Religious Accommodation Research Articles

Negative Relations with Others as a Moderator of the Associations Between Received Religious (Non)Accommodation from a Parent and Shared Family Identity with the Parent

This study examined young adult children’s history of negative relations with others as a moderator of the associations between their received religious (non)accommodation from a parent and shared family identity with that parent. Negative relations with others moderated how religious-specific supportive communication, respect for divergent values, and inappropriate self-disclosures were associated with shared family identity. The associations were stronger for children with a high history of negative relations and weaker for children with a low history of negative relations. (Non)accommodation in a family relationship may carry different implications depending on the receiver’s sociohistorical experiences in the larger supra-system.

Know how to strengthen processes for religious accommodations requests

A little more than a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the most impactful ruling on religious accommodations in decades. Let's start with a little background for the case, which has implications for colleges and universities and other employers. Gerald Groff, a professed Christian and employee of the U.S. Postal Service declined to work on Sundays, citing his religious beliefs. USPS attempted to accommodate him by arranging for co‐workers to exchange shifts, but there were multiple instances where employees weren’t available to trade. Groff didn’t report to work on those days, and USPS terminated his employment as a result.

Religious identity-based discrimination in the physician workforce: findings from a survey of Muslim physicians in the UK

ObjectiveExamine relationships between religiosity, workplace discrimination, religious accommodation and related professional and psychological outcomes among UK Muslim physicians.MethodsIn 2021, a national survey of British Islamic Medical Association members was conducted....

Statutory Religious Accommodation in Employment and the Problems of Judicial Intent and Outcome

The Groff v. DeJoy case unhappily, but inevitably, generates a variety of realistically unresolvable fundamental problems in typical statutory religious accommodation cases. Perhaps even more important, though, are the unintended and perverse results of Groff’s placing a generally heavier burden of religious accommodation on employers. The Groff standard indeed incentivizes the bringing of more religious discrimination cases, and both the winning and losing of such cases by religious claimants. But our adversarial cultural circumstances, including the typical inseparability of religion, politics, and culture, crucially affect the actual, but unintended, results of judicial reforms. The Groff rule is likely to result, unintendedly, in greater, not less, overall religiously grounded alienation and demoralization in the typical workplace.

Public Support for the Accommodation of Religious Diversity: The Interplay Between Religious Identification, Threat Perception, and Cross‐Group Friendships

AbstractAccommodating new religious communities has become a central issue in Western Europe. However, the role of religious identification in shaping intergroup relations still needs to be better understood. This study addresses this gap by analyzing the factors influencing public support for the accommodation of religious diversity, drawing on two statistically representative surveys conducted in Catalonia, Spain. The results revealed that religious identification moderates the relationship between the perception that religions other than Catholicism threaten society's way of life and the level of support for accommodating religious diversity. Contrary to initial assumptions, practicing Catholics were more supportive of religious accommodation than nonpracticing Catholics and nonbelievers, regardless of the level of threat they perceived. Moreover, cross‐group friendships mitigated the negative impact of perceived threat on support for religious accommodation, particularly among nonbelievers. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of cross‐group friendships in fostering more inclusive societies and provide valuable insights for religious governance.

Title VII and Religious Accommodations in the Workplace After Groff v. Dejoy (2023)

The United States Supreme Court in Groff v. DeJoy rejected a 50-year precedent regarding the application of Title VII of the United States Civil Rights to requests by private and public employees for Title VII workplace religious accommodations. The article evaluates the impact of 73 U.S. District Court and U.S. Court of Appeals decisions decided after Groff to determine whether Groff has had an impact on how lower federal courts have evaluated requests for Title VII workplace religious accommodations. The article also evaluates the role of U.S. District Courts as gatekeepers for Title VII workplace religious accommodation lawsuits. Finally, the article discusses the impact of Groff on the most common types of workplace religious accommodation requests. The article argues that employers will have greater difficulty persuading U.S. District Court to grant motions to dismiss or motions for summary judgment to end Title religious accommodation lawsuits.

