by Brian Grim

May 4, Washington, DC: Who can imagine Corporate America pausing today for the U.S. National Day of Prayer? After all, the business of America is business. And yet, a major food supplier – one of Fortune’s “Most Admired Companies” in 2017, employing more than 100,000 in the U.S. – does just that as a matter of course.

Tyson Foods, one of the world’s largest food companies and a recognized leader in protein, employs a force of 98 dedicated chaplains to provide compassionate pastoral care to their workforce and their families, no matter what their religious affiliation or beliefs might be. This includes prayer, not just on the National Day set aside for it, but when people face issues of life that a spiritual perspective can help address.

U.S. law requires the President to issue annually a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer. The law envisions prayers in places of worship, in groups and by individuals, but it makes no mention of prayers in the workplace. In fact, the non-profit National Day of Prayer Task Force’s guidance on the matter is to pray for business, apparently not expecting businesses to join in.

Including and recognizing faith is part of other diversity and inclusion commitments. In 2017, Tom Hayes, President and CEO of Tyson Foods, Inc., also joined the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion group of more than 250 CEOs. “As part of our core values, we strive to treat each other with dignity and respect every day,” said Hayes. “Signing this pledge is another visible demonstration of our ongoing commitment to fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion, which we believe makes us a stronger, better team.”

Many Companies Engaging

Tyson Foods isn’t the only major global company adding religion as part of diversity and inclusion programs. Recently, EY created an online program, Religious Literacy for Organizations, winning EY UK Chairman Steve Varley a Global Business & Interfaith Peace Award at a March 2018 gala keynoted by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, with the collaboration of the UN Global Compact.

Bloomberg, DTCC and The Walt Disney Company are sponsoring the 3rd Annual Tanenbaum Religious Diversity Leadership Summit on May 10 at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. At the summit I will discuss the global traction of the Corporate Pledge on Religious Diversity & Inclusion, which has a growing number of signatories including the CEOs of Hyundai Elevator, Berkshire Capital, The Edmond de Rothschild Foundations, Yuhan-Kimberly and the Mizan Group, Indonesia’s largest Muslim publisher.

Such corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives are tapping into a couple of current trends. First, workplace religious diversity is increasing as people have more job mobility. Second, religious switching in the United States and elsewhere has increased the number of people who identify as spiritual but not religious. Within this increasingly fluid religious marketplace, it is natural that the workplace becomes part of the environment where religious identities are lived and shaped, especially because that is where so many of us spend so much time.

Underlying religious diversity and inclusion initiatives is the need for freedom of religion and belief in the workplace. Workplaces adopting these values send two clear messages to current and prospective employees: (1) you can work here without changing who you are; and (2) the company respects all employees and will not discriminate on the basis of religion or belief. And that’s good for the business of all.

Religion Animates Business People

Religion, not just religious diversity and inclusion, also animates business leaders. Next week, at the annual Horasis Global Meeting of business and world leaders, five CEOs will share with their peers how their faith inspires and animates their work in business. And faith is a consistent topic at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, ranging from special sessions on the power of faith to informal events like the Davos Shabbat initiated by the late Israeli President and Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

We live in a world where religious populations will dramatically outgrow religiously unaffiliated populations. According to the Pew Research Center, the global religiously affiliated population is projected to grow by 2.3 billion between 2015 and 2060 compared with almost no growth in the religiously unaffiliated population (less than 0.1 billion). This is more than a 23-fold difference in favor of religious populations.

Given these workplace, religious and demographic trends, it will not be surprising if more companies join in the National Day of Prayer in 2019.

More on the Tyson Foods Chaplaincy

Related: Tyson Foods Appoints Karen Diefendorf as Director of Chaplain Services. Karen is a former military chaplain with more than 33 years of experience in ministry has been named director of chaplain services at Tyson Foods. Full press release. See video on Tyson Foods’ Chaplaincy program below.

Exec Ed: Workplace Religious Freedom

If your business or organization wants training on successfully navigating religious diversity and inclusion in the workplace, please contact Brian Grim, RFBF President. 

Frank-Jürgen Richter, chairman at Horasis, previews the upcoming Horasis Global Meeting that will bring together 600 CEOs and discusses French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit with U.S. President Donald Trump, and the future of trade. He speaks with Bloomberg’s Mark Barton on “Bloomberg Markets.” (Source: Bloomberg, 25.04.2018)

A question Davos has yet to address

Next week at the annual Horasis Global Meeting of business and world leaders, five CEOs, each from a different faith tradition (Catholic, Confucian, Evangelical, Mormon and Muslim), will share with their peers how faith inspires and animates their work in business. This is an issue the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos has yet to take up.

