Attending DEVOTIONS at WORK
QUESTION: I have just started working at this company where they have devotions regularly. I don’t have anything against them having devotions, per se. I don’t have a problem attending either, as it is during work hours. But a couple of times my colleagues are saying I am cold and stiff. I feel that they will call upon me to lead it one morning. Now, I don’t care to participate, since I don’t believe in much of what they do. What should I do?
– G.C.
CAREERS: Thank you for your question. It seems like they did not discuss devotions with you at the job interview. You say you don’t have a problem with attending these devotions as they take place during work hours. Therefore, you go. This is very good as far as things go. You will be looked on favourably by your bosses and colleagues, seeing that you are young at the company.
Having said that, however, be warned that you are setting the precedent for what they will come to expect from you. If it is a fact that you weren’t told about this, then go to your boss and talk it over with him or her. You may find that your boss will respect you for it; just say you don’t want to conduct the devotion exercises. You can state whether or not you will attend the sessions, as you wish. And that should be it.
If your boss carries the argument further and wants to know why you take this stance, this is my further advice to you.
Tell them you are there to do a job, and it doesn’t include devotional exercises. You will quietly stay at your post and do your work, while others are at the devotions. This is giving them their freedom to express themselves and to assemble as they see fit. As a Jamaican, you, too, have a right not to attend this devotional session.
You can simply laugh off the charge that you are cold and stiff. Not everything needs to be taken seriously.
You say you don’t believe in all they say. That can mean you don’t share their particular beliefs or doctrines. Or it can mean that you embrace an atheistic or agnostic viewpoint. The point you must get is that it is up to you what you believe and practise. No workplace has the right to ask of you that you spout their doctrine or that you adopt certain practices. You have a right to freedom of expression.
In Chapter 3: Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, Section 13 of the Jamaica Constitution speaks to that. It also speaks of ”the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association”, which means that your colleagues can exercise this right, too. They are perfectly within their rights. But your rights are equally protected by the Constitution as is every other Jamaican worker in every other company. Also in Section 17.4, it says: ”No person attending any place of education ... shall be required to receive religious instruction, or to take part in or attend any religious ceremony or observance, which relates to a religion or religious body or denomination other than his own”. That means you are free to attend or not attend the devotional exercises, as you so choose.
And finally, as Section 17.1 says: “Every person shall have the ... right, either alone or in community with others and both in public and in private, to manifest and propagate his religion in ... practice and observance.”