Click to read original article from World Net Daily
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
Shirley Chaplin (Christian Legal Centre photo)
A government tribunal in the United Kingdom has ruled that the National Health Service has a right to ban its nurse employees from wearing Christian crosses as a symbol of their faith.
The ruling was reported yesterday by the Christian Legal Centre, which announced Exeter nurse Shirley Chaplin has promised to continue the fight over her necklace.
"The decision shows a worrying lack of common sense," center director Andrea Williams said. "No evidence supported the Trust's 'health and safety' position, yet the tribunal considered removing Mrs. Chaplin's cross as a proportionate response to a 'health and safety' risk that was never established."
WND has reported on similar cases, most notably of Nadia Eweida, 58, from southwest London, who took on British Airways over its banishment of her small cross necklace.
The center's report said a government employment tribunal ruled Chaplin, who is banned from working on hospital wards with her necklace, did not suffer discrimination because all staff members were treated equally – none was allowed to wear a cross. Staffers were, however, allowed to wear the Muslim hijab, the report said.
Chaplin's conflict arose with the Royal Devon and Exeter National Health Service Trust, which said its uniform could be modified only by "mandatory" religious symbols.
The center report also said Chaplin had found a second worker concerned about wearing a Christian cross, since in the Eweida case the government said the dispute would have to involve more than one person.
But the tribunal then changed its definition and concluded that a "group" – or more than two people – must be involved in the problem.
"This appears to be another case in which the courts are reluctant to protect the rights of Christians. Instead of using common sense and proportionate measures to secure peaceful outcomes, as evidenced in their attitudes towards the hijab, there was a continual hardening of the trust and tribunal's position regarding the central importance of the symbol of the cross, recognized as the most important symbol of the Christian's faith since Christ's death on a cross 2000 years ago," the Christian Legal Centre report said.
"I am disappointed, but not at all surprised," Chaplin said. "It was obvious from the very start that the trust would use every tactic possible to get itself off the hook."
"I fight to win the right for Christians to live out their faith in Britain today – anything less would be a negation of my Christian duty," she said.
According to a recent report in the London Telegraph, Archbishop of Centerbury Rowan Williams said the case was "one more mark of the curious contemporary belief that Christians are both too unimportant for their convictions to be worth bothering with and too dangerous for them to be allowed to manifest those convictions."
"Is the God we see in the cross, the God who lives through and beyond terrible dereliction and death and still promises mercy, renewal, life – is that God too much of a menace to be mentioned or shown in the public life and the human interactions of society?" he said.
WND reported the Eweida case began in 2006 when she was sent home from work after refusing to remove the cross because airline officials claimed it violated their dress code.
British Airways, her case revealed, permitted adherents of other religious faiths to wear a Sikh bracelet, the Jewish skull cap and the Muslim hijab but not the Christian cross.
WND also reported when a similar situation arose in the United States.
A FedEx employee had been ordered onto an "administrative leave" for wearing a Christian cross to work. She later was told she would be allowed to report for work.
Lisa Graves told WND at the time her case developed in the Springfield, Mo., region where the company has several stores. She said she was approached by her supervisor and given the option of hiding the cross or being placed on leave for a dress code violation.
No comments:
Post a Comment