Brian Grim will moderate.

Many global events seem beyond control and ultimately affect people locally. People become disillusioned, and without hope fall prey to despair and populism. How may we develop trust, faith and togetherness to enable inspirational progress that can develop economic, political and spiritual change? Businesses by and large are secular, but how are they impacted and inspired by religion?

MICROSOFT: Embracing Diversity 

Ron Jonson and John Brandon applied gospel principles into developing one of the most successful retail stores in history.

FAITH & CO. is a 13-part documentary film series by Untamed* and distributed by Seattle Pacific University, which explores the tensions, struggles, and life of leaders who approach the world of business through the lens of faith.

From senior executives at Apple who created the most successful retail store in history, to a high-fashion wearable technology company in Vietnam. From a couple revitalizing an entire town in Alabama, to a $1 billion dollar car dealership infused with the values of transparency and service. You can watch them all at FAITH & CO.

United Religions Initiative’s (URI) Executive Director, The Rev. Victor H. Kazanjian, Jr., and Religious Freedom & Business Foundation’s  (RFBF) President, Brian Grim, have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together to strengthen each organization’s efforts to create cultures of peace through interfaith cooperation and understanding. The two organizations were introduced by Ambassador Mussie Hailu, URI Global Envoy, Continental Director for URI-Africa and URI Representative to the United Nations.

With U.S. offices in San Francisco, California, URI is the largest grassroots interfaith peacebuilding network in the world, cultivating peace and justice by engaging people to bridge religious and cultural differences and work together for the good of their communities and the world. URI implements its mission through local and global initiatives that build the capacity of its member groups (called Cooperation Circles) in 104 countries to engage in community action such as conflict resolution and reconciliation, environmental sustainability, education, women’s empowerment, youth leadership  programs, and advocacy for human rights.

Headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland, RFBF educates the global business community about how religious freedom is good for business and engages the business community in joining forces with government and non-government organizations in promoting respect for freedom of religion or belief. RFBF envisions a global future of innovative and sustainable economies, where freedom of religion or belief and diversity are respected. It accomplishes its work through its Empowerment Plus initiative, research, global awards, world forums, and education on how freedom of religion or belief is in the strategic interests of businesses and societies.

URI and RFBF will initiate their combined efforts by rolling out Empowerment Plus in conjunction with Launching Leaders Worldwide in URI’s East Africa Region under the leadership of URI’s Mussie Hailu. Empowerment Plus is an interfaith action program teaching young adults how to apply spiritual principles in their personal and professional lives, helping them develop a faith-centered framework with a focus on giving back. The interfaith Launching Leaders course is the cornerstone of Empowerment Plus. The course is packed with state-of-the-art videos and interactive exercises that help young adults answer important life questions and make plans for their lives. As an integral part of Empowerment Plus, young adults from different faith groups partner together to carry out practical interfaith action projects ranging from jobs programs to service projects.

Visualize impact and change the world. Explore our video-rich initiatives: in-company training, network of CEOs building interfaith understanding and peace, women filmmakers creating new narratives, Millennials exercising leadership, and research showing religion’s socio-economic impact is measurable.

Workplace Training

RFBF together with the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute provide best practice training for companies on why allowing employees to bring their whole selves to work – faith and all – is good for the bottom line. Watch and share the promo video with companies and organizations in your network.

CEOs support peace at Paralympics

Be inspired by business leaders advancing interfaith understanding & peace worldwide hailing from Australia, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Italy, Myanmar, Netherlands, South Korea, UAE, UK, US.

Award-winning Short Films

Watch original short films that showcase how religious freedom leads to innovation, peace, entrepreneurship and human flourishing.

Interfaith Action

With Launching Leaders, we have just signed an agreement with the United Religions Initiative to provide our video-rich Empowerment+ leadership and empowerment initiative. URI has 914 local chapters in 104 Countries.

Impact is Measurable

The socio-economic contributions of religion and religious freedom to society are measurable. Check out this award-winning video.

Recent Posts

• – Chris Seiple (RFBF Board Member): Faith can overcome religious nationalism. Here’s how World Economic Forum
• – Shirin Taber (Middle East Women’s Leadership Network): Women’s Empowerment and Success in Business Rely On Religious Freedom RFBF Blog
• – Ali Aslan Gümüsay (Vienna University of Economics & Business): Religion & Leadership RFBF Blog

Can you visualize impact?

