The Bishop of Lichfield has questioned whether Britain can still be regarded as a Christian country – and warned that “creeping secularism” was leading to the religious foundations of the country being ignored.
The Rt Revd Jonathan Gledhill’s comments came at a meeting of the Lichfield Diocesan Synod in Stoke-on-Trent, which also saw the Bishop highlight the case of Christian nurse Shirley Chaplin who brings a case to an Exeter Employment Tribunal this week because her employers told her to remove from the Cross that she wears around her neck.
He said:
“She has worn it for 40 years since her Confirmation and says it is a sign of her Christian faith and her vocation in nursing. She says the cross sustains her in all her work; but she says our legislators are not listening to people like her. Presumably they want next to take the cross out of our national flag or the Union Jack.
“Now I personally do not think we should go to the stake for the wearing of crosses. The uniform that Christ and the apostles tell us to wear is not the adornment of jewels or anything outward; but rather the mark of love, which, of course, is a much more demanding mark for all of us who struggle to be better Christians than we are; and knowing the fallibility of our churches. Nevertheless if our country allows Sikhs to wear turbans it is a bit of nonsense to forbid nurses to wear crosses. Imagine what that Christian nurse Florence Nightingale would say!”
The Bishop also covered the subject of recent headlines about child abuse by priests in his speech.
He spoke of reviews carried out by the Church of England which saw more than 40,000 files on clergy and lay leaders scrutinised by independent experts. He added:
“Out of those 40,000 files, only 13 cases were found that needed any further follow-up and over none of those have the police decided to take any action. This doesn’t mean that we can be smug or complacent. Any case of child abuse is one case too many, and there may well be lurking cases that emerge at any time. But I hope that what I have said shows that we can have confidence in 99.9 per cent of our clergy and lay leaders in this matter; and, most importantly, we can be determined to go on offering youth and children’s work right round the diocese.”
