Is workplace religious inclusion on the rise?

Corporations across the U.S. have scaled back their diversity programs, not only in response to the changing environment, but also in response to Supreme Court rulings finding that some affirmative action programs ran afoul of law.

Because most faith-friendly initiatives have been situated within these corporate programs, have they been scaled back along with the other initiatives?

Tomorrow, at the annual Fortune 500 Faith@Work conference in Washington DC, the results of the 6th annual Fortune 500 Faith-Friendly Workplace Report will answer this question. Stay tuned!

What to Expect at Washington Faith@Work Summit

Good news – despite economic challenges, major companies are gathering together to highlight the business imperative of making their workplaces faith-and-belief friendly. Dare to Overcome begins on May 20 with with special resource roundtables for faith-specific and interfaith employee resource groups (ERGs).

Following a networking lunch, the Keynote Plenary will feature Busch School of Business Dean Andrew Abela. All attendees get his new book Superhabits: the Universal System for a Successful Life. Also, our sponsors will share their Ways Forward in today’s changing environment.

The program is filled with a variety of sessions that inspire, equip and connect people from across the US and world. Topics include the nuts and bolts of faith@work initiatives such as employee resource groups (ERGs).

We will also look at ways faith initiatives at work increase productivity by increasing resiliency through stronger networks as well as spiritual and emotional health.

As Dare to Overcome ends and the IRF Builders Forum begins, the cross-over event at 3pm on May 21 looks at how our India team have successfully piloted a human rights and business skills curriculum for teenagers.

The Executive President of the University carrying out the pilot will receive the 2025 Global Business & Interfaith Peace God Medal, an honor shared previously by CEOs of companies as diverse as Intel, Tyson Foods, Godrej Industries, American Airlines, EY, Senior United Nations officials, and other leaders of business in more than 30 countries worldwide.

The closing plenary of Dare to Overcome will coincide with the opening of the first-ever International Religious Freedom (IRF) Builders Forum. U.S. Senior Official performing duties of the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom will deliver a keynote followed by a fireside chat with RFBF President Brian Grim, IRF Secretariat Chair Greg Mitchell and Chris Seiple, Senior Fellow, Love Your Neighbor Community (LYNC).

𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐆𝐫𝐢𝐦, 𝐏𝐡.𝐃. – 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐭 𝐒𝐓𝐖𝐒 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓

Dr. Brian Grim, Founding President of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation (RFBF), will speak at Shape the World Summit 2025 in Rome & Vatican City.

An internationally recognised expert on the intersection of economic sustainability and religious freedom, Dr. Grim has worked with multinational corporations to demonstrate how belief inclusion strengthens innovation, workplace culture, and long-term impact. He is also a Davos speaker and a trusted advisor on global interfaith business strategies.

At STWS 2025, Dr. Grim will speak on:
🎙 “Creative Leadership for Technology: Dialogue for Impact – A Creative Leadership Approach from the Tech World”, as part of the Creative Leadership for Dialogue segment. He will explore how values-based leadership and freedom of belief can empower ethical innovation and social impact within today’s tech-driven economies.”

In this Jubilee year at the Vatican, Consulus will convene 200 leaders and senior executives from the worlds of geopolitics, business and faith-based organisations, for dialogue and debate on creative leadership for social impact in a time of turmoil, economic inclusion, tectonic shifts due to AI, and the ripple effects after a year of worldwide elections.

Shape the World Summit has been organised since 2005 and is inspired by the vision of UNESCO Peace Prize Winner Chiara Lubich who launched the idea in 1991 to build an Economy of Communion(EoC), a concept inspired from Catholic Social Teaching so that no one is in need. In 2017, Pope Francis pushed the entire EoC movement to go beyond giving and work to change the rules of the socio-economic system so that there is no more victim.

• Dates: 12th to 13th June, 2025
• Venue: Urbaniana University, Rome, and Vatican City

About Consulus

Shaping the Future of AI and Religious Liberty

Is there a positive relationship between artificial intelligence, religious freedom, and economic growth? Some research indicates that there is. Not all agree. Join us in Washington DC May 20-21 to hear top experts weigh in on this and other critical conversations around work and religious freedom for all. 

Leading figures from the two colliding worlds of AI and religious liberty – a senior fellow at Microsoft, an evangelical leader, and an AI researcher – will discuss the rapid development of AI and its growing, multifaceted impacts on religious liberty in the United States and abroad.

A New Way to Begin

For the first time, Dare to Overcome (DTO) will begin (8:30am on Tuesday, May 20) with resource and networking roundtables for the four most prevalent faith employee resource groups (ERGs): Christian, Interfaith, Jewish, and Muslim.

Members and leaders of faith ERGs will have the opportunity to network and learn from their peers as well as benefit from the resources and experience of the convening sponsors: Coca-Cola Consolidated, Interfaith America, Clal, and the El-Hibri Foundation.

Success Story: Merck Interfaith Doubles in a Year

In these disruptive times, the Faith@Work movement is growing. Join us on May 20th to hear what’s behind the amazing growth of Merck’s Interfaith Organization Employee Business Resource Group (EBRG)! They have double in size over the past year, spread to more countries, and the growth may just be getting started.

