Great idea, right? What could go wrong?

Should Christians be excited about “Protecting Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace”?

When I was in college, I lived next door to two really nice girls. They were involved in Campus Crusades for Christ. They dated boys platonically, without any inappropriate touching. They didn’t drink. They were full of joy and treated everyone with kindness.

But then there was this one day when we were talking in the hallway and one of them invited me into their room to have a Coke or something. At this point in my life, I considered myself a believer, but I wasn’t actively going to church—and, honestly, had never really gone regularly. I have a terrible memory, but I also think I must have blocked it out, because somehow, without me knowing how we got there, we started talking about faith. She kept asking me questions that I wasn’t sure how to answer, and no matter what I said, it sounded like I wasn’t a believer. Because of the way the questions were phrased, I couldn’t seem to figure out how to communicate that I was—probably because I didn’t have much of a church or faith background, and just didn’t know how to express it. Before I knew it, she was holding my hand and crying and praying, giving thanks for me deciding to give my heart to God. Thanking him for saving me.

I couldn’t figure out how to escape. My mind was screaming, “GET ME OUT OF HERE.” I was mortified, and frustrated, and probably more embarrassed than anything else. I was SOOOO uncomfortable.

She was giddy as she gave me a giant hug, telling me something along the lines of “welcome to God’s family” as I moved towards the door and dashed into my room, locking the door behind me.

Like I said, I’ve partially blocked this memory. I remember I was probably rude in my attempts to avoid her, to say no to her invitations to church. If I would hear her and her roommate in the hall, I’d wait until she went into her room so that I wouldn’t have to run into her. To my relief, she graduated shortly after that, and I moved on.

About 20 or 25 years later, I ran into her again at a writers conference. Until that point, I hadn’t reflected much on that day. Out of sight, out of mind. But as soon as I saw her, I remembered that icky feeling, and it took everything in me to greet her with a smile.

As I said before, she’s a lovely person. I genuinely like her. She was so excited to discover I now wrote books about prayer and faith. The cynic in me is pretty sure she went home that night praising God for using her to change my life. That she believed there would be jewels in her crown in heaven as a result of her good works. That she had told friends for years about the night she got this wild, crazy girl to give her life to Christ.

It’s true, I had changed. It’s true, I wasn’t really a person of faith back when she knew me. I believed, but God was not really part of my life, of my thoughts, of my decision-making. And it’s true that her faith made an impression on me—but not in the way she thought.

All of this came rushing back when I read the new rules for religion in Federal workplaces. This is from a memorandum issued by the US Office of Personnel Management on July 28, 2025, titled “Protecting Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace”: