In an increasingly technological and Internet-centric society, there are few things people keep secret from one another or feel uncomfortable talking about in a work setting. Except for religion.
“There’s more religion than ever before but everyone’s going into silos,” said Anthony Hatcher, associate professor of communications at Elon University and one of the panelists at the “Religion and Objectivity” talk held April 25 in the new Numen Lumen Pavilion.
The talk, sponsored by the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life, brought three of Elon’s professors, each of them self-described as religious, to talk about how religion can exist civilly in a workplace environment. One common theme each panelist touched on was a hesitance to discuss religion with others, even outside of work.
“It’s a fear that you will not share the same views as another person,” said Srikripa Chandrasekaran, assistant professor of biology at Elon.
Martin Fowler, a philosophy lecturer, had a similar view.
“No one wants to talk about things important to them that no one else cares about,” Fowler said.
Fowler also delved into the rifts that can come between what one has to do in their profession and what one’s religious beliefs may dictate. Fowler referenced the early Western philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, who were harangued by the Greek governments for not supporting the pantheon of Greek gods.
“Philosophy didn’t get off to a good start with religion,” Fowler said.
Chandrasekaran brought up one classroom experiment where students had to work with stem cells and some students had a religious objection to experimenting on cells harvested from embryos. While pointing out these conflicts exist in science, Chandrasekaran also said she suspected these kinds of objections will not last forever.
“A few years ago, organ transplants were a big deal and controversial, but today we don’t even think about it,” she said.
Hatcher recalled his hesitancy to share his religious beliefs when he first entered the workplace.
“It might be hard to hold onto your faith in a secular workplace,” Hatcher said. “When I worked in a newsroom, I heard the word ‘God’ a lot, and not in a very reverent way.”
One of the main themes of the talk was how to remain objective in the workplace when it comes to issues of religion and not letting other people’s beliefs define them. Fowler said religious discussions can be very fruitful and enlightening, but they have to be started in the proper contexts.
“We only have a few arrows in our quiver of respect and one of them is not to be nosy,” Fowler said.
One part of the night’s talk that neither the panelists nor the moderator anticipated was a discussion between the panel and Ahmed Fadaam, assistant professor of communications at Elon. Fadaam talked about how he and his co-workers in Iraq talked openly about each other’s differing religions and were very friendly about it.
But when sectarian violence started in his country around 2003, his friends became increasingly edgy about discussing religion, especially when they had different faiths or belonged to different sects.
Chandrasekaran said her grandfather told her similar stories about living during the partition in India, where people he knew had been getting along, but when the partition started, violence between different groups grew.
“Everyone started killing each other over religion because of what some politician did,” Chandrasekaran said.