Transcript 

Welcome to the Hundredfold Business Podcast, where Christian men learn the principles, strategies, and tactics to grow their businesses top line, bottom line, and finish line. I want you to discover the secret to applying Biblical truth to business growth for the greatest kingdom impact. So in the end, you hear from your Heavenly Father, well done.

Welcome to the Hundredfold Business Podcast, where Christian men learn how to grow their businesses top line, bottom line, and finish line. And I'm your host, Josh Fonger, founder of Forceful Ventures. And today we have a very special guest.

We have Noah Nash. Noah serves as legal counsel for the corporate engagement team with Alliance Defending Freedom. He advises businesses and executives on operating their businesses in accordance with their faith and the law, and inspires business leaders to build corporate cultures that respect religious freedom, foster free speech, and promote life.

And I need to read a disclaimer before we get into all this legal work today, which is this is not legal advice. This does not create a lawyer-client relationship. And Noah will be addressing federal law today.

All right, Noah, excited to have you on the show. Welcome. Hey, thanks, Josh.

Glad to be on. All right, so very excited again to have Noah on. Today we're gonna be diving into the topic of sharing your Christian faith at the workplace so that we can be bold as Christ ambassadors in knowing our legal rights when we do it.

So to start, Noah, this is what I ask everybody when we get started is I'd really love to hear your personal story, how God has brought you and directed you to where you are today. Yeah, no, for sure. I'm happy to share.

So I went to law school with this idea, this grand idea that someday I wanted to work in, do religious liberty work. And that was born out of my desire just to help our country remain the awesome biblical foundation country that it was started as. And I saw that as I was growing up sort of under attack.

And so when I went to law school, that was the vision. But then I, you know, life happened. I needed to get a job coming out of law school and started doing corporate transactional work.

And I didn't, you know, I'd never put my dream, I never forgot about it. But it was always this dream in the back of my head that someday I would love to do this kind of work. And in February, in fact, I just started at Alliance Defending Freedom after doing almost nine years of work in transactional and governance work for a firm in Delaware.

So, you know, God has a funny way of putting dreams in our heart when we're younger. And I'm excited to be to be fulfilling that dream today and helping Christian business leaders walk out their faith in the workplace. That's perfect.

Well, I mean, that totally aligns like you're talking ahead of time that this podcast is for Christian entrepreneurs, specifically men. But it's my goal with this episode really is to teach them what are the laws and what are their rights. And I think the best way to do that is to make it really practical and walk through just a typical scenario that I would deal with, because as a business coach and consultant, I work with a lot of small companies.

And I and, you know, we talk ahead of time is maybe the best thing to do is just take a normal example, like a marketing company, let's say a full service marketing company that does, they do SEO and websites and billboards and content creation, Facebook ads, they do all this stuff. Let's say they have 20 employees now. And let's just imagine that for a second.

So that's the company. And they've got a Christian business owner, maybe someone listening to this show right now. And they want to really, you know, ingrain their faith into their work.

What can they do in terms of their business strategy, their vision, values, missions, what's legally allowed with regards to sharing their faith? Yeah, so I would start with, you know, the first thing that I advise companies to do is if they want to incorporate faith into the workplace, the first thing they should do is adopt a statement of faith. And whether that's in your organizational documents, a charter, bylaws, or whether you put that in your employment handbook, you want to get that inside your legal documents somewhere to set the foundation for what your company is about. Really, this is, this is about setting a bedrock for you to build on for the rest of your company.

And the reason you do that is not just for you personally, but also, when it comes to legal issues, that document will serve as evidence that not only are you a person of faith, right? Because you can say that and that's fine. And you have religious rights under the laws of our country. But there's this question about, well, can a business really have a faith? And so, this question has worked its way all the way up to the Supreme Court, and it worked its way up there through a case called Hobby Lobby.

And its companion case was Conestoga Wood. ADF represented Conestoga Wood. So, we took this case all the way up to the Supreme Court.

And this was in response to the Affordable Care Act passed under President Obama. And in that case, the federal government said to Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood and others, said, you have to pay for abortifacients for your employees. And these Christian employers said, no, that's not what we're going to do.

