workplace than those in the Northeast and the West, perhaps because Christianity is dominant in the South.

Finally, recent research suggests that evangelical Christians are especially likely to perceive an increase of religious hatred and social persecution in the United States more broadly over the past decades, even if actual levels of hostility have not increased (Yancey 2018). Thus, it may be useful to understand how evangelical Christians perceive religious discrimination in the workplace and the similarities and differences with other groups. Theoretically, evangelical Christians’ perceptions of discrimination may be due to a long-standing sense of embattlement among evangelicals vis-à-vis non-Christian and non–evangelical Christian groups, which, as Smith et al. (1998) argue, has long been central to evangelical boundary-making and group identity. Additionally, recent research suggests that white evangelical Christians, in particular, may perceive threats to their iden- tity because of broader racial, political and social anxieties about their place in their nation (Baker, Perry, and Whitehead

4 Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World

2020; Whitehead, Perry, and Baker 2018). Although a sense of embattlement and perceived discrimination among evan- gelicals does not preclude benefiting from structural advan- tages in the workplace tied to being a demographic religious majority in the United States, research on perceived discrim- ination may shed light on the particular ways a diversity of evangelical Christians understand negative treatment in the workplace.

In short, further analysis of the different ways employees perceive religious discrimination is needed to fill empirical research gaps and to better understand how employees them- selves understand and experience workplace religious dis- crimination. In what follows, we examine two primary research questions. First, what are the different ways employ- ees perceive religious discrimination or othering in the work- place? Second, how do religious majority and minority groups’ perceptions and descriptions of religious discrimina- tion align and diverge?

Data and Methods

To answer these research questions, here we draw primarily on interview data from a mixed-methods study that included a national population survey of 13,270 people as well as 194 in-depth interviews with Christians, Muslims, Jews, and nonreligious respondents (Ecklund et al. 2020).1 The national survey included questions about topics such as workplace satisfaction, spiritual meaning and purpose tied to work, reli- gious expression and practices in the workplace, and experi- ences of discrimination in the workplace. Survey respondents who expressed interest in completing an interview to discuss issues addressed in the survey in greater detail and who were deemed eligible to participate in the subsequent phase of the study were contacted via e-mail and/or phone and invited to participate in an in-depth interview.

Interview eligibility criteria for Christians included iden- tifying as Christian, attending religious services at least once per month, and working full-time or part-time or not cur- rently working but looking for work. Religious minority respondents needed to identify as either Muslim or Jewish, self-identify as either “moderately” or “very” religious, pray several times a day (Muslims), attend religious services at least once per month (Jewish), and be working full-time or part-time or not currently working but looking for work in order to be eligible for interview participation. Nonreligious respondents were deemed eligible if they selected “no reli- gion” for their religious identity on the survey. In addition to salience of religion, potential interview respondents were sampled on the basis of diversity with respect to their posi- tion within their organization, race, ethnicity, education, occupational industry, age, and region. Three hundred fifty- three survey respondents were invited to participate in fol- low-up interviews, and this yielded a 58 percent response.

Interviews were semistructured and conducted by mem- bers of the research team. Separate interview guides were created for religious majority, religious minority, and nonre- ligious respondents. Respondents could elect to complete interviews in English or Spanish. Most interviews were con- ducted by phone, but a small proportion were conducted in person or via Zoom video calls. All interviews were audio- recorded with permission from respondents. Most interviews were transcribed by a contracted transcription firm. However, a small proportion were transcribed by trained undergraduate and graduate students. All interview transcripts were edited for accuracy by a member of the research team and deidenti- fied prior to analysis.

To examine the different ways employees perceive reli- gious discrimination or othering, as well as to examine how people from majority and minority religious traditions per- ceive and describe religious discrimination, here we analyze interview data from 194 interviews (159 Christians, 13 Jews, 10 Muslims, and 12 nonreligious respondents). We devel- oped an initial coding scheme that was used by our team to descriptively record with a simple “yes” or “no” categoriza- tion whether respondents reported experiences of being treated unfairly or differently because of their religion at work. While looking for any instance in which different or unfair treatment tied to religion was discussed in the inter- view, we paid particular attention to responses to the inter- view questions “Have you ever been treated differently or unfairly in your workplace because of your religious identity or beliefs [or due to the fact that you are not religious]?” and “Have you personally experienced any religious discrimina- tion in your workplace [or because you were not religious]?” All interviews were coded by two team members and any coding discrepancies were reconciled by a third member. Following this initial descriptive analysis, we used a partially inductive interpretive coding method to identify themes that emerged in the descriptive coding regarding different modes of perceived religious discrimination and othering and to

1Gallup drew a stratified sample of 29,345 individuals aiming to match U.S. population targets on the basis of the 2017 Current Population Survey, as well as oversamples of preidentified Muslim (n = 752) and Jewish (n = 882) respondents, yielding a participa- tion rate of 45.2 percent and a response rate—which accounts for all stages of recruitment per the American Association for Public Opinion Research—of 1.2 percent. We sampled 29,345 members of the Gallup Panel, a nationally representative probability panel of U.S. adults, by Internet and mail in the fall of 2018 on their experiences related to faith in the workplace. We received 13,270 completed surveys, oversampling on minority religious traditions (Jews and Muslims). The survey was available in both English and Spanish. We knew that a probability-based panel would include a large number of Christians, but we chose to include oversamples of Muslims and Jews, who represent the largest minority religious groups in the United States, in the sample selection to accurately characterize faith-work integration and religious discrimination among members of these minority religious traditions, as well as to compare members of minority religious traditions with the Christians in our sample.

