A Christian should run their business on Biblical principles…honesty, integrity, love, truth, etc. However, if you start requiring people partake of “COMMUNION”, or complying with Jesus’ command….to “go ye into all the world…” you will be hard-pressed to comply with “the separation of Church and State” issues placed upon us by our government.

First, I would like to address the big picture. After that, I will tell you how we address the overall issue in our business. Finally, I will give you some resources that will allow you to seek further information.

Is Christian Business Against The Law?

Obviously, with the overwhelming number of laws and regulations we have at almost every level of government these days, it is impossible for me to address all areas of the law relating to Christian business. That is not the intent of this post. Instead, I want to hit the main points and then give you the resources to go further if necessary.

While it certainly looks as if every corner of today’s culture is opposed to our Christian faith, it may surprise you to know that our law is actually friendly to our Christian witness. In fact, there is very little in the way of regulations that will hinder you in integrating your faith into your business.

The main area that can trip up the Christian business owner or leader is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This law is not designed to keep our faith out of the business. Instead, it is written to forbid discrimination in hiring, compensation, and promotions based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Our responsibility as Christian business owners and leaders is to comply with this law in a straight-forward manner. So, how do we do this?

The following material from the C12 Group answers this question well:

General Guidelines For Compliance

Owners and managers are able to communicate their religious beliefs through company policies, practices, and witnessing if they stick to the following simple guidelines:

• Don’t give current or prospective employees the perception that employment or advancement requires workers to adopt a certain religious belief.

• Accommodate employee objections and provide equal opportunity of expression and use of resources/facilities (unless incompatible with stated company core principles).

• Don’t require employees to participate in worship.

Recommendation:

Ensure company written materials (e.g., application, manuals, etc.) inform employees that their religious beliefs or non-beliefs play no role in hiring, termination, promotion, or in the terms, conditions or privileges of employment.

Note:

These guidelines are general and are not a substitute for detailed legal advice.

Building a unified team while avoiding legal issues

• Always be clear in communicating and reinforcing the core principles of the firm
• Recruit & interview employees with these principles firmly in view
• Ask candidates how they will contribute in such an environment; hire accordingly
• Hold all your people accountable for abiding by these core principles
• Give everyone committed to achieving these core principles an equal opportunity to be hired, developed, promoted, and compensated
• Maintain a policy requiring internal disputes to be resolved according to a clearly defined conflict resolution process with the ‘final step’ being third party mediation or arbitration

Our Approach

When we first begin our interview process, we let the prospective employee know that we consider ourselves a Christian business and we operate on Biblical principles. We explain that we do not hire, compensate, or promote based on that, but we are open about our faith.

The Mike Patton Auto Family seeks to honor God through impacting the lives of our employees, customers, and community.

We tell them about our mission statement (above) and let them know about some of our practices such as monthly devotions, opening meetings with prayer, etc. We explain that they are not required to participate in these activities, but we do want them to know about them up front.

We are working on way to reinforce this approach during orientation so that the awareness does not fade. After that, we simply attempt to live this out to the best of our abilities.

We are not perfect and we very well may face legal opposition one day in the future. In that event, I pray we have behaved according to God’s will and that He will protect us. Regardless of the consequences here on earth, we will continue to bear witness of our faith as well as we are able.

Resources

Several Christ-centered legal organizations offer websites, publications, help lines, and legal counsel to defend Christian freedom in the workplace. These resources include:

Alliance Defense Fund (www.alliancedefensefund.org): Pamphlet – The Truth behind Faith in the Workplace.

American Center for Law & Justice (www.aclj.org): Wonderfully informative website, Pamphlet – Workplace Rights

Pacific Justice Institute (www.pacificjustice.org): Pamphlet – Reclaim Your Workplace

Christian Legal Society (www.clsnet.org): Christian lawyer referral service

Peacemakers Ministries (www.peacemaker.net): Christian conciliation services, and helpful teaching and discipling materials applicable to workplace, churches and homes.

Photo by designer491/Shutterstock

A Christian should run their business on Biblical principles…honesty, integrity, love, truth, etc. However, if you start requiring people partake of “COMMUNION”, or complying with Jesus’ command….to “go ye into all the world…” you will be hard-pressed to comply with “the separation of Church and State” issues placed upon us by our government.

First, I would like to address the big picture. After that, I will tell you how we address the overall issue in our business. Finally, I will give you some resources that will allow you to seek further information.

Is Christian Business Against The Law?