If you, your business or organization wants to help champion these values, please contact me.
Brian Grim, RFBF President

by Shirin Taber*

We live in a remarkable age in where women’s rights in the workplace are gaining unprecedented traction. But as we approach the tipping point of global change, so are the forces that oppose it. As millions promote liberty around the world, too often the critical factor of religious freedom is overlooked in our conversation about gender equality in the business world.

Over the years, I have become passionate about religious freedom and its impact on women’s rights. My exposure to religious freedom was birthed in many ways while growing up in a home with an Iranian Muslim father and an American Christian mother.

My mother passed away from cancer when I was 14, so her spiritual role in my life was limited. Even though my father was a practicing Muslim, he never pressured me to follow his faith as he did. In fact, he encouraged me to think for myself, explore new ideas, play sports, travel abroad, and determine my own spiritual path. The religious freedom he allowed me became a conduit to uncover my personal faith, talents, vocation, and calling to help empower marginalized women.

I have also learned that women’s empowerment and success in the business world cannot occur without religious freedom. Women around the world must be able to choose their own faith perspective. Religion cannot be handed down to them by male-dominated communities. A woman’s choice regarding religion (and its practices) will be one of the greatest factors that impacts her personal peace and development.

In response to the research showing that religious freedom empowers women, the network I direct, Middle East Women’s Leadership Network (MEWLN), and the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation (RFBF) are partners in the Religious Freedom & Business Film Competition.

In our age of media, we believe the important message of women’s rights connection to religious freedom must be shared as widely as possible. Furthermore, we believe we must create visual narratives which encourage indigenous leaders to advance the legal principals of freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief for every person without distinction.

The goal of the film competition is to challenge filmmakers around the world to create short films that showcase how religious freedom leads to innovation, peace, security, entrepreneurship, and human flourishing in communities.

Strategically, these short films were shown at the 2018 Global Business & Interfaith Peace Awards ceremony. The grand prize winner of the 2018 competition received $5,000 and a trip to present her work. Additionally, the wining films are being shared with religious freedom networks, NGOs, and faith based organizations around the world.

My father impacted my life in many ways, but mostly I am grateful that he allowed me to choose my own religious identity, from which many of my personal freedoms and life accomplishments flow. I hope the same for the next generation.

The winning and finalist films include:

• – $5000 GOLD GRAND PRIZE: Love Has No Borders (by Christy Anastas and Deborah Paul)
• – SILVER FIRST RUNNER UP: Global FC (by Mariya Dostzadah Goodbrake)
• – SECOND RUNNER UP: Equations (by Nancy Sawyer Schraeder and Naji Hendrix)
• – THIRD RUNNER UP: Clarkston (by Erin Berhardt)
• – FINALIST: Paper Dresses (by Lizzie Chaplin)

For more details about the competition and sample films, visit the MEWLN website or contact Shirin Taber, MEWLN Director, at shirin@visualstory.org. 

* Shirin is Iranian-American and the author of Muslims Next Door (Zondervan) and Wanting All the Right Things (Relevant). The Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, Fox News Christianity Today and NewYorkTimes.com have featured her writing and work among Muslims and Christians alike. She served with Cru, Inspirational Films and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Shirin is passionate about helping women become world-class leaders by creating media for their mission. Partnering with various United Nations, NGOs and faith-based agencies, she helps leaders develop media strategies to expand their visibility and outreach platforms. She is a graduate of the University of Washington and speaks French, Farsi and English.

Ancient wisdom for a modern world? New study.

Ali Aslan Gümüsay*

Leadership is both deeply personal and profoundly social. Similarly, religion shapes the core of personal beliefs and values, as well as an understanding of social relationships. It has extensive reach and intensive force. Too often it is regarded with a passive distance and a disdainful disregard.

Instead, we should more actively and constructively engage with religion and its impact on leadership. I have done so in an 18-month long study with LEAD Academy, a social business with non-profit status located in the heart of Berlin. The study builds on 32 semi-structured interviews with religious leaders of secular organizations and a half-day workshop. Interviewees and participants were adherents of the so-called Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Download the study here

Religion – a double-edged sword

Engaging with religion does not imply an uncritical rapprochement. On the contrary, engagement means to acknowledge religion as a social fact with a strong impact on many lives and wider society. It follows that religion needs to be taken seriously – both as a source for good and bad – and dealt with accordingly.

The study illustrates that religion is a double-edged sword that can cause both harm and good in leaders and beyond. Potential pitfalls are worldly negligence, non-critical reasoning, exclusivity claim and a belief in divine right. Potential opportunities are personal harmony, deeper meaning, social caring and lived values. If pitfalls are overcome and opportunities embraced, religion can be an anchor and compass for individuals, organizations, and societies in a complex world.

No room for faith?

