Doctors are demanding that NHS staff be …
Doctors are demanding that NHS staff be given a right to discuss spiritual issues with patients as well as being allowed to offer to pray for them. In February of this year, Caroline Petrie, a nurse employed by North Somerset NHS Trust, was suspended after offering to pray for a patient, although she was later allowed to return to work. Concerns have also been raised (by the usual crowd) about the funding of hospital chaplains. It’s at this point that start to get a bit cross with atheists.
thabet, 
razib are discussing.
razib 5:01 am on June 28, 2009 Permalink
i don’t see how the article is showing that this is atheists per se, as opposed to asserting this. it seems most of the time a lot of these issues crop up due to interreligious fears & tensions. though u got more atheists on that side of the pond….
plimfix 6:13 am on June 28, 2009 Permalink
In the UK, there is is definitely a low-key but pervasive anti-religious culture which, in recent years, has been exacerbated by the National Secular Society. I’ve met Christians who won’t “come out” at work for fear of ridicule. There are probably a number of reasons why this is so. Not untypically, the ‘religion’ imposed on me at school (in the 1970s) was offensively stupid, yet despite widespread popular indifference to organised faith, the religious lobby remains powerful beyond it’s size. For some, their ire has been provoked by issues like the imposition of Christian school assemblies and the widespread existence of Christian faith schools which necessitate parents pretending to be religious in order to get their kids enrolled. In my view, emnity has been stoked with respect to all these issues by the Dawkins squad. No one would have complained about a Nurse saying she was going to pray over somebody a few years ago, although it might well have invited a discrete finger twirling round the temple.
thabet 7:34 am on June 28, 2009 Permalink
I was working offshore and a Scottish guy used to get ridiculed because he was a practicing Christian. I was clearly The Muslim, but if they were slagging me off it was behind my back!