May 01, 2006 16:07
You may or may not know I'm pretty sensitive to matters of faith. I like them explicitly seperate from work and government.
I've made up a little game called "Spot the Bible" to lighten my distrust(?) everytime I see my manager walking around holding one. Last week at the company meeting he sat down to lead the meeting and it sat infront of him the whole time. I was paralyzed by what I would do if he started reading from it. I decided that I would get up and verbally excuse myself if passage sharing started. Luckily it didn't, but what disturbed me more was that the partner meeting was after the general meeting and the book stayed for that. There is a certain air of wholesomeness (to make light of it) to the atmosphere here. One of the partners attends church before work. Another was asking for a referral to a church. Little comments here and there.
So my dilemma is that if I raise an issue with their freedoms, I am opening myself up for them to raise and issue with my (less mainstream) freedoms. I also think its wrong (unnecessarily arrogant to be precise) to stomp on anyones freedom of faith regardless if it pisses me off or marginalizes most of who and what I am.
It comes down to this: I don't feel entirely safe at work. It's not a quest on physical safety, but I feel like I HAVE to be in the closet about my faith, orientation, etc though nobody has told me I have to be to continue working here. Nothing has happened, been said that is inappropriate. It just feels wrong. I little like that one uncle who always wanted you to sit on his lap... Normally I would take the issue to my manager, but I'm not quite sure how to broach the topic of "So, does this commpany have a xtian agenda?"
Assuming everything else is good (and you need the paycheck), what would you do?
work