No, it is an imposing gesture, and the only response they think is acceptable is, “Thank you.”
Question, if someone says, “I’ll pray for you.” and I roll my eyes at them or reply with sarcasm, do you think that I am in the wrong?
If anything, such a policy is probably not intended to protect atheists from Christian prayer, it is to protect Christians from atheist snark.
I agree that is pushing it. “Bless you” or “I’ll pray for you” as a friendly linguistic interjection is one thing, but something that sounds a bit critical of a person’s position on religion is, to my ears, offensively rude in any context (in any direction.)
Granted, I’m Canadian; here we don’t have the same tradition of, or commonness of, evangelical Christianity, and it’s just not a part of our culture to aggressively bring this into the workplace. I’ve heard more of this stuff on individual business trips to the USA than I have in my life in Canada, so I don’t have to put up with it much.
I intentionally switched to gesundheit many years ago. But i interpret “godblessyou” after a sneeze as a meaningless social convention. Lots of atheists say it reflexively. I think it would be a little weird to get upset by that.
I’d be pretty offended if a coworker expressed an intention of praying to bring me closer to Jesus. But if a friend who believes in prayer offered to pray for my mom’s health or something, I’d just say “thanks”, and consider it equivalent to “I’ll keep you in my thoughts” or “I’m rooting for you”.
Still, i think the group of people you can politely offer to pray for is pretty much the same as the group of people you can politely offer a hug to. It assumes a level of intimacy and an understanding of what the friend might be comfortable with.
I usually go with “Salud”, or if I’m feeling particularly rude, “Sancho”.
I think you are way overstating it when you assert that the phrase “I’ll pray for you” has devolved into a mere conventional expression with no religious implications whatsoever, akin to “Goodbye” or even “Bless you” in response to a sneeze.
“Goodbye”, and even a post-sneeze “Bless you”, are such conventional de-spiritualized expressions that even most atheists have no problem using them, as other posters have already noted. But I don’t know of any atheist or agnostic who says “I’ll pray for you” when they want to offer a polite phrase of condolence for somebody’s suffering.
So I have to call bullshit on the “it’s just a polite phrase with no religious or any other meaning beyond a formulaic expression of sympathy” excuse. At least in any conversational context where I’ve ever encountered it or heard of it, the expression “I’ll pray for you” most definitely does carry some specific implications of religious meaning.
Consequently, no, it’s not optimally polite or appropriate to use that phrase in a situation where you don’t already know that the person you’re saying it to shares your general religious beliefs about prayer being a good and supportive action. Obliviously expecting one’s own religious utterances like “I’ll pray for you” to be accepted as religiously neutral manifestations of general goodwill, and to deserve polite expressions of gratitude for the goodwill without any pushback against the religious implications, is a classic example of majoritized-group privilege.
“Explicit” means directly stated, not implied. “That sucks, how can I help?” doesn’t explicitly say anything about the person’s religious beliefs. It’s something that could be said by either an atheist or a theist.
As someone who doesn’t collect stamps, how would I indicate that I don’t collect stamps without saying something that could be said by someone who does collect stamps?
Personally, I think that just removing the religiosity from your method of comforting others is enough, you don’t have to make it a point that you removed the religiosity.
Please read my other posts on this subject in this thread.
I work in Accounts Receivable. Last week, one of our customers sent in, not a check, but a note indicating that my company is staffed by incompetents, cheats, losers, and liars. The note had many exclamation marks, and ‘frowny’ faces in green magic marker (and all over the envelope as well). The envelope was addressed to “The Liar-in-Chief CEO.”
Also included was a separate note, in red magic marker, that informed us that “Someone is praying for you!” There was a heart instead of a frowny face. Nice touch, I guess.
I could not think of a single greater example of passive-aggressiveness. You want to send a nastygram, fine, knock yourself out. But shove your “prayers” up your ass.
But my beliefs or lack there of are not anyone’s business.
That’s fantastic for you. What does it have to do with my post?
I have, and that’s what I am responding to. That there isn’t really a way of promoting atheism in the way you want to. Any more than there is a way of promoting not collecting stamps while comforting someone with their pain or grief.
That others choose to promote stamp collecting while supposedly giving comfort doesn’t mean that there is a viable antonym to that behavior.
I’m unable to formulate a response to “I’ll pray for you” that is explicitly atheistic without being really harsh.
If someone asked me my plans for Sunday morning, I might say I would be sleeping in. If their response was, “YOU WILL BURN IN THE FIRES OF HELL FOR NOT WORSHIPPING OUR LORD AND SAVIOR” that would be explicitly theistic, but kinda weird.
Literally the point of every post I’ve made in this thread.
I think it is a hijack (and I, the Hijack Queen, should know), but I for one have no objection to briefly discussing it, if the OP and/or mods permit.
Yeah, see my post #85 for agreement about the fact that institutional performative moral earnestness often does come across as rather self-righteous and exasperating, and sometimes frivolous and wasteful.
However, as TroutMan and Odesio have noted, the underlying goals of such initiatives are indeed really important. I bet a lot of Germans get exasperated about being legally required to study in school why the Holocaust was bad, too. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have to.
It’s easy for members of majoritized groups (and even some members of minoritized ones who’ve been fortunate in a high degree of social integration) to just take it for granted that we “already know all this stuff” and “don’t need to be told why bigotry is bad” and so forth. But we are never going to really fix any societal problem unless we really understand it. And the complex ramifications of systemic prejudice and oppression need more than a complacent attitude of “I already know that bigotry is bad” to be able to truly understand them.
So when I get yet another survey or announcement about some workplace DEI thing, I tend to go through the following steps:
To me, hearing “I’ll pray for you” is a reminder that the person is of a much larger group that is actively restricting the rights of women and other classes of people. And they’re so clueless that it would never occur to them that I’m not a fellow churchgoing believer.
This is too tough to manage. I don’t believe in the power of prayer to help me but if someone offers to pray for me because they don’t know how else to help, I accept their offer with grace and gratitude. Some people will say, “I’ll pray for you” with a sneer and contempt. I would like a workplace where the first is acceptable and the second isn’t. I would also like a workplace where a perfectly acceptable and respectful response to the first person is, “No thank you.” I don’t know how you write an HR rule to get there.
Ahh, I wandered a bit. In a real life situation where someone says they’ll pray for me, I might chuckle/eye roll. Luckily I don’t have HR overseeing my job.
Please believe me when I say that you are not.
Once a thread is started, the creator has no control. Let it run free and wild if you love it.
This is it in a nutshell. While I might not agree with every little thing, overall the goal of DEI initiatives are worthwhile. And I’m not even particularly upset that our boss told us to refrain from using certain phrases. Many people in this thread have given me perfectly valid reasons why they don’t want to hear a coworker say they’ll pray for them. We have people who aren’t offended by it, others who are, and it’s just one of the many reminders that when you throw a bunch of people together in a work environment there are all sorts of little friction points.