Praying nurses

[ciphergoth]

Nurse suspended without pay for offering to pray for a patient during a home visit - what do you think?

(Snowed in today, trying to work from home but it's not really a workplace atmosphere around here today :-)

Updated: the patient is described as a Christian in the article. One wonders if this means Christian as in really a Christian, or "Christian I suppose" which AFAICT is the majority religion of the UK. Updated: actually "have Christian beliefs myself" is more like the phrasing I'd expect from someone who takes it seriously.

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I don't agree with the suggestion various commenters have made that she should just pray for patients without asking them. Some people who believe in gods specifically don't want to be drawn to the attention of gods other than their own without their consent - Odin, for instance, has a fearsome reputation for interfering unconsensually once people are mentioned to him, and I know people who distrust the Christian God in the same way. So I think it's generally preferable not to pray for people without their agreement. I do think it should be acceptable to ask politely whether someone wishes to give that consent, however, provided one also accepts that it is not rude for the other person to refuse; so I think the patient should not have complained and the nurse should not have been suspended, unless she was pushier about it than the story suggests.