A British judgment on preaching to colleagues and clients
BY HER own lights, Sarah Kuteh was evidently convinced that she was doing the right thing. But some of the patients who were interviewed by this devoutly Christian nurse, as they were being prepared for big operations, felt disturbed by her insistence on bringing up her beliefs. One man, facing cancer treatment, said she offered him a Bible and induced him to sing part of a Biblical Psalm with her. It felt like a scene out of Monty Python, an old British comedy show, he complained later.
In Europe, a conditional right to proselytise was affirmed by a famous judgment of the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, the so-called Kokkinakis case, adjudicated in 1993. As was to be expected, lawyers for Ms Kuteh brought up that case, which vindicated a Greek Jehovah’s Witness. In the United States, where religious faith and the sanctity of free speech are generally held in higher regard than in some parts of Europe, there is a similar struggle to achieve a balance. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that upholds anti-discrimination law, warns employers that if one worker is allowed to preach aggressively to another, that can give the targeted worker grounds to sue the bosses for allowing a hostile work environment.
A landmark case in 1996 upheld the dismissal of a devoutly Christian worker at a firm in Richmond, Virginia, after she told her supervisor to “get right with God” and warned a subordinate that she was sinning gravely by conceiving a child out of wedlock. But gentler religious language, such as wishing fellow workers a “blessed day”, has been found to be permissible.
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