When Jacqueline Moreno got her job at a global investment firm, it was an answered prayer.  

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “Coming from my background, as the child of immigrants growing up in the poorer parts of San Diego, I thought these kinds of jobs were out of reach.  

“It’s really, truly, a miracle,” Moreno said. 

Moreno was thankful her prayers seemed to be answered with the job offer. What she did not expect was that her prayers would be welcome at work. But when she started, she joined a “Christian life” community at the firm, one of its 24 different employee resource groups (ERGs), representing an array of identities and interests among the company’s workforce.  

“Too often, when you work at big companies, you feel like you have to keep your faith in the back pocket,” Moreno said, “but through this community, it’s like every day is ‘bring your religion to work day.’”  

Moreno’s experience is becoming more common as companies and corporations come to terms with increasing religious diversity in the workplace. As Eboo Patel, Founder of Interfaith America told Religion News Service’s Kathryn Post, among major brands like Walmart and Starbucks as well as tech firms like Google and financial behemoths like Alliance Bernstein, a growing contingent of businesses are engaging questions around religious diversity and dialogue.  

The expansion seen in recent years, however, may be under threat, as the federal government’s efforts to curb Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices may soon have sweeping impacts on the private sector and threaten interfaith efforts at corporations and companies across the U.S.      

The American workplace: Ground zero for interreligious encounter 

Elaine Howard Ecklund, sociology professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas, said workplaces are one of the places Americans are most likely to encounter religious diversity, when compared to other spheres of life.  

“Our social media channels, the kinds of neighborhoods we are in, the places we shop or spend our free time; it’s easy to be with people like us in all of these places,” Ecklund said. “Workplaces are one of the last places in American society where we have the potential to meet people who are different than us, including from different religions.”  

Ecklund is Co-Author, with Wheaton College professor Denise Daniels and West Virginia University sociologist Christopher P. Scheitle, of a new book, Religion in a Changing Workplace, which shows how employees across the private sector are embracing the notion of “bringing their whole selves to work” — and many employers are encouraging them.  

The team conducted more than 15,000 surveys and 300 in-depth interviews on the subject of faith in US workplaces. It is the largest study of faith at work in the US to date.  

Though the researchers surmised that people would bring their faith to work, they were surprised by the extent to which people want to.  

Wheaton’s Daniels has been studying these dynamics for years. She said when people hear “religion at work,” they tend to think about that coworker who wants to talk about their personal faith or invite you to their house of worship. But beyond wanting to talk about faith, members of the American workforce understand their work — and callings — in terms of their faith. 

“American workers are exploring things like meaning, calling, and ethics within a faith framework, seeing their work through the meaning and purpose of their religion,” said Daniels, “which helps them engage work in a more meaningful way.”  

Ecklund and Daniels said a lot of policymakers and employers may at first be uneasy — or downright fearful — of having people talk, and share, openly about their faith in the workplace. Thier research concluded that allowing, and encouraging, employees to “bring their faith to work” does not necessarily lead to conflict, but closer relationships and diverse teams performing better, together as members have opportunities to engage their differences and share their strengths.  

To strengthen a culture of belonging in their workplace and open up new opportunities for growth, Ecklund and Daniels said leaders have to intentionally engage this facet of their workers’ identities, and do so in a civil, respectful and power-mindful way.

“When organizations and companies are more open to welcoming broader expressions of faith, people feel much more comfortable and engaged,” Daniels said, “which leads to positive outcomes for the workplace as a whole.”  

Though the team did not study interfaith dialogue efforts they were encouraged by stories that showed how inclusion and interreligious engagement are possible and positive in American workplaces.  

“There was one Muslim woman who worked in a pharmacy,” said Ecklund, “who, when asked about her faith, decided to start a lunchtime discussion group with colleagues. 

“What started with questions about a particular faith helped create a broader culture of welcomeness, sensibility and a spirit of exploring and finding out about differences people did not know much about,” she said.   

Executive order threatens DEI, interfaith efforts at US companies 

That kind of work, however, can prove particularly challenging at a time when multiple firms and corporations are starting to cut back DEI initiatives, which have come under fire from President Donald Trump’s administration and Republican legislatures in states like Florida.  

In his first days as president, Trump signed an executive order terminating DEI programs, “in the federal workforce, and in federal contracting and spending.” The January 22, 2025 order directed all federal departments and agencies to end internal DEI efforts and “relentlessly combat private sector discrimination.”  

The order specifically tasked the US Attorney General, along with other agencies, to create a report containing, “recommendations for enforcing Federal civil-rights laws and taking other appropriate measures to encourage the private sector to end” their own DEI policies and programs. The report is due on the president’s desk by May. 