We're not willing to do that. The federal government threatened them with $1.3 million in fines daily if they did not comply. It worked its all the way up to the Supreme Court.

And the Supreme Court held that the federal government could not force those companies to violate their conscience, violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. And one of the things, the key pieces of evidence that the court looked at when they were trying to answer this question about whether a company could actually have religious beliefs or a faith was a statement of faith that those companies had adopted and worked into their organizational documents. So, when you start with that, you're setting a foundation for your company in terms of how you're going to make decisions as a business, but you're also protecting yourself in case the government ever comes after you and says, hey, you have to do something.

Well, under certain federal laws, Religious Freedom Restoration Act, you may not have to do that something that they're trying to ask you to do. And the evidence that you'll have will be your statement of faith that you've already adopted. So, this sounds critically important.

What about those business owners who, like in our marketing company, let's say they don't have anything. They've got 20 employees and they're hearing this now. Is it too late? Can they reinstate that now? No, it's not too late.

Whether it's a Certificate of Incorporation, that's the document you filed to create your entity with whatever state you're in. You can amend that. So, you can amend that by different states have different rules, but typically, the board would adopt it, stockholders would approve it, and then you would file it and update your Certificate of Incorporation on file with the state.

Now, you don't have to put it in your charter. You could put it in your bylaws, the bylaws that govern your organization. You could put it there.

You could also put it in your employment handbook. Somewhere where your company looks to for its governance, you need to get that foundational statement of faith in there so that you can then use that as evidence in case you ever run into issues. Okay.

So, we got the first piece of the puzzle done. Let's say everyone does that. That's the homework from today's episode.

All right. So, then you are going about hiring and training your team. What can be done and what can't be done with regards to, let's say, the marketing company? Can you integrate your faith into that process? Yes.

So, hiring and firing is pretty black and white. If you have 15 or more employees under the Civil Rights Act, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, you cannot discriminate in your hiring or firing practices or for any of your employment practices, for that matter, based on five protected characteristics. And those are race, color, religion, national origin, and sex.

And so, you can't, if you're a business owner of 15 or more employees, you cannot say, well, I'll hire you because you check one of these five boxes or I won't hire you because you check one of these five boxes. So, we need to stay away from that. Business owners need to stay away from that.

There are some exceptions, right? So, if you're a religious corporation, i.e. something like a church, okay, that law doesn't apply to you. You can hire, it doesn't matter, you know, you want to hire people who are, who are, share your faith. And then, so, Title VII doesn't apply.

There's also bona fide occupational qualifications. And that's like a big, heavy legal term. But basically, what it means is, if it's truly necessary for the job, for someone to have a certain sex, national origin, or religion, then you can, then that's sort of another carve out from this, from this requirement.

Those are the two exceptions. For everyone else, you need to stay away from hiring and firing based on religion, or color, or national origin, or sex, all of that stuff, because that's illegal. Okay.

So, again, we've got 20 employees here. We're saying, hey, we're a marketing company. We work with anybody, let's say it's local, whether they got a restaurant, law firm, whatever.

And as the owner, they're saying, hey, I'm Christian, and it's in our bylaws, it's in our code of conduct, it's in our employee manual. But someone comes in there, they're like, sounds great, I'm a Muslim, but I love to work here. You're like, great, as long as you're willing to work under these conditions, then, and they've got the skill sets, there's no, nothing else you can do, right? Well, that's right.

So, I mean, you know, people's religion is not, is not going to impact whether or not they can do the job. Now, there are some positions where you say, hey, look, our marketing company, we market for a lot of, let's just say pro-life stuff, okay? That employee, they don't have to buy into that, but they have to be willing to say, okay, yeah, I can do that, right? So, if your company has sort of this niche where a lot of like religious issues might have some overlay into what they're doing every day, then that's part of the job description, right? Like, if you're going to be employed in this position, here are the things that you need to be willing to do. And so, you're not screening people based on their religion, you're screening based on whether or not they're going to do a good job.

So, that's a different, that's a different question, and you can do that, right? If someone's like, well, I don't want to work here because I don't want to do X, Y, Z, well, then you're not going to do a good job and you don't have to hire them. Okay, right. And so, let's just say, let's reverse it, let's just say clientele.