Identity work responses to workplace stigmatization: Power positions, authenticity, religious coping and religious accommodation for skilled practising Muslim professionals

AbstractDespite the challenges Muslims face because of their stigmatized religious identity, little is known about how they navigate that identity in the workplace. Adopting an interpretivist perspective of identity work, this study investigates this issue by building on two‐round in‐depth interviews (35 in round‐one and 21 in round‐two) with skilled practising British Muslim professionals. It extends work on power positions to show the privileges those in senior managerial positions have, including assertiveness and control over workplace interactions and outcomes. It further advances understanding of authenticity, revealing that, despite their experiences of stigmatization, these professionals tend to remain true to their religious identity, openly practising their religion in the workplace. They perceive identity re‐interpretation to be part of authenticity, and a responsibility to contest religious stigma. Importantly, this study conceptualizes proactive religious coping as an identity work response to workplace stigmatization, theorized in this organizational context as turning to God and religious rituals for meaning, comfort, resilience and reconciliation, whilst also being proactive and fighting to challenge experiences of stigmatization. However, unlike for other stigmatized groups, inclusive organizational practices, particularly religious accommodation, are not a driver for authenticity, but rather a signal for environment‐fit and authenticity is instead driven by religious identity.

A Conditional Process Analysis of Siblings’ Religious Communication (Non)accommodation, Surface Acting, and Shared Family Identity

ABSTRACT This study tested the conditional direct and indirect associations between siblings’ religious (non)accommodation and shared family identity (SFI) vis-à-vis surface acting. Participants included 218 young adults who reported on a target sibling’s (non)accommodation of their religious beliefs, as well as their family’s conversation and conformity orientations. Results indicated that the sibling’s religious (non)accommodation was directly and indirectly associated with the participant’s SFI with the sibling via the participant’s surface acting during religious conversations. The associations varied in magnitude, however, as a function of family conversation and conformity orientations. For sibling accommodation, the positive indirect association with SFI grew in magnitude for families low to moderate in conversation orientation as conformity orientation increased. For sibling nonaccommodation, the negative direct association with SFI diminished in magnitude as both family orientations increased, whereas the negative indirect association increased in magnitude for families low to moderate in conversation orientation as conformity orientation increased.

The Claim for An Institutional Identity in Healthcare Activities: the Italian Case

Abstract The aim of this article is to analyse the status of religiously affiliated health facilities in Italy. Many faith-based healthcare institutions are currently entrapped between the expectation to participate in the healthcare public delivery, and the need for a preservation of their religious identity. Indeed, they are facing an increasing risk of a weakening of their religious identity, due to the evolution of civil law regulating ethically controversial issues, which is increasingly distancing from the religious approach, undermining the traditional religious accommodation granted to faith-based healthcare institutions. However, the preservation of their religious ethos requires dealing with a ‘web of relationships’ which includes the founding religious order, patients, practitioners, the State and a ‘highly competitive market’. This article explores the feasibility of an intermediate path between complete immunity and strict non-tolerance of their religious ethos, in the pursuit of the constitutional principles of pluralism, positive neutrality, and subsidiarity.

Juxtaposing contested bodies: What can be learned from the politics of weightism and of women’s exclusion

ABSTRACT A significant stream in fat studies scholarship explores its relationship with other fields of critical theory that scrutinize the marginalization of stigmatized bodies. Engaging with sexism, racism, homophobia, and ableism, fat studies reflect on the concepts, critiques, and strategies employed to achieve equality and respect for all bodies. This essay contributes to this vein of scholarship by juxtaposing two seemingly remote topics: weightism in the United States and the global north and the treatment of the female body in the context of the tensions between religious accommodation and gender equality. Societies worldwide have increasingly faced tensions regarding religion and gender in civic contexts. These dilemmas are explored here through the case of religiously motivated sex-based segregation in the public sphere in Israel. Mapping the commonalities and intersections between these two arenas provides new insights into the politics of contested bodies and the path to change. The comparison reveals that in their respective contexts, fat bodies and women’s bodies are often framed as unruly and impure, bearing personal responsibility for their alleged plights. In both cases, the restraint of these bodies is deemed central to national unity and collective resilience, and their symbolic presence is to be erased or minimized. Additionally, the essay underscores the complexities of naming and politicizing the issues vis-à-vis de-politicization efforts. Finally, it addresses the challenge of balancing deontological and instrumentalist arguments in promoting justice and the oversimplified understanding of choice that governs the discourses in both arenas.

Shabbat and Shattered Dreams: Religious Accommodations for Public Exams in South Korea

Abstract Today in South Korea, individuals of certain faiths are unable to take a wide range of state-administered qualifying examinations due to their religious convictions. The Constitutional Court of Korea has repeatedly refused their request for religious accommodations, such as an alternative test date for Sabbath or holy day observers who are unable to take exams on their original dates. The authors analyze the series of Constitutional Court decisions rejecting the need for such accommodation by focusing on the court’s use of its main analytical tool, the proportionality principle. These decisions reveal important shortcomings in the court’s application of the proportionality principle, including challenges inherent to proportionality and more specific deficiencies in the court’s application of the general principle. The article thus sheds light on how the proportionality principle is applied in the context of Korean constitutional jurisprudence and the resultant deprivation of protection for certain fundamental rights in Korea. The authors compare the court’s approach with that of courts in Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. They then propose a number of ways to improve the court’s proportionality analysis and its constitutional reasoning.