When a Christian worker told his employer that shaving his beard to comply with company policy violated his religious beliefs, Triple Canopy, a Virginia-based federal contractor, called his beard a “purely personal preference” and forced him to resign. In December 2023, the company was ordered to pay the former employee nearly $111,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit.

In another recent case, a Muslim teen who worked at a Chipotle restaurant in Kansas alleged that her supervisor repeatedly asked her to remove her hijab and eventually partially removed it himself. In April 2025, the national chain was ordered to pay the former employee $20,000 to settle her religious harassment suit.

After years of decreases in workplace religious discrimination lawsuits, the trend has reversed in recent years, largely due to employees seeking religious exemptions from coronavirus vaccine mandates. In fiscal 2022, U.S. workers filed 13,814 religious discrimination charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a massive increase from 2,111 the previous year and the highest number filed since 2018.

Read full article.

Leading figures from the two colliding worlds of AI and religious liberty discuss the rapid development of AI and its impacts on religious liberty today.

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, May 8, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ — Leading figures from the two colliding worlds of AI and religious liberty – a senior fellow at Microsoft, an evangelical leader, and an AI researcher – will discuss the rapid development of AI and its growing, multifaceted impacts on religious liberty in the United States and abroad.

The May 21, 2025, panel will examine the risks AI poses to humanity, especially to religious pluralism and freedom of thought and practice, as well as the potential opportunities for AI tools to serve the flourishing of religious communities across the world. The session will also consider how religious leaders can engage more in the broader discourse around AI governance and development, what safeguards and mechanisms might help to prevent AI from being used to surveil or suppress religious minorities, and what responsibilities AI companies might have to consult with religious stakeholders when designing systems that may affect spiritual life or expression.

READ FULL PRESS RELEASE

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, May 7, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ — Dare to Overcome (DTO) is the premier annual gathering for Fortune 500 company faith-oriented employee resource groups (ERGs), corporate chaplains, and other faith-and-belief workplace initiatives to share best practices and celebrate achievements.

We are thrilled that this 6th National Faith@Work ERG Conference — cohosted by RFBF and the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America — has a fantastic group of sponsors from corporations and civil society partners.

READ FULL PRESS RELEASE

Leading figures from the worlds of AI and religious liberty – a senior fellow at Microsoft, co-lead of Accenture’s AI for Good initiative, an evangelical leader, and an AI researcher – explore the rapid development of AI and its growing, multifaceted impacts on religious liberty in the United States and abroad.

The panel will examine the risks AI poses to humanity, especially to religious pluralism and freedom of thought and practice, as well as the potential opportunities for AI tools to serve the flourishing of religious communities across the world.

The session will also consider how religious leaders can engage more in the broader discourse around AI governance and development, what safeguards and mechanisms might help to prevent AI from being used to surveil or suppress religious minorities, and what responsibilities AI companies might have to consult with religious stakeholders when designing systems that may affect spiritual life or expression.

We are thrilled that the 6th National Faith@Work ERG Conference — cohosted by RFBF and the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America — has a fantastic group of sponsors from corporations and civil society partners, including Platinum Sponsor The Future of Life Institute. Register now!

Panellists:

– Suhail A. Khan – Suhail Khan serves as Director of External Affairs at Microsoft Corporation and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement, a Christian religious freedom think tank. Khan served as a policy advisor and counsel on Capitol Hill, and a senior political appointee with the Bush administration, where he served in the White House and as an advisor for two cabinet secretaries. He was awarded the U.S. DOT Secretary’s Team Award in 2005 and the Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement in 2007. Khan was awarded the Young Conservative Coalition’s Buckley Award in 2010.

– Rev. Johnnie Moore – Rev. Moore is the founder and CEO of The KAIROS Company, now part of JDA Worldwide, and President of The Congress of Christian Leaders. He was twice a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom serving during the Trump and Biden administrations. Previously, Rev. Moore was Senior Vice President and campus pastor at Liberty University, and Chief of Staff and Vice President of Faith Content for the United Artists Media Group in Hollywood.

– Max Tegmark, Ph.D. – Max Tegmark is an AI professor and researcher at MIT, and the founder and president of the Future of Life Institute (FLI) and the Improve the News Foundation. Tegmark’s most recent AI safety research focuses on mechanistic interpretability and provably safe AI. He is the author of over 300 publications as well as the New York Times bestsellers “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” and “Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality”. In 2023, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in AI 2023.

– Will Jones (moderator) – Will is a Futures Program Associate at the Future of Life Institute (FLI), lead FLI’s work to amplifying faith perspectives on AI issues and opportunities and supporting religious leaders to steer AI in a better direction for their communities. Jones graduated with First Class Honours in English from the University of Cambridge.

Dare to Overcome (May 20-21) will feature personal testimonies of leaders in the Faith@Work movement, including Julia Oltmanns, Sr. Manager of Culture and Care at Coca-Cola Consolidated. Julia will share her journey of going from a foe to a friend of faith-based ERGs.

Julia is a senior leader committed to helping organizations solve problems and leverage business resources for good. With a passion for living out my faith, she looks for meaningful ways to utilize her deep expertise in HR and employment law, legislative affairs and public policy, communications, employee engagement and culture, and ethics and compliance matters. She’s driven to use her extensive experience in legal and business environments to make a positive impact on individuals, organizations and communities.

To hear her in person, register today!