Reason and Radical

Keep Your Faith to Yourself

As I've mentioned before, I am jobless. The last company I worked for offered career consultants, so I went to the orientation on Monday. All was fine, except that the leader twice in the first 20 minutes related how he had prayed for a certain outcome. He did this one other time in the session.

My question is, when did it become OK to testify about your faith in a secular setting? It certainly wasn't OK in the America I grew up in in the '60s.

More than 20 years ago, I went to a management training session -- you know, one of those deals where you're in a hotel ballroom with a couple of hundred middle managers and a motivational speaker tells you how to be a better manager. At one point, the leader asked for stories from the audience of how they had overcome a problem at work and a few brave souls ventured up to the mike with the usual stories of clever management tricks. Then, a woman said that she had a co-worker who took the lord's name in vain and she prayed and prayed about it and finally he stopped. The entire ballroom went dead silent. Everyone was clearly uncomfortable. I whispered to someone at my table "I guess she thinks she's in church and is testifying." I don't remember how the instructor handled the situation, but this woman's public pronouncement of her faith was clearly an embarrassment to everyone but her.

So when did this change? Why is this acceptable? Or is it not acceptable? Should I have said something to the guy to let him know how uncomfortable I was with his professions of faith?

posted by Leimodnu @ 12:51 PM