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Watch out, Aretha Franklin: these days, you say a little prayer at your peril.
So at least is the experience of Olive Jones, the Somerset maths teacher who was dismissed for offering to pray for one of her pupils who was too ill even for home lessons.
According to the Oak Hill Short Stay School and Tuition Service in Nailsea, North Somerset, Mrs Jones's discussion of her own faith with the girl and her mother could be deemed to be "bullying".
Her case is now the subject of an investigation by North Somerset Council - although Mrs Jones understandably feels that her hitherto faultless record has already been besmirched.
Hers is only the latest such case in which Christian employees have found that their beliefs make them vulnerable. Last December, a nurse in Weston-super-Mare was suspended for offering to pray for an elderly woman patient during a home visit - and reinstated in February only after a media outcry.
In July, Duke Amachree, a Homelessness Prevention Officer, was sacked by Wandsworth Council, after he tried to comfort a terminally-ill woman who was due to be moved out of her home by suggesting she put her trust in God.
As a non-believer myself, I am the first to acknowledge that evangelism can be irksome and occasionally intrusive. Why do the local 15th Day Miserabilists always ring on my buzzer when I am settling down to watch an episode of Entourage?
But, in all three of these cases, it seems clear that the offers of prayer or religious advice were well-meant, compassionate and far from aggressive.
In Mrs Jones's case, the pupil's mother responded with a firm declaration that "we come from a family who do not believe"; the teacher respectfully withdrew her offer and assumed that that was an end of the matter. Far from it: as things stand, her career is in tatters.
What these three stories have in common - apart from the fact that they involve devout Christians - is a mad lack of proportionality.
How can it possibly make sense to suspend or even sack an employee over such a small matter: what is, at worst, a breach of professional etiquette?
The answer flows from a significant shift in the cultural centre of gravity, and one that the Archbishop of Canterbury crisply identified in a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph.
"The trouble with a lot of Government initiatives about faith," Dr Williams said, "is that they assume it is a problem, it's an eccentricity, it's practised by oddities, foreigners and minorities."
The legislative consequence of this cultural shift is to be seen in the Equality Bill, now before the House of Lords, which will isolate Christian employees still further and make employers even more aggressive towards those who dare to express their faith in the workplace.
The bill's definition of "harassment" is so general and all-encompassing that more or less any profession of faith could be considered "intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive" and grounds for serious disciplinary action - or even a call to the police.
In its approach to religion, as Lord Lester of Herne Hill observed in the Upper House last week, the bill engages in "legislative overreach".
In the same debate, the Archbishop of York went further: "You will never overcome unequal treatment on grounds of religion or belief by silencing the expression of religion in the public square the Bill appears to require Christians to separate what they believe from how they express those beliefs, as if integrity of life and faith were of no consequence."
Where does such legislation lead? To a spree of vexatious litigation, hard cases and a bonanza for lawyers, that's where.
And that's according the Minister for Equality himself, Michael Foster, who said last week that both churches and atheists "need to be lining up [their lawyers] by now The secularists should have the right to challenge the church and if the church's argument is good enough - which I believe it is - then the church should win through".
Self-evidently, something has gone pretty badly wrong when ministers are talking about legal battles between Christians and atheists like football commentators rubbing their hands together in anticipation of a great match.
Somewhere along the way, in the bleakest of ironies, the Enlightenment values that stood against the tyranny and obscurantism of religion have been disfigured into the basis of a 21st-century crusade; the long campaign against intolerance has itself turned into a form of intolerance.
As the philosopher John Gray puts it, there is a kind of liberalism that is "a species of fundamentalism, not a remedy for it."
In Christmas week, of all weeks, it is worth pausing for thought about all this. You do not have to believe a single one of the supernatural claims in the Bible to respect the place that Judaeo-Christian principles have played in the formation of our society, our culture, our philosophy.
To deny this is not only intolerant; it is also profoundly ignorant, as well as historically illiterate. All around us stand the monuments of modern liberalism and the fruits of contemporary capitalism; but - not far beneath our feet - is a much older stone.
I am with Larkin in his poem Church Going: "though I've no idea/ What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,/ It pleases me to stand in silence here;/ A serious house on serious earth it is,/ In whose blent air all our compulsions meet."
In our secular society, of course, nobody is forced to stand in church, and rightly so. We long ago traded uniformity for pluralism, and are stronger for it.
But, if that is so, is there not still room in the mix and in our midst for a teacher who, faced with a pupil's suffering, dares to ask if she might say a prayer?