So, you're a, again, the marketing company, and one of the restaurants in town, they want to do some promotional ads that are maybe too risque, or they are crossing the line in terms of your conscience. What can you say? We're not going to produce that for you, or what are you allowed to do? Yeah, this is an important question. And, you know, there are some instances where if someone's asking you to do something that is contrary to your sincerely held religious beliefs, this is a fight that Alliance Defending Freedom has been engaged in for a long time.

And I say that because this happened to a man named Jack Phillips, you may have heard of him, Colorado cake baker, and he did custom cakes. And so, some people walked into his shop, said, hey, we want a cake. And it's for a wedding.

And it's going to be a gay wedding. And Jack Phillips said, I'm sorry, that that is contrary to my faith. I serve everyone here.

But because the message that you're asking me to, to create is something that violates my sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage, I can't do it. And so, we argue that case all the way up to the Supreme Court. Colorado was very hostile towards Jack Phillips, they came after him and said, no, in our state, you have to do this.

The Supreme Court, when we got there said, Colorado, you have been openly hostile towards Jack Phillips religious beliefs, and said, you better do this again and kicked it back down. And while that case was going back up through the Colorado court system, we also took another case, Lori Smith. And Lori Smith, she ran her own business for custom website creation.

And a very similar circumstance unfolded. Lori Smith was asked to create a website for a wedding. She did not want to create because again, it was for a gay couple.

She politely refused. When that case got all the way to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court held that Colorado did not have the right to force people to create custom expression against their sincerely held religious beliefs. And so, that case was won six to three at the Supreme Court.

And then Jack Phillips case was also won. And so, we now have incredible Supreme Court precedent that says states cannot come in and force you to do things that go against your sincerely held religious beliefs. And so, that's a huge protection for business owners when someone comes in and asks them to do something that really is going to violate their beliefs and their conscience.

So, with those wins, does that, is that anything, you know, in quotes, promoting sin? So, if you're a, you know, sinful lifestyle, like, you know, the gay marriage thing, and you're like, no, that's against my beliefs. What about other sins? Has it been tested by, you know, let's just say you're really against heavy drinking, let's just say, you know, and they're like, well, you got to promote this thing that involves a bunch of drinking. They're like, has that, have those kind of things been tested as well? I don't, I'm not aware of a heavy drinking type case, but what I will say is the rulings are very broad.

And so, while not every factual scenario has been tested, we do have a very good baseline that you can turn to for your protection and for good precedent in those types of circumstances. Okay, so what about prayer? So, prayer in the workplace, again, as a Christian owner with maybe, let's just say, half the employees are Christians, half are not. How can that be, what are your rights there? You can absolutely pray in work.

And so, I think what's important for your listeners to realize is there's no federal law that says you can't pray at work, or you can't evangelize, or you can't have a Bible study, or have a chaplain. All of these things are permitted under federal law. Now, there are some things we need to be cognizant of, but this is like, once you realize you have this freedom, you really can open the door to incredible opportunities for your business.

And the thing that you need to be cognizant of is if you are implementing these types of faith practices in your workplace, and someone comes in and is of a different faith, and they do not want to participate because it violates their sincerely held religious beliefs, the law requires that you give them an opt-out, right? So, if they don't want to be part of your prayer group, they don't want to be part of your Bible study or fill in the blank of what type of ministry you're doing in the worksite, you need to be able to say, okay, I understand and be respectful of that and let them opt out. And that's what Title VII protects. It doesn't just protect the employer's religious beliefs, it also protects every employee's religious beliefs.

You can't be forcing people to do things that would violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. Now there are, you know, we can get into some nuances with that, but that's the general rule. And I, you know, I want people to, what I want people to know is that when you begin to incorporate these things into your workplaces, you have any potential to impact lives far beyond what you can imagine.

One public company executive recently told me that hundreds of people are being saved in their workforce every single month because of initiatives like this, like devotionals, prayer at work, corporate chaplains in the workforce. Another business executive I recently talked to, they started a hope team. They reach out to customers who are on their online fundraising platform and their hope team calls these people and they've literally saved a woman's life through their outreach and offering hope and encouragement because people are in dark places and when they reach out, they really impact them.