Obviously, there are an overwhelming number of laws and regulations we have at almost every level of government these days. It is impossible for me to address all areas of the law relating to Christian business. That is not the intent of this post. Instead, I want to hit the main points and then give you the resources to go further if necessary.

It certainly looks as if every corner of today’s culture is opposed to our Christian faith. It actually may surprise you to know that our law is friendly to our Christian witness. In fact, there is very little in the way of regulations that will hinder the integration of your faith into your business.

The main area that can trip up the Christian business owner or leader is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This law is not designed to keep our faith out of the business. Instead, it is written to forbid discrimination in hiring, compensation, and promotions based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Our responsibility as Christian business owners and leaders is to comply with this law in a straight-forward manner. So, how do we do this?

The following material from the C12 Group answers this question well:

[box]

General Guidelines For Compliance

Owners and managers are able to communicate their religious beliefs through company policies, practices, and witnessing if they stick to the following simple guidelines:

• Don’t give current or prospective employees the perception that employment or advancement requires workers to adopt a certain religious belief.

• Accommodate employee objections and provide equal opportunity of expression and use of resources/facilities (unless incompatible with stated company core principles).

• Don’t require employees to participate in worship.

Recommendation:

Ensure company written materials (e.g., application, manuals, etc.) inform employees that their religious beliefs or non-beliefs play no role in hiring, termination, promotion, or in the terms, conditions or privileges of employment.

Note:

These guidelines are general and are not a substitute for detailed legal advice.

Building a unified team while avoiding legal issues.

• Always be clear in communicating and reinforcing the core principles of the firm.
• Recruit and interview employees with these principles firmly in view.
• Ask candidates how they will contribute in such an environment; hire accordingly.
• Hold all your people accountable for abiding by these core principles.
• Give everyone committed to achieving these core principles an equal opportunity to be hired, developed, promoted, and compensated.
• Maintain a policy requiring internal disputes to be resolved according to a clearly defined conflict resolution process. The ‘final step’ should be third party mediation or arbitration.

[/box]

Our Approach

When we first begin our interview process, we let the prospective employee know that we consider ourselves a Christian business and we operate on Biblical principles. We explain that we do not hire, compensate, or promote based on that, but we are open about our faith.

The Mike Patton Auto Family seeks to honor God through impacting the lives of our employees, customers, and community.

We tell them about our mission statement (above) and let them know about some of our practices such as monthly devotions, opening meetings with prayer, etc. We explain that they are not required to participate in these activities, but we do want them to know about them up front.

We are working on way to reinforce this approach during orientation so that the awareness does not fade. After that, we simply attempt to live this out to the best of our abilities.

We are not perfect. We very well may face legal opposition one day in the future. In that event, I pray we have behaved according to God’s will and that He will protect us. Regardless of the consequences here on earth, we will continue to bear witness of our faith as well as we are able.

Resources

Several Christ-centered legal organizations offer websites, publications, help lines, and legal counsel to defend Christian freedom in the workplace. These resources include:

Alliance Defense Fund

(

www.alliancedefensefund.org

): Pamphlet –

The Truth behind Faith in the Workplace

.

American Center for Law & Justice (www.aclj.org): Wonderfully informative website, Pamphlet – Workplace Rights

Pacific Justice Institute(www.pacificjustice.org): Pamphlet – Reclaim Your Workplace

Christian Legal Society (www.clsnet.org): Christian lawyer referral service

Peacemakers Ministries (www.peacemaker.net): Christian conciliation services, and helpful teaching and discipling materials applicable to workplace, churches and homes.

[Originally posted on May 28, 2012]

Legal Issues Facing Christian Business

In the realm of religious political discourse in the US, contraceptive/abortifacient funding and gay marriage reign supreme. These push other issues to the side – legal issues that have a huge impact on Christians in the workforce.

What if the government forced you to vindicate sin?

As a photographer, strongly considering photography as a source of income in seminary and if needed as a bi-vocational pastor, I couldn’t help but be touched by this story:

Elane Photography… received an email from a woman in a same-sex relationship inquiring about prices for shooting her and her partner’s “commitment ceremony” in Taos. The photographer knew that she could not in good conscience use her artistic skills to photograph a ceremony that communicated support for redefining marriage. Although the same-sex couple found another photographer for their ceremony, one of the partners filed a discrimination complaint with the state, subjecting the owners to a trial before the Human Rights Commission.