Consent, Multiculturalism, and Exit: A Contemporary Critique of Religious Accommodation and the Right to Sex Equality

ABSTRACT As liberal legal systems worldwide develop new forms of multicultural accommodation, this article identifies a noteworthy shift. Democracies have been moving from non-interference in internal illiberal community norms to a growing readiness to allow inegalitarian norms, especially norms discriminating against women, into general societal spheres, as a means for minority integration. Religious women’s consent to modesty and segregation norms has been central in legitimating these novel modes of accommodation. Relying on feminist critiques of consent and using Israeli law as its case study, the article demonstrates how the liberal discourse readily embraces women’s consent to sidestep difficult questions concerning harm to gender equality. Consent serves to sustain normative ambiguity about sex segregation and about the boundaries between public and private. Finally, the expansion of inegalitarian practices from the community onto the larger society further problematizes the idea of the right of exit, a core component of liberal multiculturalism theory.

Complexities, complications, and change for non‐Christian students

AbstractBuilding on the previous chapters in the volume, this concluding chapter provides a practical overview of theories relating to religious diversity and organizational change to outline recommended actions for practitioners across higher education functional areas who want to create a more equitable landscape for non‐Christian college students.Practical Takeaways Individuals across university communities and stakeholder groups can have an influence on changing the campus climate for non‐Christian students through advocacy and action within their institutions. Current theories provide insights and guidance on how and where individuals can influence change within their institutions, including pushing for reviews of standing policies relating to religious accommodations and advocating for religious literacy training for staff and faculty. The issues surrounding the campus climate for non‐Christian students are systemic: making strides towards a more equitable future will take deliberate and long‐term efforts across institutions and stakeholder groups, but can start with coalition building across staff, faculty, and students to focus on those efforts.

Creating welcoming and supportive campus climates for Buddhist students: Barriers and opportunities

AbstractThere is scant available research and scholarly discourse related to the unique needs and experiences of Buddhist students in US higher education—even in the small but growing body of literature on religiously minoritized college students. In this chapter, I summarize what little research does exist on Buddhist students, and explain the broader historical, societal, and cultural factors that serve as important context for making sense of that research. Focus points include curriculum, institutional policy, and student affairs. In the end, I offer recommendations to faculty, administrators, and student affairs professionals regarding what they can do to help create more welcoming and supportive campus climates for Buddhist students.Practical Takeaways Buddhism is internally diverse and Buddhist students often understand religion and express religiousness in ways that greatly differ from Christian and many other religious students. For that reason, creating welcoming and supportive campus climates for them looks different from common ways institutions attempt to do that for students from other religious groups. Creating a designated Buddhist prayer space on campus may not be very helpful to Buddhist students. Things that are more likely to help include: providing religious literacy education to all students, creating an inclusive religious accommodations policy and interfaith calendar, permitting the use of incense in residence halls, hiring a full‐time student affairs professional dedicated to working with Buddhist students, regulating proselytizing on campus, avoiding appropriation of Buddhist traditions, and engaging with Buddhist students directly.

Relationships Between Religious Commitment, Workplace Experiences, and Professional and Psychological Outcomes Among U.S. Muslim Physicians.

To examine relationships between religiosity, workplace discrimination, religious accommodation, and related professional and psychological outcomes among U.S. Muslim physicians. In 2021, the authors surveyed 264 physicians from 3 U.S.-based Muslim clinician organizations. Religious commitment, as measured by multiple items, was evaluated as a possible predictor of workplace discrimination and accommodation; job turnover; career satisfaction; workplace motivation; and belonging, burnout, and depression. Bivariate regression models were used to identify possible significant relationships between predictor and outcome variables. Predictors with meaningful bivariate analyses were included in separate multivariate regression models for each outcome. Participants' mean age was 39.5 years (standard deviation, 10.03). Most were male (160/246; 65%), were U.S.-born (146/244; 60%), completed medical school in the United States (190/243; 78%), and wore a beard/hijab (135/235; 57%). Participants identified as African American (40/247; 16%), Arab (55/247; 22%), South Asian (82/247; 33%), and White (70/247; 28%). Multivariate models demonstrated that religious importance was positively associated with discrimination from patients (odds ratio [OR] = 3.78; P = .02) and depression (OR = 5.36; P = .002), and negatively associated with prayer accommodation at work (OR = 0.20; P = .001). Engaging in congregational religious activities was negatively associated with discrimination from patients (OR = 0.64; P = .006) and job turnover (OR = 0.63; P = .02), and positively associated with accommodations for prayer (OR = 1.42; P = .008) and general religious identity accommodation (OR = 1.47; P = .01). Additionally, participant race and ethnicity were variably associated with these outcomes. This study demonstrates how religious identity may negatively associate with workplace experiences and well-being among U.S. Muslim physicians and highlights the buffering role of religious practice. It spotlights an urgent need for academic medical centers to ameliorate religious discrimination and implement workplace accommodation policies for Muslim physicians.

