Years ago, I interviewed for a position with a statewide sexual violence coalition. I had earned my bachelor’s degree (Organizational Management and Development) from a Christian university not far from the organization’s headquarters. Yeah, this school was about that Christian life, and everybody in the vicinity knew it.
The coalition was led by an openly lesbian woman, and we were preparing to merge with the domestic violence coalition, which was led by two women who were lesbian partners.
This was a position with tremendous responsibility. We would be serving people across one of the largest states in the country. People of different races, ethnicities, languages, cultures, religions, and abilities. Christians, atheists, people of other faiths, and people who didn’t identify with any religion at all.
During the interview, I could sense that some of the staff had questions about my religious background. Sure, I had a record and reputation in the work but…… Those people wanted to make sure that I understood that their beautiful contemporary office set in a well-known college town in the mountains wasn’t a church. That was super cool with me because my church was in two hours away in Richmond, and I loved it. (“I got a church.”) AND the church I was a member of welcomed and taught non-discrimination for people in same-sex relationships. (I didn’t share that part; it was an interview, not a campaign.)
Because of my education, I understood that certain questions about religious affiliation could raise legal concerns in an employment interview. But I also understood what these six or seven women were trying to learn about me.
Can you relate to us? Can you work with us? Can you lead here? Will your religious beliefs interfere with your ability to serve people whose lives and beliefs differ from yours?
Those were reasonable concerns about the work itself.
And I answered them from my heart. (And I got the job.)
1. My faith is for me. It is not something I impose on other people.
I explained that my faith gives me what I need to live in this here world. As a Survivor, it has been a tremendous part of my healing. If I had a thousand tongues, I still would fall short of being able to explain it.
My Christian teachings have also taught me that not everybody will live, think, or believe as I do. That doesn’t prevent me from finding common ground, exchanging joy, or treating people with love and dignity.
I’ve served on faith task forces. I’ve spoken in spaces where people held beliefs different from mine. I have spoken in spaces that were less than friendly to Black people. Those experiences were wonderful exchanges of wisdom, joy, and mutual respect. Because that’s the standard. Mutual respect.
My faith had never been an obstacle to serving people. In fact, my studies and teachings continually reminded me to approach service with humility.
2. I wasn’t applying for a job to preach. I was applying for a job to serve in a different way.
That distinction was important to me.
I wasn’t going there to evangelize, teach Christianity, or persuade anybody to adopt my beliefs. I was going there to help strengthen services for Survivors of sexual and domestic violence.
In the language of my faith, I wanted to be a blessing.
And part of being a blessing is knowing when your personal beliefs belong to you and when your responsibility is to meet another human being’s needs.
I didn’t want to become another burden or obstacle between a Survivor and the help she needed.
3. The world has changed, and leadership must be able to meet people where they are.
We live among billions of human beings with different beliefs, histories, customs, and experiences. Leaders of countries, organizations, institutions, and media companies must be capable of understanding that.
We cannot keep dragging society backward into the days of witch trials, scarlet letters, and scold’s bridles, those cruel iron devices historically associated with punishing and silencing women.
We have learned too much about human rights, freedom of conscience, discrimination, and abuse of power to pretend those lessons never happened.
Leadership requires more than conviction. It requires judgment, reason, humility, and the ability to serve people who do not share your worldview.
4. Respecting someone’s beliefs does not require adopting them.
This is where I believe some people have lost their way.
Right now, we have leaders, journalists, and heads of media who seem more interested in evangelizing than doing the jobs entrusted to them. Leadership is about serving the public, not converting people to your worldview. Journalism is about informing people, asking difficult questions, and telling the truth, not recruiting people to your beliefs.
You are free to believe what you believe. But when you hold a position of public trust, your personal convictions cannot become a requirement that everybody else must live by. Your job is not to make the public more like you. Your job is to fulfill your responsibility to the public, including the people who will never believe as you do.
I can respect your religion without practicing it. I can respect your personal convictions without making them my own. I can work alongside you, learn from you, celebrate with you, and defend your right to live peacefully.
None of that requires me to surrender my own conscience.
And I expect the same consideration in return.
There is a difference between asking people to respect your beliefs and demanding that they organize their lives around them.
One is coexistence. The other can become coercion.
5. Women and girls are entitled to that same freedom of conscience.
This is especially important today.
Women are asking questions about our rights, our safety, our boundaries, and the decisions institutions make on our behalf.
We are not obligated to adopt somebody else’s beliefs about womanhood, our bodies, or what we should be willing to accept.
Nor should women have to pretend agreement to avoid accusations of being hateful, intolerant, or unkind.
We can recognize another person’s humanity without agreeing to every demand that person makes of us.
That is not a failure of compassion. That is how mutual respect works.
6. If you cannot lead people who believe differently, perhaps leadership is no longer the right position for you.
I mean that sincerely.
There comes a time when an organization, institution, or country needs leadership capable of taking it into the future.
If a leader cannot reason through disagreements, respect people’s boundaries, consider evidence, or protect the rights of people whose beliefs differ from their own, we have a serious problem.
And sometimes the appropriate response is to thank that person for their service and find someone better equipped for the responsibility ahead.
Experience and conviction are valuable. Neither automatically makes someone capable of leading a changing society.
7. We have to get back to understanding what respect actually means.
I think about that interview from time to time because those women had every reason to want reassurance that I could do the job fairly.
They weren’t asking me to abandon my faith. They wanted to know whether I could serve people without making my faith a condition of their receiving help.
I understood the difference.
And I wish more people in positions of authority understood it today.
Believe what you believe. I sincerely hope your beliefs bring you wisdom, comfort, strength, and joy. Mine certainly have.
But understand that other human beings have their own lives to live.
Your convictions do not give you ownership of their conscience, their bodies, their boundaries, or their decisions.
We do not need a world where everybody believes the same thing. We need leaders mature enough to serve a world where everybody doesn’t.
And when people come to us for safety, justice, dignity, or help, they should not have to become more like us before we are willing to serve them.
That was true when I sat in that interview years ago.
It is every bit as true today.
I say this in love: build more churches for yourselves and do whatever you do there. Do your thing.
The Unseen Cage: How Systems Use Coercive Control – WE Survive Abuse
