Fired for His Faith: ACLJ Defends Employee Fired for Wearing Cross Necklace and Having Bible at His Desk

Imagine being called into your boss’s office and told that your cross necklace is “unprofessional,” that wearing a visible symbol of your Christian faith means you’re “not inclusive,” that being a Christian at work makes you “unapproachable,” and that if you really want to be a good Christian, you should just “wear it in your heart” and keep it hidden. Then imagine that when you finally stand up for your federally protected rights, your employer fires you three days later.

That is exactly what happened to John Artz – and the ACLJ is fighting back.

John was hired as the Human Resources Manager at Timken Belts’ Springfield, Missouri, plant in March 2024. By the summer of 2025, Timken supervisors began targeting his Christian faith. He was summoned to meetings and told to hide his cross necklace under his shirt, conceal his Bible, and stop associating openly with other Christians at work – because it was creating a “clique.” One supervisor even recommended a nurse’s cross necklace as “easy, low-hanging fruit” to eliminate next, actively enlisting John in the suppression of Christian expression throughout the workplace.

Yet John refused to hide his faith. He contacted the ACLJ, and on September 2, 2025, we sent Timken a formal demand letter putting them on legal notice that their supervisors’ conduct violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Timken never responded to that letter. Instead, six days later, they bypassed John’s legal counsel entirely – despite his explicit request that all communication go through us – and summoned him directly to confront him about the legal claims. Three days after that meeting, they fired him.

The ACLJ filed a case with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC),  an administrative court proceeding, to vindicate his rights. You can read the full background of the case here. This week, we filed our formal reply to the EEOC – and the evidence against Timken is undeniable.

We have the recordings. Under Missouri’s one-party consent law, John lawfully recorded the meetings in which supervisors targeted his faith. Those recordings have been submitted directly to the EEOC. They capture, in the supervisors’ own words, every anti-Christian statement listed above. This is not a he-said/she-said dispute. It is direct, contemporaneous evidence – on tape – from the very people involved in the decision to fire him.

Timken wants the EEOC to believe this was about job performance. But timing tells a different story. They cited alleged performance issues that supposedly existed for months without resulting in termination. The same “deficiencies” were never deemed fireable until only nine days after we sent our demand letter.

Courts have consistently recognized that close temporal proximity between protected activity and termination is powerful evidence of retaliation. This close timing is not a coincidence. It is retaliation.

What happened to John is not an isolated incident. It is a pattern – a quiet, corporate pressure to treat Christian faith as something shameful, something to be hidden, something incompatible with professional life. When he refused to hide it, he lost his job.

The ACLJ is demanding that the EEOC issue a finding of reasonable cause. The recordings are indisputable. The timeline is clear. We will not stop fighting until John receives justice.

Religious liberty doesn’t end when you clock in at work. The Bible on John’s desk could just as easily be your Bible or your cross. The hostility John faced could just as easily come from your employer. The ACLJ is fighting for John – and for every American’s right to live out their faith without fear of losing their job.