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Not Christian, But Nonetheless Qualified: The Secular Workplace - Whose Hardship?, Gwendolyn Yvonne Alexis

Gwendolyn Yvonne Alexis

This paper examines the uneven history of the U.S. as a haven for religious freedom and links it to the challenges being confronted today in incorporating into U.S. society the influx of immigrants from non-Christian, non-Western cultures. Focusing on the workplace, the author argues that non-Christian employees are at a disadvantage in the so-called secular U.S. workplace because it in truth represents a bastion of secularized Christianity. That is to say, an institutionalization of Christianity in the civil laws and public institutions of the U.S. has allowed religiously embedded practices to masquerade as secular norms. To overcome the Christian presumption …