The Sabbath Observer, the Idiosyncratist, and the Religious Organization: How the EEOC Imagines Religion at Work

ABSTRACT Charged with enforcing Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission plays an overlooked but profoundly important role in shaping American religious life. While scholars of religion, law, and American culture have devoted a great deal of energy to analyzing the ways that federal courts define religion for the purposes of protecting it, they have paid less attention to the role of administrative agencies, like the EEOC. In this article, I argue that the private workplace offers a critical site for understanding how the state regulates and manages American religious life. I look to the EEOC's regulatory guidelines and compliance manuals as important sources for understanding the shifting relationship between religion, law, and work in the United States. I identify three modes of religiosity—or three types of religious actors—existing in tension in the EEOC archive, each bearing a distinct genealogy: the Sabbath Observer, the Idiosyncratist, and the Organization. While gesturing to very different notions of what religion is, the figures of the Idiosyncratist and the Organization both assume that demands of religion and work can be neatly reconciled. They presume that religion can be seamlessly integrated into the workplace without disrupting the functioning of capitalism. However, for those concerned about economic inequality, corporate power, and neoliberal working conditions, I suggest that it may be useful to revisit the EEOC's Sabbath Observer, who insists on the right to collective forms of life and value outside of work and the market.