NEWS STORY: Alone together _ what are the rules?

c. 1999 Religion News Service UNDATED _ It happens everyday in offices across the nation: men and women meeting _ alone. But what’s acceptable in corporate America often runs counter to what’s regarded as proper in religious circles, particularly conservative ones. Private one-on-one business meetings between men and women _ no matter how professional they […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ It happens everyday in offices across the nation: men and women meeting _ alone.

But what’s acceptable in corporate America often runs counter to what’s regarded as proper in religious circles, particularly conservative ones. Private one-on-one business meetings between men and women _ no matter how professional they may be _ is one area of divergence.


The hubbub surrounding Republican presidential hopeful Gary Bauer, a conservative evangelical Christian, attests to the issue’s importance.

Former members of Bauer’s campaign staff maintain the candidate’s meetings with a younger female staffer were inappropriate because they created the appearance of sexual impropriety.

Bauer told a Washington news conference Wednesday (Sept. 29) that he had done nothing wrong and he saw nothing improper in the meetings. In a television interview, his wife agreed.

However, religious leaders _ evangelical and otherwise, conservative and liberal _ said they tend to go the extra mile to prevent questions of impropriety with members of the opposite sex. That includes avoiding one-on-one private meetings or taking steps to minimize that chance of inadvertently sending out a wrong signal.”It’s not a written rule, but everybody out there has heard of the `Billy Graham rule,’ which is never alone without the door open,”said Michael Cromartie, director of the Evangelical Studies Project at Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Graham said he tried to be so careful about his dealings with women that he never rode alone in a car or had a meal alone with his secretary. He once told a TV interviewer that when Hillary Rodham Clinton invited him for lunch, he chose to dine in a hotel restaurant where they could be seen.

Religious leaders said theological and moral concerns _ as well as concern over sexual-harassment lawsuits _ influence their dealings with members of the opposite gender.”Never once would I or can I remember closing the door to have a conversation with my office manager who is a young woman in her 20s,”said the Rev. Richard Cizik, Washington director of the National Association of Evangelicals.”It’s the rule, not just for clerics but for professionals, and I would hope men and women in all professions. … We’re instructed in Scripture you don’t create the appearance of evil. You avoid the appearance of evil at all cost.” Cizik said he once accompanied former NAE President Don Argue to a White House state dinner for the premier of China when Argue’s wife was not available. Argue could have invited a woman with interests in China, but”so there would not be any misunderstanding, he went with another man,”Cizik said.

The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said she heard the Billy Graham rule from the evangelist himself when the two met for a private meeting in her office some years back.


Campbell said Graham talked of once having been advised that one way to avoid trouble was to never be alone with a woman in a closed-door meeting.

Graham looked up and said,”Well, unless it’s the general secretary,”Campbell said.”I just laughed. It was a very funny moment.” But Campbell said meeting alone with a person of the opposite sex does present serious problems for some clergy, especially male ones.”When people go to share with a minister …. they really want to believe that it’s going to stay in that room,”she said.”That sometimes comes in conflict with not wanting to have an appearance that something improper might be going on.” Campbell said she makes a point of keeping her office door open.”I have very few closed-door conversations, enough so that when I do it makes everybody curious,”she said.”I think there are some people who have positions like mine who keep the door closed all the time.” In the Greek Orthodox Church, the Sacrament of Confession is conducted in a private setting with just a priest and the confessor present. Unlike with Roman Catholics, no partition separates the two.

That setting, said the Rev. Alkiviadis Calivas, a professor at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Mass., calls for”constant alertness.””One needs to be very careful, like always making sure someone else is always in the building and has been made aware in advance that the door is closed because the sacrament is taking place,”he said.”One walks a very fine line.” Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Washington representative of Orthodox Judaism’s Lubavitch movement, said a woman is never allowed into his office alone”unless there is someone on the premises _ my assistant or my wife, for example _ who can enter the room as they wish at any moment.” Shemtov, as do many Orthodox Jewish men, makes sure not to touch a female who is not his wife or in his immediate family. That includes a handshake.

The prohibition is based in traditional Jewish law.”It comes from the very simple fact that one plus one will sooner or later equal two. So you don’t tempt temptation,”he said.

Dilshad Fakroddin, Washington spokeswoman for the Islamic Supreme Council, noted that traditional Islam also dictates against unmarried men and women meeting alone in private.

When her work requires her to meet with a man, she makes sure to do so in as public a place as possible. If the setting is an office, Fakroddin said she insists the meeting take place in a conference room that others may enter.”You do all you can to make sure there can be no suspicion that anything outside of a business meeting is taking place,”she said.


Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive vice president of Reform Judaism’s Central Conference of American Rabbis, said the increased emphasis in recent years on sexual harassment has prompted his organization to draw up guidelines designed to head off any hint of that occurring.”There’s the open door, of course. But there’s also having a secretary of the opposite sex within calling distance and installing doors with glass panels,”he said from New York.

Cromartie said for powerful leaders _ religious and otherwise _ there exists the”aphrodisiac of … celebrity”that needs the antidote of an open door.”It’s not just an evangelical thing,”he said.”In this age of flying lawsuits and all … everybody ought to be careful.” In his defense, Bauer said his not being ordained afforded him greater latitude in his dealings with women than that of ministers, priests or other clergy. But others disagreed.”At the university, that wouldn’t make a difference,”said the Rev. James Wiseman, an associate professor at The Catholic University of America in Washington.”Nowadays, everybody ought to be playing it safe.” One religious leader who disagreed with all the concern over appearances was Dr. Uma Mysorekar, secretary of the New York-based Council of Hindu Temples of North America.

Traditional Hindus adhere to strict rules separating the sexes. But Mysorekar, a medical doctor, said the business demands of contemporary American life sometimes force the faithful into situations they would prefer to avoid.”As long as one has self-control and goes for the purpose for which the meeting is set, I see no problem,”she said.”I think that as long as the conscience is clear I don’t worry about it.”In today’s world everything is looked upon with a great deal of suspicion,”Mysorekar added.”That’s especially so in a political year.”DEA END BANKS/RIFKIN

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