Schneider et al. 5

identify qualitative similarities and differences among respondent narratives.

Additionally, to offer a broad descriptive picture of per- ceptions of religious discrimination in the workplace, here we also include basic descriptive survey data from a sub- sample of 11,356 respondents who were employed full-time or part-time, were self-employed, or were retired. Because we were interested in employee experiences, respondents who identified as homemakers, students, or volunteers or were unable to work were excluded from the analytic sam- ple. To determine the prevalence of perceived religious dis- crimination in the workplace, we asked respondents the frequency with which they were treated unfairly in the con- text of their work because of their religion or nonreligion; possible answer choices included “never,” “rarely,” “some- times,” “often,” “very often,” and “not applicable.” To char- acterize respondents’ experiences with discrimination, responses were recoded as “no discrimination,” including “never” and “not applicable,” and “at least some discrimina- tion,” including all other answer choices. We also conducted descriptive analysis to describe the proportion of survey respondents who reported religious discrimination alongside of one or more other forms of discrimination (e.g., sex or gender, marital status, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, or criminal background).

Results: Religious Discrimination and Othering in the Workplace

Nearly a third (27 percent) of all survey respondents from our subsample (n = 11,356) reported perceiving religious discrimination at some point in their working tenure. A larger proportion of Muslim (63 percent) and Jewish (52 percent) respondents reported religious discrimination compared with other religious groups. Additionally, perceptions of religious discrimination varied within Christian subgroups, with 36 percent of evangelical Protestants, 24 percent other Christian/ other Protestants, and roughly 20 percent of Catholics and mainline Protestants each reporting religious discrimination. A little more than one quarter (27 percent) of all nonreligious respondents perceived religious discrimination in the work- place. It is also worth noting that respondents who perceived religious discrimination at work often reported other forms of discrimination tied to their social location. Of the 27 per- cent of people who reported experiencing religious discrimi- nation, 24 percent reported experiencing one or more other forms of discrimination in the workplace. This was espe- cially true for Muslim and Jewish respondents, of whom 60 percent and 44 percent reported experiencing other forms of discrimination, respectively.

In-depth interviews with survey takers shed further light on the ways employees perceive religious discrimination and othering in the workplace. When asked about being treated differently or unfairly at work because of their religion, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and nonreligious respondents

often described similar modes of perceived unfair or differ- ential treatment in the workplace. This included experiences of name-calling and stereotyping, social exclusion and other- ing, and other negative experiences tied to observing reli- gious holidays or display of religious symbols at work. Yet analysis of the ways members of these groups narrated their experiences also reveals nuances in individual experiences of religious discrimination and othering as well as differ- ences between majority and minority groups’ experiences of religious discrimination.

Verbal Microaggressions and Stereotyping

By far the most common form of religious discrimination described by interview respondents were verbal microag- gressions, including experiences of name-calling, mocking, ridicule, and uncomfortable “joking,” which could also be accompanied by other forms of harassment or a sense of being judged or stereotyped by others. Although some respondents did not consider microaggressions to be dis- crimination, because they were not fired or did not feel indi- vidually targeted, nevertheless, the behaviors described were often interpreted as demeaning, invalidating, or prejudicial.

Both Jewish and Muslim respondents described verbal microaggressions tied to anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic ste- reotypes. For example, a white Jewish woman working in social services in Indiana described how coworkers made stereotypical comments about her being “good at bookkeep- ing and keeping track of money” a common anti-Semitic trope.2 Similarly, a white Jewish man who works in informa- tion technology in Florida described hearing occasional comments of “Well, Jews run all the banks,”3 while a white Jewish consultant in Illinois recalled hearing, early in his career, a colleague use the phrase “Jew me down.”4 Another white Jewish man living in New Jersey, a former Air Force officer, also recalled how during officer training school, his fellow trainees would make “little jokes” about the Holocaust. At the time, he did not recognize it as anti-Semitism, until a fellow cadet came to him and said “they’re saying this because you’re Jewish. Don’t you realize it?”5

Similarly, several Muslims also described expressions of Islamophobic sentiment in the workplace. An Asian Muslim man who is an engineer in New York mentioned hearing workplace conversations in which colleagues expressed anti- Muslim views (i.e., “Muslims are extremists” or, during the Gulf War, “Send ’em back”), though notably he did not con- sider this to be discrimination or directed at him explicitly.6 In a more extreme example, a white Muslim woman working

[email protected]_ST112, white, woman, Jewish, social services, Indiana. [email protected]_ST121, white, man, Jewish, information technology, Florida. [email protected]_ST108, white, man, Jewish, consulting, Illinois. [email protected]_ST151, white, man, Jewish, retired civil servant, New Jersey. [email protected]_ST115, Asian, man, Muslim, engineer, New York.

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in sales at a construction company in Louisiana described being “harassed” when she converted to Islam so that “an alrea

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