Another business owner recently shared with me a video of one of their workers getting baptized on the worksite after they gave their lives to Christ. And so while we need to be smart about the law, there is a world of adventure, lives changed, and eternity's impact when we bring the hope of Jesus Christ into the workplace. Yeah, I love that because these people are not, they're not going to be stepping foot into a church.

And so you have the opportunity to do that ministry work right there at the workplace. And you know, and I wanted to ask you some of those nuanced questions. And as I told you before, I have a list of like 50 questions here.

We'll see how many we get through. So next thing, this is maybe one of the nuanced ones, is so let's say you're a Christian business owner and you read this great book about sales marketing. And it's a book that is about business technique, but it's written by a Christian.

They use some Bible verses and they integrate their faith into this training. Can you mandate that all your employees read this and go through this training material, or is that going to cross a line? So it depends. I mean, if it's something that you, yeah, when we get into the hypotheticals, I have to be careful because it's not necessarily going to be the same answer in every circumstance.

But to the extent you have training materials that are job, you know, related and really are going to help your workplace, I would generally feel okay with that. You know, obviously, there's, there could be nuances where you feel like, you know, this one's, this is too much or this is, but generally speaking, when it comes to training, yes, you can train, you can train people on character, you can train people on virtue, you can train people on biblical principles that you want incorporated into your business. All of that is fair game.

But when it comes to, you know, more of the overt faith type stuff, that's where you need to be careful and just say, okay, if someone wants to opt out of this because of their own religious beliefs, you have to be accommodating of that. So I know we can't go into detail, but how much of a variety is there between the state's laws and the federal laws? Is there a big difference between a blue state and a red state or where should someone, I mean, what should they do if they are living in a blue state and they're thinking, gosh, I really should, you know, this federal stuff that Noah's telling me is great, but I probably need more, where should they go for that information? Yeah, in those circumstances, and especially if you're in more of a liberal state, I just encourage you to reach out to us. You can go on our website, requestlegalhelp is a button you can press.

And what we have at Alliance Defending Freedom is a network of over 4,000 allied attorneys. And so even though we're sort of setting, you know, the big picture and helping people with the big picture issues from a federal law perspective, we have attorneys all across the country who are values aligned, who have been screened by our team and who we can connect business owners with to help them with state specific issues. So let's go back to this marketing company.

Let's say that the owner hears this and like, you know what, I'm going to start, I'm just going to update our employee handbook. I'm going to start, you know, being more bold and praying during company meetings. And maybe one of their employees who's been there a while is starting to get a little annoyed or certain, you could just kind of tell there's a little bit of tension there.

What is the right approach that they should take with an employee that doesn't share the faith, doesn't like how you started saying, hey, we're going to bless our customers with this. And we're going to do this for God's glory. And they're starting to get a little uncomfortable.

They haven't done anything. They haven't filed any lawsuits. What's the standard practice that an owner should do to be, I guess, do things the way? Well, you know, job performance is one thing, right? So if someone's not doing a good job, business owners know how to deal with that.

If it has more to do with, well, they're not showing up for Bible study. They're not showing up for prayer. You can't fire someone for that.

Okay. And you can't, you can't base any of your employment, you know, bonuses, promotions, demotions, you can't base those types of decisions based on someone's willingness to engage in the religious activities at your workplace. Okay.

So in terms of as far as that goes, as long as it's not affecting their performance at work, then it's okay if they're just opting out of all the things that are extracurriculars. All right. Now, what about if one of your employees who's doing great work, happy, showing up every day, no problems, but they say, you know what, instead of calling me John, you got to call me Susan now, and I am going to be wearing a dress and wearing a wig every day.

But I'm gonna keep doing my work. What are your, what are your rights there? Yeah, no, this is, this is an important issue, a very hot topic. And let me just give a little bit of history on this.

So the Civil Rights Act, and Title VII was adopted in 1964. Okay. So from 1964, until 2020, that law said you couldn't discriminate against people based on sex, and the other characteristics I mentioned earlier.

Okay. In 2020, after this law had been on the almost 50 years, a case worked its way up to the Supreme Court called Bostock. And in that decision, the Supreme Court decided that sex in Title VII also covered sexual orientation and gender identity.