Religious Accommodation and Its Limits. By Farrah Raza

Religious Accommodation and Its Limits. <i>By Farrah Raza</i>

Islamophobia in higher education environments

AbstractIslamophobia is a reality facing Muslim college students daily on and off campus. In this chapter, I highlight Islamophobia in higher education environments and explore its structural and interactional manifestations. I provide practical recommendations to address institutional and interpersonal Islamophobia and specify how campus educators can work to respond to and prevent Islamophobic incidents. I also make policy recommendations to respond to the hostility toward Muslims in the national discourse. Finally, I outline future frontiers for higher education research, such as the need to account for the complexity of the Muslim identity and its intersections and the need to distinguish Islamophobia from Muslim appreciation through empirical measurement. Future directions in higher education should take on the responsibility of responding to Islamophobia and eradicating its hold on Muslim lives.Practical Takeaways Colleges and universities should critically examine their infrastructures and policies concerning accommodating the religious needs of Muslim students. Each campus should have an academic accommodations policy that specifies how students may go about requesting an accommodation for religious reasons. This policy should be explicitly stated in syllabi, websites, and orientation materials. Institutional leadership should explicitly commit to countering religious‐based hate, including Islamophobia, through policies that condemn such forms of hate and outline specific means of responding to incidents when they occur. A proactive effort to counter hate on campus requires knowledge of the structures in place to utilize these resources when needed and to identify areas for improvement. Educators should create programs and opportunities that promote interactions across religious, spiritual, and secular (RSS) identities and must offer the time, resources, and effort to support formalized campus activities that foreground interfaith engagement. Educators should proactively create spaces for these encounters and incorporate these opportunities into campus architecture and the required programming (e.g., orientation). In the face of a national movement to eliminate, ban, or otherwise weaken diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) resources on college campuses, religious accommodations must be codified in both state and federal laws and guidelines to create consistency across states and a standard of how universities could actively work to create a welcoming environment for all.

The Lutheran Experience in the Ottoman Middle East: Stephan Gerlach (1546–1612) and the History of Lutheran Accommodation

Abstract This article examines what it meant to be Lutheran in the early modern Middle East. Its point of departure is a letter in which Stephan Gerlach, a sixteenth-century Lutheran chaplain to the imperial ambassador in Istanbul, asked his superiors about the type of behaviour that befitted him as a Lutheran. Was he allowed to wear a Turkish turban to see mosques and learn about Islam? Was it permissible for him in exceptional circumstances to accept communion under both kinds from a Roman Catholic monk? Was he allowed to postpone the Sunday sermon to attend Greek Orthodox ceremonies? Reconstructing how sixteenth-century Lutherans who had business in the early modern Middle East tried to resolve such issues not only affords new insights into the Lutheran experience in the Ottoman Empire; it also raises a set of fundamental questions about late sixteenth-century Lutheranism itself. Did Lutherans in this period develop forms of religious accommodation similar to those of early modern Catholics? Did travel in the Eastern Mediterranean demand a more flexible and more fluid form of Lutheranism? Could one even adhere to Lutheranism’s core principles so far away from the place where the movement had first taken root? Through an examination of various Lutheran treatises and travelogues, I show that sixteenth-century Lutheranism did not develop an official policy of accommodation. Instead, Lutheran responses to questions about accommodation, (dis)simulation and conformity were often makeshift and idiosyncratic, because Lutheranism formulated little to no official guidance on the movement as a lived religion.

Same Words, Different Meanings—Same Courts, Different Leanings: How the Supreme Court’s Latest Religious Accommodation Holding Changes the Law and Affects Employers

Same Words, Different Meanings—Same Courts, Different Leanings: How the Supreme Court’s Latest Religious Accommodation Holding Changes the Law and Affects Employers

Statutory Religious Accommodation in Employment and the Problems of Judicial Intent and Outcome

Statutory Religious Accommodation in Employment and the Problems of Judicial Intent and Outcome