Monthly Archives: July 2021

by Kent Johnson, J.D., Senior Corporate Advisor, Religious Freedom & Business Foundation

Part of the blog series, Authenticity & Connection

I’ve shared before that, when my paternal grandparents entered the US through Ellis Island as immigrants in the 1890s, they also entered a covenant with the increasingly diverse people of America.

Here’s the deal: They agreed to work hard and honestly. They would learn the English language and learn baseball, and gradually give up some of their native culture in order to gain the benefits that were promised by US citizenship. The promised benefits included freedom to advance – through hard work and creativity – beyond the social and economic class to which they were born, freedom to worship and live in accordance with their conscience, and in short, freedom to build a new future in the New World. For some immigrants, America kept those promises; for others, it didn’t. The results would impact their descendants.

In this piece I’d like to share some observations from our forbears’ immigration experiences that are relevant to today’s worldwide workplace diversity movement. Most importantly, I’ll provide some recommendations for your workplace.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the pressure to conform to a particular brand of American culture was fierce. Each new wave of newcomers began as outcasts. The immigrant’s worth and opportunity were determined by the larger society’s perception of his conformity to their norms. The Tenement Museum in New York City provides a poignant window into the treatment of immigrants in America. The exhibits reconstruct powerful and dreadful vignettes of the hard life to which various immigrants were subjected at home and at work. They trace specific family histories for generations after that. It’s fascinating and deeply illuminating for our purposes today.

As I noted earlier, as hard as it was, the trials for European immigrants as a general rule tended to be shorter, less demeaning and less deadly than for other immigrants. Those who didn’t “look European” faced the highest hurdles. Most blacks had not come voluntarily, so there was no covenant for them; and for generations, it was impossible for many to earn a ticket out of the tenement.

These deplorable experiences, as well as the positive experiences of descendants who were able to escape the many constraints, ought to inform our approach to workplace diversity today. As diverse people increasingly enter our workforce, it’s as if they were arriving on Ellis Island, the gateway to a land of opportunity. They enter a covenant with our companies which in some ways is like a covenant of citizenship – to do the work honestly and skillfully, and to relate with us. Our companies are not countries, but my point is that we can do this far better than our forbears did. Here are a few specific thoughts in that vein, as you continue to navigate the increasing diversity of your workforce:

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• 1. Clarify the covenant. Right from the start, spell out what are you asking them to be, and do, and not do. In this, make very clear that your company stands for the right of all human beings to be treated with dignity and fairness, as they themselves would like to be treated; that they will remain free to live and speak according to their beliefs, insofar as that right doesn’t actually violate the rights of others; and that your company will seek to foster friendship and even reconciliation across cultures. And of course describe the job requirements and expectations with adequate specificity.

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• 2. Think of your diverse employees as immigrants to a new land, the land of your company. Many will start out feeling alone and without support. Go out of your way to be sensitive and welcoming to all; and especially to those who’ve been systematically relegated to the status of outsiders or worse because of their connection with any group, and those who feel they have been subjected to discrimination due to economic or social class, race, disability, religion, sexual orientation, or any other factor. Don’t presume you understand. Actively seek to understand them. Urge your existing employees to empathize.

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• 3. Like my grandparents did for later-arriving immigrants, facilitate the formation of support groups of people who can serve as helpers, advocates and bridge-builders. Faith-oriented Employee Resource Groups are a wonderful case in point. Let newcomers know that your company officially welcomes people like them, and welcomes and desires their perspectives, and that you will officially promote such support groups – both for their personal benefit and for the company’s benefit.

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• 4. Follow through. It’s not just about the onboarding process. Periodically pulse your employees on how you’re doing in these areas. Enable midcourse adjustments as needed.

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This may seem overwhelming to some readers. To a degree, we’re all “aliens and strangers,” fresh off the boat, entering a strange and fast-changing diverse work land. If you have questions on how to accomplish these things – especially if you have questions about navigating religious diversity – contact us at the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation. We can be part of your support group.

Your company can do this well; and the entire world will be a better place because you did.

Sponsored by Empower Women Media and the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, the Competition Explores How Inclusivity and Multi-Faith Living Leads to Innovation and Thriving Communities

Finalists Hail from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, France, Japan, Iraq, Egypt, and the U.S.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 7, 2021 – Los Angeles and Washington, DC – Filmmakers from around the world overcame COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns to produce award-winning short films.

She Makes Everything Beautiful by Wagma Feroz (Pakistan) was awarded the grand prize in the 2021 Religious Freedom Film Competition. A Taste of Freedom by Meshair Jirdeh (Saudi Arabia and France) and Terri Marie (US) took 1^st runner-up, and Switch On, an animated short film by Yamini Ravindran (Sri Lanka), was awarded 2^nd runner-up. The grand prize winner receives a $3,500 cash prize, 1^st runner-up $1,000, and 2^nd runner-up $500.