The executive order already had an immediate, chilling effect on companies like Target, headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota and university campuses like Northeastern in Massachusetts, which quickly backtracked some of their DEI initiatives and activities.  

Legal experts expect the administration to go after private sector DEI work in the months and years to come, through federal agencies and the courts. Their warnings threaten the advances of a range of programs some of the world’s largest companies, from Google to Salesforce, American Airlines to the CVS Health, Capital Group and Tyson Foods.   

Missed opportunity 

Megan Johnson, Senior Director of Corporate Strategy at Interfaith America, encourages companies to keep trying.  

Having worked with Interfaith America for 18 years, Johnson has seen firsthand how the tools and resources they offer — originally for a higher education audience — help drive religious inclusion and cooperation in the other sectors as well.  

“As already pointed out in the research, it’s in the workplace where Americans are encountering religious diversity in their daily lives,” Johnson said. “While there may be trepidation around it, it’s already there. People are bringing this part of themselves to work. So, the question is how to engage it?”  

Though religious accommodation is an important starting point, Johnson said Interfaith America’s tools and training help companies create a culture that encourages people to come together, to respect differences, build relationships across those differences, and cooperate around shared goals.  

Though this is a challenging time for such efforts, and engaging religious diversity can feel risky, Johnson said the risk is far weightier when companies do not engage religious diversity and get caught flat-footed when an issue arises.  

“Part of what we encourage — and this is advice from the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission — is the more you can talk about religion as an aspect of identity and create spaces for people to bring that part of themselves to the work place, the better chance you have to not be sued,” she said.  

In other words, Johnson said, “to avoid talking about religion is a missed opportunity.” 

Religion as a community resource 

Of course, Johnson admitted, it is one thing to say that bridging divides in the workplace is important and another to actually make it happen.  

“The fact is that people need the skills to do this well,” she said, “you don’t wake up in the morning with that ability, especially these days.” That is why Johnson said it is important for companies to look to groups like Interfaith America to make sure that people have tools and resources to support one another and pay attention to each other’s needs.  

One of the ways large corporations can start to engage faith at the workplace is through employee “resource” or “affinity groups.” These groups — sometimes known by their shorthand ERG — are voluntary, employee-led groups organized around shared gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation, lifestyle, or interest, meant to foster a diverse, inclusive workplace.   

Islamic studies scholar and Muslim chaplain, Celene Ibrahim, has years of experience working in interfaith dialogue alongside partners like Rabbi Or Rose, Director of the Miller Center for Interreligious Learning and Leadership at Hebrew College in the greater Boston area.  

When she was invited multiple times to speak to NASA’s Islamic Study Group, part of its Employee Welfare Association, she jumped at the opportunity to bring Rabbi Rose in to facilitate interreligious programming exploring the Abrahamic religious traditions together.  

Ibrahim is a believer in the power of companies’ and organizations’ ERGs to foster respect and inclusivity, and help employees feel valued and socially connected at their place of work.  

“Workplace affinity groups offer wonderful opportunities for cross-group collaboration,” she said. “Interacting with different worldview perspectives arguably stimulates the mind and helps build empathy among colleagues, potentially enhancing workplace and overall well-being. 

“Supporting collaborations across axes of religious diversity encourage whole-person connections that help to generate dynamic workplaces that attract and retain talent,” she told Interfaith America.  

Daniels and Ecklund echoed Ibrahim, saying that companies are still confident enough to engage faith in the workplace, at such a time as this, need to do so in an effective, informed, way.  

They said workplace leaders need to think about how certain groups are likely to be discriminated against. Their findings showed that 65 percent of Muslims report some kind of unfair treatment, along with 55 percent of Jewish people and 38 percent of evangelical Protestants, some of which overlaps with racial discrimination for Black Protestants and other minoritized populations within American Christianity.  

“When leaders think about interfaith interaction,” Ecklund said, “one piece of that needs to be creating a level playing field for that interaction and addressing marginalization first.  

“If people feel they might be harmed or mistreated, they would not feel it is safe to have interfaith dialogue or interaction,” she said. “A huge first step to make sure that discrimination and unfair treatment is not happening.” 

For CEOs, talent development teams, diversity officers and resource group leaders looking to foster interreligious collaboration in the workplace, Ibrahim recommended they bring in an expert to build leadership skills and share best practices for engaging religion in the workplace. 

That way, Ibrahim said, companies can avoid major pitfalls at a time of increased polarization.