Are Christians discriminated against in the UK?

[sccsux]

Perhaps she has seen ladies walking around in hajabs and thinks it unfair that her faith can't be as visible as others.

 

Then she should switch religions to one that has strict dress codes, rather than the wishy washy christian religion.

[Plain Talker]

I think the lady in question wanted to make her faith visible, perhaps because people of other faiths can do so in public, in this case the medical profession. Perhaps she has seen ladies walking around in hajabs and thinks it unfair that her faith can't be as visible as others.

 

Thing is, health and safety policy overides, and rules are rules. Personally I can't see how she could question that.

 

But, and it's a big but...I don't think it's fair to suggest that this lady would be happy swinging MRSA around. I really don't think this was her intention.

 

Could her faith not be demonstrated by her good deeds, and showing care and compassion to her patients?

 

As others have said, wearing a cross (however ostentatiously) doesn't actually make you a Christian, any more than living in an airport makes you a 'plane.

 

It's your actions that speak, louder than words, demonstrating whether you are a person of loving kindness.

 

The people who caused me to be attracted to Islam were not proselytisers, or preachers, nor were they ostentatious in their actions. Their actions were beautiful, and simple, and when I inquired about what the Qur'an actually said, and what the Muslim believes, they explained things to me without mockery. There was no browbeating "This is what I believe, therefore you must believe". It was a simple "this, this, this..." is the Muslim's faith, and this is what it says in the Qur'an. That was it.

[Cyclone]

Wearing a turban doesn't make me hindu (if I even got the right religion), but the fact remains that people of that religion have the right to wear their religious dress where I wouldn't be able to.

She might have had a point if there were any symbol that a Christian is required to wear, but there is not. She simply wanted to wear it.

[milquetoast1]

So Nicky Campbell's petulant attempts to claim that Christians in the UK are persecuted failed miserably. Here's what the BHA had to say:

 

The Inflationary Model

 

A one-off, hour-long opinion piece from Nicky Campbell, asking Are Christians Being Persecuted?, was probably not the kind of BBC1 Easter programming that most of us would have commissioned, or indeed most Christians. But between the documentary style re-hash of tabloid headlines and sideswipes at immigration, there was one very important moral lesson to be gleaned. Namely, that if you are going to inflate the terms of debate, you’d better be sure it doesn’t leave your argument looking small and hollow in comparison.

 

Having failed to find anyone in Britain being remotely threatened or abused for their Christian beliefs, the filmmakers were forced to conclude the obvious; that Christians in Britain are not being persecuted. They are “sidelined and victimised”, though, and this can “feel like persecution”. To get to this point, we were treated to a recap of the handful of cases in which some form of religious expression has landed a believer in court, such as the teacher offering to pray for a pupil. The film neglected to mention the distress this was reported to have caused the sick child and her family. This example typified the show’s strategy: repeating rumours and headlines about councils banning Christmas, and Christians losing court battles, with no real analysis of the merits of the cases at hand, and no critical reflection on the organisations sponsoring those court cases.

 

We were told once again that acting on Christian “moral principles” was being outlawed by equalities legislation, and once again the only example offered of this high-minded conscientious objection was the “right” to discriminate against gay people. Hand-picked vox pops gave the impression that everyone in Britain has very strong views about what Christmas lights are called, and in the one piece of “special” research conducted by the programme we were told that 44% of the population believe religious intolerance is growing. But we were not told that in the very same survey 39% of people said that Britain was becoming more tolerant.

 

The overall impression was that Christian belief should be a trump card, but nowadays it isn’t, and that that’s what ‘marginalisation’ means. But if that is what marginalisation means – mere lack of special privilege – then everyone is “marginalised”. In fact, by this strange definition, the only people who are not marginalised by the state are Christians of the Church of England. For, in an improbable editorial decision, the programme makers cut to the Bishops in the House of Lords as they argued, from their privileged and reserved parliamentary seats, against the Equality Bill. This was the programme’s way of making the point that Christians felt like they didn’t have a voice!

[purdyamos]

That sounds like an effective precis of the points made on this thread, some of it almost word for word! I'm astounded that the programme makers didn't see the inherent contradiction in using the House of Lords to argue their case!

[redwhine]

Wearing a turban doesn't make me hindu (if I even got the right religion), but the fact remains that people of that religion have the right to wear their religious dress where I wouldn't be able to.

She might have had a point if there were any symbol that a Christian is required to wear, but there is not. She simply wanted to wear it.

But she still couldn't claim discrimination if she was forbidden to wear a required symbol of faith due to a rule that applied to all employees. She would be pleading to be exempt from a rule and treated as a special case. She would be asking to be discriminated for and not being discriminated against.

 

Only if she could show that others were allowed to wear a cross but she wasn't could she make a claim of discrimination.

 

So, even then, this case would not provide an example to support an affirmative answer to the OP...

 

"Are Christians discriminated against in the UK?"

 

...but rather an example of where one particular christian was not discriminated for.

[Cyclone]

But she still couldn't claim discrimination if she was forbidden to wear a required symbol of faith due to a rule that applied to all employees. She would be pleading to be exempt from a rule and treated as a special case. She would be asking to be discriminated for and not being discriminated against.

 

Only if she could show that others were allowed to wear a cross but she wasn't could she make a claim of discrimination.

 

So, even then, this case would not provide an example to support an affirmative answer to the OP...

 

"Are Christians discriminated against in the UK?"

 

...but rather an example of where one particular christian was not discriminated for.

 

I was making the distinction on the basis that other religions are often exempted from rules due to their religious requirements. For example, Sikhs and small daggers.

[andyofborg]

Then she should switch religions to one that has strict dress codes, rather than the wishy washy christian religion.

 

the book of leviticus contains some rather strict dress codes and codes for other things too but apart, from a couple of verses allegedly referring to homosexuality, christian's choose to ignore all of their god's rules

[Grahame]

the book of leviticus contains some rather strict dress codes and codes for other things too but apart, from a couple of verses allegedly referring to homosexuality, christian's choose to ignore all of their god's rules

 

The Old Testament is Judaism, not Christianity.

[Plain Talker]

The Old Testament is Judaism, not Christianity.

 

Jesus (PBUH) was an orthodox Jew.