Now, those are concepts that I would argue, were largely not even around in 1964, let alone pervasive. And so, you know, Bostock was wrongly decided, it should be overturned. But for now, that holding of the Supreme Court is still on the books.

And so, following that decision, the EEOC, which is charged with enforcing these rules, promulgated rules, regulations, and guidance for employers to look at when it comes to things like preferred pronouns, and bathroom policies. And what the EEOC said, was if someone wants you to use their preferred pronouns, you employer have to do that. You employer have to give them access to the bathroom that corresponds with their so-called gender identity.

But I have an update for you. In May 2025, only three months ago, a federal judge in Texas, this was, these regulations that were put out by the EEOC were challenged. And the Texas judge said that those regulations went too far, they went beyond the scope of the power that the EEOC had, and vacated them.

So they can no longer be enforced. So they've basically been scratched out of the guidance. On top of that, we have a new administration.

Those rules and regulations were promulgated under an old administration. And we have a new administration now. And Andrea Lucas is leading the EEOC.

And she has been a vocal opponent of this guidance ever since it came out. And so we have a leadership at the EEOC that I expect will be pushing back against this, and hopefully fighting so that this doesn't happen again. But for now, at least at the federal level, you do not have to use preferred pronouns, you do not have to give access to people based on gender identity.

But this is an area where the states and localities have also joined the battle. And so I would say almost half of the states at this point have enacted laws that would differ than what the federal government, what I just explained. And so depending on what state you're on, you need to find out, you need to talk to a lawyer in your state and find out what the rules are.

But again, that's sort of the current state of play. Okay. Now, what about employees? So you mentioned that owners have the freedom to share their faith, and also to promote their faith.

What about if you, let's just say you have a Muslim that works in your business, and they want to be praying during the work day or during their breaks, and they want to be public about it and not discreet, what is the legal response, and what's the accommodations you have to make? Yeah. Well, when someone's religious beliefs, and they ask for an accommodation from their employer, the employer has to provide an accommodation to those employees to exercise their faith in accordance with their beliefs, unless it would put a substantial burden on that business. And so this is a very employee-friendly law, an employee-friendly rule, and businesses do need to be cognizant about that.

And while a Christian business owner, you might argue that they don't want to do that. This isn't saying you have to open up prayer meetings for everyone of every different kind of faith that ever walks in through your doors as an employee. But what it is saying is, to the extent someone has a sincerely held religious beliefs, and that somehow comes into conflict, how they want to live that out comes into conflict with how you're running your business, you do have to accommodate that unless it puts a substantial burden on your business.

Okay. And what is a substantial burden? What would that be? Well, it's complicated, because this was a decision that came out in 2023, called Groff versus DeJoy. And it was a good decision in terms of the protections that it provides to employees.

If you're an employer, perhaps you would think otherwise. So that issue, what is a substantial burden? It remains to be seen, right? So the Supreme Court has said, it has to be something more than minimal. It can't be that you dislike it.

It can't be that it makes you uncomfortable. It actually has to be something that impacts your business as a whole. And so small little thing, I don't really like that.

I wish we didn't have to do that. That's not going to be enough. And so this cuts both ways, right? So the Christian who comes in and says, I don't want to work on a Sunday, because I want to celebrate the Lord's Day and go to church and worship.

Employers have to be somewhat accommodating of that, again, unless it's puts a substantial burden on your business. What about with, you mentioned a couple of times, new administration, currently with the Trump administration, how does that change anything? And then has there been legislation that's very new that wasn't here a couple years ago? Yeah, there have been some really positive developments since Trump came into the office. I already talked about how the EEOC is changing.

I mean, that's going to be huge for employers. But I also would, I would touch on a couple things that the Trump administration has done. The first one that is that they've defunded Planned Parenthood.

So in the one big beautiful bill that was passed by Congress and signed by Trump almost a month ago, around a month ago now, one provision in it stopped Medicaid dollars from going to large healthcare providers that provide abortion like Planned Parenthood. Okay, almost simultaneously this summer, we won a huge battle at the Supreme Court in Medina versus Planned Parenthood, where the Supreme Court decided that states can defund Planned Parenthood through their Medicaid programs. And there's a lot of nuances and people here who could talk for hours about the case, but that was the bottom line.

