Hide Your Bible

From a Christianity Today article of the same title by Brad Greenberg:

Daniel Berry was practicing his faith, but his employers felt he took it too far. They told him to keep his Bible tucked in a desk drawer, to take down a "Happy Birthday Jesus" sign, and to stop praying with clients. Berry didn't like the orders given by the Tehama County Department of Social Services, so he sued, claiming his First Amendment rights had been infringed. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against him in May, further affirming the limitations on overt Christian behavior by government employees... Beginning in 2001, Berry hosted informal and unscheduled prayer meetings in a conference room, even after the county told him he could not use the site. They said he should use a break room instead. Later that year, he challenged a departmental rule and placed a Bible on his desk and hung a Jesus sign on his cubicle. He was seen praying with clients. Berry had never been prevented from sharing his faith with coworkers. But the county strictly prohibited religious conversations with clients, because they feared such dialogue could be perceived as government endorsement of religion... "Generally, an employee is not barred from giving a religious testimony-even to the general public," Derek Davis, director of the Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University, told CT. "If you invited the client to pray with you and the client said, 'Sure-why not?' that would be okay. If the client resisted, then you would need to back off." The case would have been different had Berry not been a government employee. The "cloud" of "separation of church and state sometimes shuts peoples' mouths when they don't have to [be] shut," said Os Hillman, director of the International Coalition of Workplace Ministries. "Yet there are clearly times you don't want to overstep your bounds." One of those is evangelizing on company time. Another is proselytizing a coworker who feels harassed. The best things Christians can do, Hillman said, are work hard, demonstrate integrity and love, and share how God is transforming their lives. "I particularly like what St. Francis of Assisi said, 'Preach the gospel always, and when necessary use words,'" Hillman said. "That is especially important in the workplace."