Rhetoric Race and Religion
Hobby Lobby’s overt Christianity shocked Charity Carney when she started working at a Texas outpost of the crafts chain a few years ago. Most staff meetings began with a prayer, Carney learned. You could always find a Bible in the break room, she said.
“It was just assumed that you would be a believer if you worked there,” said Carney who left the company after a few months and is now a historian, studying the rise of megachurches at Western Governors University. “I don’t think anybody would be persecuted for not believing, but there was an assumption in place.” She said she eventually got used to it.
Hobby Lobby’s religious bent was thrown into the spotlight this week when the Oklahoma City-based crafts chain argued its case against Obamacare’s so-called contraception mandate before the Supreme Court. The company, which employs 16,000 workers in its more than 550 stores, maintains that the law’s requirement that health insurance cover IUDs and morning-after pills violates its religious rights.
Though the idea of a company with an overt religious commitment — and the belief that contraception is a religious issue — may seem surprising in 2014, there’s a long-standing American tradition of mixing religion and work going back more than 100 years.
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