Reader views (22)
This is just the tip of the iceburg. Our government will soon consider new mandates against all Christians who put their faith into action. These govern-mental pig-heads have no respect for God, and no respect for Christianity. They are more than happy to tolerate greedy Muslims who squeeze the social system for every penny they can get, and polute the street with their slogans of domination, but when it comes to upholding the standards of Christians there's nothing but insults, persecution, riducule and injustice. These parliamentary bigotts are the hypocritical homophobic predators of all that is pure and Holy, and are guilty of showing discrimination against Christians. I SAID GUILTY! This perverted corrupt government stinks, and we can see are hell-bent on supporting queers and bum bandits rather than those desperately trying to promote decency. If they had their way, it would be a criminal offence to refuse someone with obnoxious thoughts to be employed in your respectable business affairs, including the church. Can you imagine what danger there would be by employing a nancy boy to a post as youth worker? What about taking on a satanist or devil worshipper into the place sanctified for Holiness? This brainless government have no respect for decency. Go on, sue me for telling the truth, you disgust me, and I'm ashamed to be British. What a cespit you've made of this nation. Shame on you.
- John Whittle., Ammanford, Carmarthenshire., 09/01/2010 13:04
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Has the prayer worked yet?
- Vinny, London UK, 05/01/2010 00:40
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I cannot understand why ANY mother would not want her child to find G-D.
Perhaps this Teacher was praying for the wrong person.
- Conservationchris, Knutsford ENGLAND, 31/12/2009 18:50
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Mrs Jones ignored an earlier warning not to pray or speak about her faith at work and twice pressed details of the miracle by which she thought God had saved her on a reluctant mother and daughter. People do find it difficult being preached at. They want to be polite but they experience evangelism as aggression. Even the Christian Institute recognises this in its booklet Religious liberty in the workplace: “The Gospel is offensive and as Christians if we are going to share the Gospel we must anticipate that we will cause offence.”
This seems to be one of a long line of cases that Jonathan Bartley of the Christian think tank Ekklesia was referring to when he said (a propos the Nadia Eweida case):
“People should be aware that behind many such cases there are groups whose interests are served by stirring up feelings of discrimination of marginalisation amongst Christians. What can appear to be a case of discrimination at first glance is often nothing of the sort. It is often more about Christians attempting to gain special privileges and exemptions."
The number of genuine Christian believers is now quite small. The old deference to Christianity is no longer there and religion’s privileged position is being challenged - that’s what equality and non-discrimination laws are about. But regrettably the churches and organisations like the Christian Legal Centre are reacting by a confection of allegations of victimisation, almost all of which collapse on closer examination.
- David Pollock, London, 23/12/2009 14:37
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So did the prayer work?
- Vinny, London UK, 22/12/2009 02:10
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I see that the secular bigots are out in force, parading their ignorance and prejudice. This country becomes ever more like East Germany.
- Michael Mcgowan, London UK, 21/12/2009 23:29
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Come the day when no medical doctor is around, many agnostics/atheists "in extremis" will gladly accept Christian prayer for healing, through Jesus Christ, who healed those who came to him - and still does today.
- Brian Johnson, Cotswolds, Glos, 21/12/2009 21:52
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I feel that those that are TRUE believers should be thankful that they have been chosen to be persecuted for their convictions in Christ. He died so that we may live. Can we do no less? If society sees it fit to persecute me for something as simple as praying for someone, so be it. While I am pleased that Mrs. Jones prayed for a sick child, it is unbecoming that she complained when she was "disciplined" for her efforts. Our Lord didn't complain, and neither should we!
- Richard Appling, fresno, CA USA, 21/12/2009 20:56
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I would probably describe myself as agnostic bordering on atheist but if either myself or any of my family were ill or in distress and someone offered to say a prayer for us I wouldn't care if their belief was Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu (or Jedi for that matter.)I would take the offer in the spirit which it was given, i.e compassionate and in the spirit of that person's personal beliefs of divine intervention, accept gracefully and thank them for their kindness.
- Ian Wigg, Farnham, Surrey, 21/12/2009 19:35
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Interesting how the mother says "we come from a family who do not believe". I see, so Athiest's can label their children but Christian's can't?
- Ian, london, 21/12/2009 19:25
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I wonder if Olive Jones and the other people mentioned in the article were followers of Islam would all these disciplinaries and sackings still have taken place?
- Steve, London, England, 21/12/2009 18:12
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This woman complains she has been 'treated like a criminal'. What hyperbole! Criminals are generally arrested and charged. There's no need to use ill-conceived comparisons like this to try to elicit greater sympathy.
The woman should not have brought her religious beliefs into her professional life, it is as simple as that. For people who are not religious, or of a different religion, it IS oppressive and upsetting, not to mention patronising, to have someone offer to 'pray for you' (the twin assumptions being that A) you need divine intercession and B) you are not in a position to acquire this without their help.)
