Faith is the last taboo in the workplace

I rarely write here about my work as an entrepreneur and my role as a bishop in the same breath. Usually, I deliberately keep them separate. But this week I read a study that forces me not to.

A brand new UGent research provides the answer to a question I have felt on my own skin for years: Christian candidates are 7.2 percentage points less likely to be invited for a job interview than candidates whose religious conviction cannot be deduced. For atheists, that is 6.4 percentage points, for Muslims 4.8. Those who volunteer at a church or mosque even lose 6.8 percentage points compared to those who do so at a neighborhood association. The researchers — Louise Devos, Louis Lippens and Stijn Baert (UGent) — had 177 professional recruiters each evaluate fourfictitious candidate profiles, accounting for a total of 708 assessments. Meticulous work, with an unpleasant result.

‘How can you be a Christian and a businessman at the same time?’

I recognize the pattern from my own experience, for years. If I mention in a business context that I am a deeply religious Christian, a more vehement response than expected almost always follows. Sometimes curious, more often uncomfortable, occasionally downright hostile.

Once a journalist interviewed me about my company, and at one point he bluntly asked the question: how could I be a Christian and a businessman at the same time? As a Christian, I was apparently expected to always be honest. I answered that relatively lightly at the time, but the question lingered. Because what was actually hidden in that question? The unspoken assumption that businessmen, unlike me, generally are not. That a Christian who is also an entrepreneur somewhere carries a contradiction within themselvesthat needs to be explained. I have often thought back to it afterwards, and I think that one question says more about how we look at faith and entrepreneurship than a whole research report could.

A blind spot in our diversity policy

The most striking thing in the UGent research is that it spares no one. Not only do Christians and Muslims have fewer opportunities, but outspoken atheists are also penalized. So it's not about what conviction you have — or the lack thereof. It's about the fact that you give it a recognizable identity at all. So, faith in itself is not the taboo — I deliberately overstate that in the title. An outspoken philosophy of life, of whatever color, is one of the last things we say everyone is free in, while we ourselvesvisibly feel uncomfortable with it in practice.

Lippens calls religion an under-highlighted ground for discrimination, in the shadow of ethnic origin. I would go a step further. Companies that today emphasize inclusion and diversity pay little attention to this category in their policy. Ethnic origin is on every diversity agenda. Religion is rarely on it, even though it enjoys exactly the same legal protection. Inclusion, strangely enough, becomes less comfortable as soon as someone is not only different, but also believes something.

Why the silence? Because the problem, according to the researchers themselves, does not lie with the candidate. Openly Christian and Islamic candidates were even judged as more honest and pleasant — precisely the qualities you would want in a colleague. And yet they had less chance, because recruiters expect that their colleagues and clients would prefer not to work with a believer. That is the actual, astounding insight of this research: the recruiter probably doesn't think 'I don't trust this candidate,' but 'otherswill probably not like this candidate'. The prejudice is thus outsourced to a fictional colleague or client — no one feels personally prejudiced, and yet the result is exactly the same discrimination. Volunteering at a church or mosque is therefore not read as a sign of involvement — which it is — but as a signal of distance from the majority.

What we no longer know, we distrust

I suspect that distance is greatest among people for whom religion has come to lie completely outside their own world, and that is no one's fault in particular. As a society, we have pushed faith so thoroughly out of the public domain for decades — from the classroom to the job interview — that we simply no longer know how to deal with it. Not with Christians, not with Muslims, and apparently not even with atheists who express their conviction just as emphatically. What we no longer know, we distrust.automatically.

From my experience as a bishop, I still recognize something in that. A striking number of people I speak to do believe in 'something', but no longer dare to name that as a personal God. We have socially learned that a vague conviction is socially safer than a concrete one — and that apparently applies not only at the kitchen table, but equally at the job interview table.

Media and government also do not escape this. I have the impression that in the Netherlands almost every editorial team has someone who structurally monitors religion; in Flanders, that's like looking for a needle in a haystack, unless it's about a scandal. Those who never read about faith except when things go wrong, naturally learn that faith usually goes wrong.

Mutual, or it won't work

I am not advocating here for a return to the church pew on Sunday, and certainly not for a society where everyone must believe the same thing. I am advocating for something much more modest: treat religion as a full-fledged ground for discrimination, as we already do for ethnic origin — in job vacancies, in the practical tests that are coming, and in the policy of companies that call themselves inclusive. This works in two directions, by the way. Believers can also be expected to show sufficient understanding and respect for those who do not believe — onlymutual communication breaks a reflex that has remained undisturbed for far too long.

I am open about my faith. My colleagues know perfectly what that means to me, and can testify that it never plays a role in how I look at them — but rather in how I look at myself. I also wrote a book about it, Reasonably religiousprecisely because I think that conversation — between those who believe and those who do not — is held too little and not well enough. Ultimately it comes down to something simple: love your neighbor as yourself — even if that neighbor has a conviction you do not share, or none at all.

Do you recognize that tension, as a believer or not, in your own workplace? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.