States can defund Planned Parenthood or other abortion providers when they don't satisfy the state standards for healthcare providers. Both of these were huge wins for protecting life, protecting women, defunding the organization that is actively trying to kill human babies, and is also the second largest provider of so-called gender transition drugs. The other area which I've been very pleased to see Trump taking on is right after he took office, he issued executive orders banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government and among government contractors.

In addition, he rescinded the executive orders that had required federal contractors to practice affirmative action. And you might say to me, well, what does that matter? Well, DEI programs have become very pervasive throughout corporate America over the last, I'll say 10, 15 years. The reason this is important is because those programs, while they sound good on their face, they oftentimes include quota systems and the very thing we started this conversation with, which is they hire people based on their race or based on their sex, or they promote people based on race or based on their sex.

And that's illegal under federal law, but companies have been doing that for over the past decade. And Trump is finally trying to put a stop to that. And it's not just him, the Justice Department has gone after companies, the Department of Education has gone after educational institutions that are doing this.

And they're really taking on this form of institutionalized discrimination, because DEI initiatives institutionalize discrimination under the mask of diversity and inclusivity. So Trump, Pam Bondi, Department of Education and others have said, enough is enough. We're not promoting or pushing discrimination anymore.

We're going back to the merit and equality systems. Wow, that's great. It's a huge shift.

And this is being enshrined in law and case law? Well, those have been mostly at the executive level. And so Trump is trying to do as much as he can as an executive on this front. And then the agencies have also been following through.

Yeah, no, this has been great. I'm sure we could talk all day about this. And I think this is a great resource for those watching.

I wanted to end this interview by hopefully encouraging business owners. And so the question is, what would you say to encourage someone who's been afraid to share their faith openly because they're afraid of legal backlash? What would you say to them? Yeah, well, I would say this, and this comes up a lot when you're talking to a Christian business owner, right? Because they want to do the right thing, but they don't want risk. Business is risk, okay? And when you open up a storefront, there's risk.

When you hire an employee, there's risk. And so you can't totally eliminate risk. So instead, what you need to do is decide what risks are worth taking.

And if I were just to take off my legal hat for a second and just say from believer to believer and say, what legal risks are worth taking? I think the legal risks worth taking is sharing your faith with people in your workforce. You have the opportunity to impact not just the person you're sharing your faith with, but their family and their children after them. I mean, the ripple effects from sharing your faith with one person and reaching the gospel with one person, we will never know the full extent, but it's huge.

And I'm sure someday in eternity, we'll find out. So be bold. You know, I think about someone like David in the Old Testament, right? He was one among many people who went into, he saw Goliath on the field and said, all the other people of Israel were standing there saying, we can't do this.

But David had a different perspective. He saw God as bigger than, better than, stronger than the enemy. And so when he turned his sights to God, the enemy looks small.

And so what I encourage people to do is you need to get a big picture of God in your life because that's going to help you increase your boldness and just get alone with him because God can do abundantly more than all we can ask or imagine if we just step in faith. Yeah, I love that. What a great finish, Noah.

And yeah, be bold, and based on this conversation, the law is on your side in America right now, especially. So this is the chance. Go forth, make disciples, and especially in the workplace, you're gonna be touching people that, again, they're not going to church, and so you get to be that vessel.

You get to be the ambassador, and what a great opportunity. Well, Noah, thanks again for sharing your wisdom today. This has been an important message, and where should people go if they want more information about Alliance Defending Freedom? Yeah, you can go to ADFLegal.org, and on that website, you can see all the cases we've been arguing.

You can ask for legal help, and there's a ton of resources, including our resource that we put on there for business leaders called Faith in the Workplace. So if people want to dive in a little more, get into more of the details, and if they're really nerdy, want to look at some case sites, you're welcome to do that on those resources. So visit our website.

Very good. All right, thanks, Noah. And everybody here, stay tuned.

Next week, we'll be going through another episode about how you can grow your hunterful business, one that glorifies God as it grows. If you need help specifically with your business, you can always reach out directly to me at 4thSoilVentures.com. Again, Noah, thanks for being on the show. And thanks, everybody, for tuning in.

And until next time, grace be with you, brothers.