Dominic from London - what does heritage have to do with anything? We do not choose our 'heritage' - why should it therefore mean anything to us, when it is in fact foisted upon us by the accident of birth? Our 'heritage' also includes laws against homosexuality - should we uphold this simply because it is something we inherited?! I was never consulted about the religion of the country I was born into. I don't see why I should be assumed to relate to Christianity simply because I happen to have been born on this island.
- Leah, York, England, 21/12/2009 17:36
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The sheer mind numbing ignorance about the Judaeo-Christian heritage of this country expressed by some of the "atheist" bloggers is breathtaking. Our philosophy of human rights has come directly from our host Christian culture - there is nothing rational about caring for people. May I remind them that the overwhelming majority of people in this country still do consider themselves Christian. We pay our taxes, eat sleep and even breathe the same air as the likes of "Kerry from Purley", who really should be careful not to swallow some of her own venom.
- Dominic, london, 21/12/2009 16:02
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Sack the ridiculous deluded woman. how dare she foist her particular brand of delusional prattle on a sick child, it is abuse and nothing less. We should have no mention of religion in any school activity to stop the insidious creeping nonsense being peddled to our kids.
A teacher at my kids school recently stopped her taking a book from the library, suggesting "this one is better" it was a story about the baby jesus!!! If i want my kids to read fairy stories, they can have a copy of Grimms, not this religious twaddle.
- Kerry, Purley, 21/12/2009 14:29
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While I am not a Christain, I firmly disagree with Isabel Caplin. I think it would be a shame for teachers, or anyone else, to so close off their natural humanity as to never step beyond what they were employed to do.
I also think that for someone who criticises others for making assumptions, Ms Caplin is making an unwarranted assumption that the person who offers the prayer is only intending to meet their needs and not the person they are praying for. While I am an atheist, I have a number of Christian friends who over the years have given the impression of being as capable of kindness as any atheist I know. They might be wrong about what is comforting, but then I certainly don't always get other poeple's needs right myself.
- Tracy Wilkinson, London, United Kingdom, 21/12/2009 14:01
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If she wants to pray for the sick child then that’s exactly what she should do. There is no need for her to impose herself on the mother or child. She can do her praying without the child being present, or even aware of her praying; God will know who she is praying for and her prayers will be no less or more effective. It’s disturbing and quite inappropriate when these evangelical and fundamentalist Christians pounce on illness and try to make themselves the centre of attention.
- Mary Smith, London, 21/12/2009 13:37
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The more people huff and puff about religion the stronger it becomes. Trotsky and the Communists took it on in 1917 and look what happened to them!
- Jane, London, 21/12/2009 13:16
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Faith is a personal thing and it should remain so. The problem is The Church has had too much power for too long and is now crying foul when it is told that it has no right to influence law makers and tell people how to live there lives. This whole "the Christians are being prosecuted" business is being directed by the far right evangelicals who are funding much of this nonsense. Religion would be fine if was benign but the problems is that it is not and teachers and others in positions of power have no right to impose their beliefs on others.
- John David, London, 21/12/2009 12:59
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This is insane, i mean really? would they rather that she hadnt show any compasion at all? and just walked out? Religion is part of what makes some people who they are, i can say that and im not at all Religious myself. Why are we trying to supress people from being who they are? Especially when they were only trying to show some compassion and help someone?
If my child when to school, and got hurt, or was i'll,, and nobody cared i think it would be far worse than someone offering a prayer, dont you think?
- Michael, Mildenhall, Suffolk, 21/12/2009 12:45
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Sorry Isabel, that sort of jobsworth mentality opens up more problems. Her maths teaching is not being questioned. She seems to have gone beyond her job to act as a human being. Her faith is part of who she is so to legislate against that would be to deny expression to who she and many others are.
- Phloss, London, 21/12/2009 12:05
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Olive Jones was employed to teach maths not to offer prayers for a sick child. Whilst I do not doubt her sincerity I do doubt her sensitivity to the family of a sick child. It was simply not her place to do anything other than leave the house of the child.
This is not just a possible "breach of professional etiquette" it is a teacher not doing the job they have been paid to do and making the assumption, based on personal beliefs, that they can do something that meets their needs and not the needs of the pupil.
- Isabel Caplin, Diss, UK, 21/12/2009 11:36
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This is plain crazy, the teacher was offering support and this happens! And who "blew the whistle" anyway? a child? a parent? another teacher? it has to be said that there are, and always have been, some teachers who are more interested in control and following the rules rather than common sense and the greater good.
- Martin Reed, Bristol, 21/12/2009 11:06
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