In She Makes Everything Beautiful, Wagma, a Muslim, tells the true story of Sonia, a Christian, who has found employment and acceptance in a multi-faith salon in Swat, Pakistan. The Muslim owner of the salon intentionally hires religious minority women knowing they are discriminated against and often cannot find work. This thriving salon dares to overcome cultural and religious divides to make all things beautiful.

A Taste of Freedom is Meshair Jirdeh’s personal story of leaving Saudi Arabia to find religious freedom in a new land. On her journey, she meets the love of her life, a chef, and together they build a restaurant business.

Switch On, an animated film by Yamini Ravindran and her team at the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka, features a Muslim woman hesitant to “switch on” her computer camera during an online meeting because she wears a hijab. Capitalizing on the social constructs of the all-too-familiar Zoom meeting, the film exposes the ramifications of restrictions on religious expression in the workplace.

“It is particularly impressive that people of one faith focused on empowering people of other faiths,” said Dr. Brian Grim, president of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation. “Indeed, a hallmark of true religious freedom is when people stand for the right of all to enjoy the same freedoms.”

“Storytelling is one of the fastest ways to shift culture,” said Shirin Taber, Director of Empower Women Media. “It also helps people address difficult or taboo subjects like religious freedom. Through short films, women can share their religious freedom stories in positive ways.”

In addition to the top three films, A Call to Lead by Machiko Sato (Japan) won the Presidential Global Challenge Film Award. Two other films won Inclusivity Awards: Pathways to Peace by Sana Zahid (Pakistan) and Camp C414 by Aasra Mansour and Mohammed Abd Alamir (Iraq).

“Machiko Sato’s film, A Call to Lead, takes this competition to a new level,” said Dr. Brian Grim. “She challenges an entire nation – Japan – to take a lead in advancing religious freedom around the world. Indeed, with the upcoming Olympics and Paralympics, Japan has an opportunity to make religious freedom a global export.”

Empower Women Media invited 12 highly respected judges to review the short films, including Lou Ann Sabatier, Communications Director for 21Wilberforce, Ed Brown, Secretary General of Stefanus Alliance International, and other leading voices for religious freedom.

Selected films will be showcased at the IRF Summit in Washington, DC, July 13-15.

The winning films will be celebrated during a global awards ceremony at Dare to Overcome, the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation’s biannual Business & Peace Festival in Tokyo and online on August 22^nd. The global event coincides with the International Day Commemorating Victims of Religious Violence and Hatred and will be hosted by keynote speakers Dr. Brian Grim and Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief. Registration for the event can be found here.

This is the fourth annual Religious Freedom Film Competition sponsored by Empower Women Media in association with the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation.

For more information about the short films, female media producers, and the August 22^nd film festival, contact the Empower Women Media Director, Shirin Taber, at shirin@visualstory.org or www.empowerwomen.media.

Honorable Mentions: Asha (Hope) by Arpudhamani (India), We Are One by Jennifer Pinto (India), Drawing the Soul of a Woman by Carla Salloum (Lebanon), We by Ahmar & Mariam Rehman (Pakistan), Women Ablaze by Alicia Crum (US), Change Begins with Us by Nivedita Devraj (India), Afghanistan Fire Fighter Ladies by Lina Qurbanzadz (Afghanistan), and Treasure in Jars of Clay by Abisha Manoj Kumar (India).

Contacts:

• Shirin Taber, Empower Women Media (Los Angeles)
• shirin@visualstory.org – +1-949-235-5148
• Empower Women Media website

• Brian Grim, Religious Freedom & Business Foundation (Washington DC)
• media@religousfreedomandbusiness.org– +1-410-268-7809
• 2021 Film Competition website

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IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Washington, DC

Kathy Ireland, Chair, CEO and Chief Designer of kathy ireland Worldwide (kiWW), will receive the inaugural Business IRF Champion Award at the IRF Summit in Washington DC on July 15 for going above and beyond the call of duty in advancing religious freedom for everyone, everywhere, all the time.

“Kathy is known throughout the globe for her entrepreneurial success, rising from supermodel to super-mogul. She has been featured on the cover of Forbes more times than on Sports Illustrated, and she recently shattered glass ceilings with kathy ireland Worldwide being named the 15^th most powerful brand in the world, the highest ranking for a woman-owned and individually-owned company, ” said Dr. Brian Grim, chair of the business selection committee for the upcoming IRF Summit. “And now it is fitting that Kathy be recognized for her activism in support of all people persecuted for their faith and beliefs around the world,” adds Dr. Grim.

In August 2014, ISIS militants swept through the Sinjar region of northern Iraq in a deliberate attempt to annihilate the Yezidis and other religious minorities, employing brutal tactics including mass executions, rape, and sexual enslavement of young women. As this horrific genocide unfolded, Kathy not only lobbied Congress to respond, but responded herself by supporting women-led initiatives to rescue Yezidis and address the hatred and prejudices that created an environment where such atrocities could occur. To this day, almost 3,000 Yezidi women and children remain missing and almost 300,000 Yezidis still live in displacement camps in northern Iraq.

Kathy’s engagement did not stop when the genocide did. This August 22, Kathy is co-hosting with the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation a charity auction with all proceeds to directly provide business and livelihood opportunities for Yezidi women struggling to recover from the genocide.