Interviewees strongly encourage to put religion back on the agenda. Organizations need to consider how to literally and metaphorically offer room for faith. However, some leaders experience “aggressive secularism”, which makes the inclusion of faith particularly difficult. They acknowledge that yoga and meditation are trendy and have attributes of substitute religions, but often lack certain depth. In contrast, religion offers insights about concerns of deeper purpose. In other words, while essential themes for individual and organizational purpose are currently not sufficiently addressed and contemplated upon, religion may offer a means to approach these central concerns.

If practiced in context and in an inclusive way, religion offers an anchor for stability and guidance. This is not a small “if”. Still: religion can be a compass to navigate through and deal with ambiguity in a complex world. This can create a personal mindset and ‘soulset’ empowering leaders’ personal and social conduct. With the right engagement, this can have a significant positive impact on society.

The study concludes by offering five ways to engage with religion and leadership.

Additional Study:

Embracing religions in moral theories of leadership (Ali Aslan Gümüsay, published online April 13, 2018, Academy of Management Perspectives, In-Press)

ABSTRACT: Religions are social constituents of present societies that need to be integrated into theories of leadership. In this paper, I outline how three distinct characteristics, particularly present in Abrahamic religions, can significantly impact leadership principles and practices: a belief in the existence of and relationship to a God, the faith in and pursuit of a hereafter purpose, and the belief in and attempted adherence to a sacred scripture. Subsequently, I classify two approaches to examine their impact on leadership: a scripture-based and an empirical-based lens. I then highlight how the distinct characteristics can either inform and blend into or transform and modify moral theories of leadership.

About the author

* Ali Aslan Gümüsay is a postdoctoral DAAD Prime Fellow at the Vienna University of Economics & Business and the University of Hamburg. Before, he was a Lecturer in Management at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, and a strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. He received his DPhil from Said Business School, University of Oxford.

The Peace-Technology-Development (PDT) initiative fosters interfaith action to promote appropriate technology to accomplish the Strategic Development Goals (SGDs).

PDT is a collaborative endeavor of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, the Love In Lights and the International Exhibition on Smart Technology for Sustainable Development & Procurement (STS&P).

The SDGs are a collection of 17 global goals set by the United Nations cover a broad range of social and economic development issues including poverty, hunger, health, education, climate change, gender equality, water, sanitation, energy, environment and social justice.

The PDT initiative addresses two important missing aspects critical for accomplishing the goals that are not specifically spelled out: interfaith action and procuring appropriate technology to accomplish the goals.

Faith and technology are a powerful, but under-utilized pairing. For instance, much of the aid work throughout the world is directed or carried out by faith-based groups. Many employ technologies to help communities develop ranging from drilling wells to helping communities become self sufficient in both electricity and knowhow.

The PDT initiative helps faith communities directly engage with companies and agencies producing and procuring technology that aids development. In the process, not only are more appropriate forms of technology developed and procured, but also we directly address SDG 16, building peace. As we help faith groups work together to solve problems at the local level, this increases interfaith understanding and creates a climate where societies and governments will better see the value of protecting freedom of religion or belief, as defines in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Main PDT initiatives

International Exhibition on Smart Technology for Sustainable Development & Procurement (STS&P)

STS&P is a yearly exhibition that helps the connect technology developers with the real needs of communities. It is the world’s only platform helping the United Nations focus on developing technologies as tools for implementing SDGs.

STS&P brings together new industries and markets that are changing the demand for labor and capital in ways that help technology be in the service or people rather than people serving technology. The uptake and deployment of smart technology for sustainable development will be facilitated greatly by an efficient international market for appropriate technology for the SDGs that meet the real human need for holistic, integral human development.

Global Business & Peace Awards and Symposium

In support of UN Sustainable Development Goal 16, the Global Business & Interfaith Peace Awards recognize business leaders – current or past CEOs – who have demonstrated leadership in championing interfaith understanding and peace. The Awards are presented by the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation (RFBF) in collaboration with the United Nations Global Compact Business for Peace (B4P) platform, the Global Compact Network Korea, and the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC).

The inaugural Global Business & Interfaith Peace Awards were held in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, Sept. 6, a day before the Opening Ceremony of the 2016 Paralympic Games. The next awards will be given in Seoul, Korea, ahead of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Paralympics.

SDG-16: Promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

Love In Lights

Love In Lights is devoted to providing villages lacking electricity with the appropriate technology to improve the quality of life of families around the world. Further, it strengthens the competencies of the beneficiaries through implementing income-generating projects and character education programs.

Love In Lights is designed to develop sustainable communities in which residents and the environment live in harmony, and community members work together to achieve common goals.