God-fearing to God-bashing!

There was a time when the people of England could be fined a shilling for not attending divine worship. Only the most opinionated dissenter would hold his ground and not attend. Everyone trooped into the parish church for a good dose of mattins. When I was a child our church had 500 regular churchgoers out of a surburban parish of 5000. That makes 10% of the population. Given that some were Roman Catholics and others non-conformists, each taking a slice out of the 5000, it was certainly not unusual to know regular churchgoers. Discussing religious belief was not frowned on, even by non-churchgoers.

In the 1950's it was a 500-odd congregation, in the Sixties this dropped dramatically as we went into the 300 mark. The Seventies reduced it to around 200 and it bottomed out to around 150 where it stayed. The parish, however, had doubled in size so the 150 looked decidedly low in percentage terms. Going to church seemed more like an oddity in sociey than the norm.

The 21st century has brought about the end game as far as churgoing is concerned. Only the diehard faithful it seems are attending church. We have an established church but it is only on the margins. The Establishment, now made up of Blairite type thinkers, is very much of the opinion that religion is a private matter. In fact, so private it is virtually a criminal offence to mention it at work or in any public place that has not been sanctified. We have gone from fining people for not worshipping to fining them for discussing their beliefs in front of others.

The latest person to receive the backlash of the secular state is a nurse, Anand Rao, who has been sacked for suggesting patients could become less stressed if they went to church. If he'd suggested they went into a field to meditate, he'd probably have kept his job. The NHS is now run by christophobes (I made that one up, I think!) who sniff out religious talk better than a bloodhound.

I would not like to go back to the days of forced church attendance as in the Cromwellian age of protestant patronage, but neither do I think it right for Christians to be attacked for discussing beliefs. Instead of sacking people for such talk, these NHS mandarins should take a hand in getting rid of the unclean behaviour that infects hospitals and spreads unnecessary disease.