“It is a tremendous honor and very humbling to receive this honor,” says Ms. Ireland. “It is our duty and responsibility, for all of us, to fight for everyone’s right to religious freedom, no matter what religion you choose to practice. It is basic human rights. Thank you Dr. Brian Grim and everyone at the IRF Summit for bringing attention to the plight of so many who are deprived of the basic right to religious freedom, and for working tirelessly to combat those who try to inflict this cruelty upon others.”

Kathy will receive Business IRF Hero Award at the Closing Dinner of the 2021 IRF Summit, which begins at 6:30 pm on Thursday, July 15, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C.

The IRF Summit will bring together a bi-partisan and broad coalition that passionately supports religious freedom around the globe for a three day in-person event in Washington D.C., July 13-15, with a virtual option for participation. Kathy will also speak during the virtual event.

For more information and tickets to the in-person summit, visit https://irfsummit.com/. To register for the virtual summit (free), click here.

To participate in and/or learn more about the charity auction, email contact@religiousfreedomandbusiness.org

by Kent Johnson, J.D., Senior Corporate Advisor, Religious Freedom & Business Foundation

Part of the blog series, Authenticity & Connection

The most common concern I hear about the religious diversity movement is this: “Will I be pushed to compromise my core beliefs? Will I need to agree that everyone’s spiritual truth claims are equally valid?”

On this, some helpful lessons can be gleaned from the cultural melting pot in the US.

The “melting pot” was at high boil when my father’s parents emigrated from Norway. Within one generation, they had changed our name to the Americanized “Johnson,” learned English, formed societies to help later-arriving Norwegian immigrants “fit in,” started playing baseball, moved out of the tight Norwegian community on Staten Island, saw their children marry into families that had come to this land on the Mayflower, and fought for the US in a World War.

But it wasn’t all about conformity to US norms. One of the key principles that Dad’s parents adopted – indeed, one of the prime reasons they chose to leave their native country for the US – was that of freedom: freedom to advance through hard work and industry beyond the social and economic class to which they were born; freedom to worship and live in accordance with their conscience; in short, freedom to build a new future in the New World.

It wasn’t easy (though many will rightly point out that assimilation was far harder – often impossible – for immigrants who weren’t European. Also, for many blacks, emigration wasn’t voluntary, and it certainly wasn’t undertaken to advance their freedom).

Looking back, it seems to me that the melting pot of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries was unproductively constraining, even for Europeans. The richness and wisdom of many cultures was lost. The values of freedom were unnecessarily compromised.

The issues presented by growing diversity remain significant today, especially in our workplaces. My chosen residence is Houston; a metro area that has surpassed New York City and Los Angeles as the nation’s most diverse. More than 142 languages are spoken here. Fully one quarter of Houstonians are foreign-born. It’s not just Houston. Workplaces are becoming even more diverse, as suppliers, customers, and “friends” all over the world are increasingly dealing with one another.

The fact of growing religious diversity in particular requires that we find additional ways to address the tension between freedom to be different on the one hand and the need for trusting engagement in our workplaces on the other. Many faiths embrace exclusive truth claims about things that really matter. These inconsistent propositions cannot all be true in the same sense, at the same time. For instance, the Muslim and the Christian have fundamentally different views of the nature of man’s relationship with the divine, and the practical implications of that relationship in their everyday work life. Views of ultimate truth differ widely among atheists, agnostics and people of various faiths.

One theoretical response is to limit engagement among different faiths. To stay in our respective corners. But the option of living cloistered existences, engaging exclusively with those whose faith doctrines precisely match our own, is unrealistic at best. And the option of prohibiting faith-oriented communications fosters resentment, distrust, judgmentalism, discord and fear.

Thankfully, as I’ve pointed out in an earlier post, there are significant shared values on which to build deep connections among people of varied beliefs, without compromise. A set of agreed, common principles can help companies develop a form of diversity and inclusion that respects differences; one that doesn’t force the worst, most intrusive and narrowing conformity like a big indiscriminate melting pot.

In the next two blog installments I’ll reflect more on lessons we can glean from the best and the worst of the “melting pot” experiences in the US. I’ll flesh out implications of a form of “Covenantal Pluralism” [advocated by Chris Seiple and others]. The idea is to seek personal agreement – or “covenant” – around general principles that clear the way for authentic and positive connection while doing no damage to employees’ consciences and core beliefs.

In 1896 my grandparents made a covenant with the US: They would come and work hard and honestly. They’d learn the English language and gradually give up some of their native culture, in order to gain the benefits that would come from US citizenship. But they would NOT give up their core beliefs. In fact, the covenant included assurance from the US that they’d remain free to bring their core beliefs into this new land, and to practice those beliefs. Similar freedoms – and I’d argue more – should be accorded to our employees today as they enter this new land of diversity at work.

I hope you’ll join us as we unpack this further in coming weeks.

Members of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are invited to join our discussion on how faith ERGs can be good allies to people with varying abilities and Disability ERGs.