The owners explained that they tried to operate their business according to their higher principles, including those on marriage. The commission rejected their First Amendment defenses, found the company guilty, and ordered it to pay $6,600 in attorneys’ fees. The case is now on appeal and awaiting a decision by the New Mexico Court of Appeals.
– Santa Fe New Mexican (emphasis added)

The Human Rights Commission requires Christians in business to sponsor sin.

Not Just Homosexuality

This isn’t a rant against homosexuality. There are a myriad of business scenarios this type of ruling could impact:

• The construction company which refuses to build an abortion clinic.
• The cleaning service which refuses to clean a strip club.
• The newspaper which refuses to run advertisements for a casino.
• The doctor who refuses to conduct abortions.

If the government prevents Christians from recusing themselves from business deals based on moral grounds, we could find ourselves required to perform actions we abhor.

How Can Christians Respond?

Christians have many options in responding to this trend. I’ve listed some here along with some of the difficulties I see them presenting. I’m not saying that these are the only options or the best options. Neither are the considerations complete. This isn’t legal advice. It’s a starting point for thought and discussion.

1. Civil Disobedience

The first option is to knowingly disobey such orders. Knowingly abstaining from sinful actions and bravely submitting to the consequences is a powerful witness.

Considerations:

This is dissimilar from the race-focused civil rights movement of the mid-20th century on one major factor: the momentum of cultural perception. God created all humans in His image so race-based discrimination is an affront to the very character of God. The civil-rights movement of the 1960’s was a movement towards biblical truth.

However, abortion, gay marriage and similar issues are anti-biblical. Western culture is moving away from, not towards, a biblical truth. Culture will be against us, not for us. We will not be cheered for this, we will be jeered for this. Go down this path with eyes wide open.

2. Political Change

The western societies characterized by policies like this (or on their way to it) are also characterized by some form of citizen government. As such, citizens have the ability to affect change in their government’s policies.

This is exactly what the Alliance Defense Fund is doing in the case of Elane Photography. ADF is going to the courts to defend Elane Photography with the intention of establishing court rulings favorable to conscience-driven business practices.

Other avenues include:

• Ballot measures to make concience-driven business practices legal
• Nominating, promoting and voting for politicians friendly to the cause

Considerations:

Much like civil disobedience, these measures are going against the momentum of the present culture. You might lose business, reduce social standing, receive threats or even be attacked for your stance.

3. Change Your Product

The business of photography is driven by specialization. No one is simply a “professional photographer.” There are:

• Maternity photographers
• Advertising photographers
• Landscape photographers
• Fashion photographers
• Photojournalists
• Infant photographers
• Architectural photographers
• Sports photographers
• Wildlife photographers
• …and a whole host of other specializations

No one sues a landscape photographer for not shooting their wedding.

Would Elane Photography be in this trouble if the service they provided was specifically “photographic documentation of Christian weddings”? Christian weddings have different customs, symbols and points of emphasis than civil ceremonies, marriages for other religions and other family events and is therefore a legitimate specialization. If that is the specialized service you provide, chances are much lower that you will be sued for not providing services in conflict with your morals.

Considerations:

1. Offering more specific services will limit your potential pool of clients. This could have obvious impacts on revenue.

2. The laws of your jurisdiction may not provide legal shelter with a simple rebranding of services. Consult a lawyer before rebranding your services for legal protection.

4. Use The Opportunity For the Gospel

Perhaps Elane Photography could have used this as an opportunity to advance the gospel. If the final photographs delivered included Bible verses that proclaimed the gospel or posed challenges to sinners, might God have been served?

This also gives a Christian to hold a relationship with the non-Christian instead of avoiding them. Not only your product, but your words and actions are a witness to the unbeliever.

Bake the gospel into your product and your dealings with the world.

Considerations:

1. This method involves actually conducting the practice with which you disagree. It is, without question, a grey area. It risks directly sinning or putting a stamp of approval on the sin.

2. You must be completely transparent about what service you are going to provide. If the photo book you deliver is going to be saturated with Scripture, this can’t be a surprise when the customer takes delivery. Make sure your contract explains that the photos will be accompanied by relevant Bible verses.

3. Your work represents Christian business to the world in a special way. Your product must display excellence or it will tarnish the name of Christ with the labels shoddy, lazy, unrefined and substandard.

Jesus is a treasure. Represent him that way.

What Next?

How would you respond if you were in Elane Photography’s place?

What other considerations are there for the options I listed above?