Taken to Court for Wearing a Cross on a Chain

Last year, long serving nurse Shirley Chaplin was banned from working on hospital wards for wearing a cross around her neck. This week she will take the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust to an employment tribunal after she was told that she must 'hide or remove' a small cross on her necklace if she wanted to continue working on hospital wards.


Why should such a position ever be taken by an NHS authority? You may remember a similar story of an airline employee being told to remove her cross, as it may have been an offence to others. What reasons could force these issues into a court situation? Obviously, Shirley Chapman's case has not been completed, so we don't know how it will turn out, but I am left wondering what pushed the case to this extreme? To me, the possibilities are few, but can be reasonably taken to be one of the following.


1. There may be a safety issue, where a patient could grab the chain, deliberately or by mistake, and injure themselves and the nurse. The trouble is there have been no instances of this happening before, either to this nurse of many years experience, or in the hospital to other nurses. It is therefore doubtful that it could be for safety reasons.
2. It is personal, and the nurse is not liked by her bosses who have forced the issue. I don't think a boss of any sense would pick this to go to court with. Surely, if the nurse wasn't liked, they could have come up with a better, and more credible story? So, I don't think it is this.
3. It is an anti-Christian position. This is particularly likely, as the nurse wasn't asked to stop wearing the chain, just remove the cross from it, or hide it from view. This also takes care of the position of it being a safety issue, as a patient could still grab at the chain. It may also explain that there may be a personal difference with a colleague who has forced the situation through their boss. If this is the case, then some questions need to be answered, like,
a/ is this not a bit extreme? Nurses of other religions are allowed to show their 'symbol of faith' in the same hospital, for example being allowed to wear headscarves.
b/ is Britain still considered a 'Christian' country? Apparently this is in question now, even though Christianity is still the majority religion by far.
c/ is the NHS being too Politically Correct for the Christian employee, but not for the Muslim employee?
d/ is there someone in the NHS chain of command with a grudge against Christianity, and they are trying to push something through the courts to make a precedent? (Think about that one carefully, and don't rule it out of hand too quickly.)


This kind of case worries me on many levels. This nurse is not a 'fanatical Christian'. She just wants to wear a cross to show her faith as she has done for 38 years! Am I to be offended by people of other faiths who show their allegiance by wearing things like, a turban, a veil, a headscarf, a full burka? It would be very interesting to see what would happen if one of these UK 'minority religions' was taken to court in the same way. It is wrong to assume anything, but yes, I think I know the answer to that one, and doesn't that give us all cause for concern?