From our friend and pro-life colleague Stuart Cunliffe's blog come a frightful case of the British government's increasing intolerance against Christians.A time of anti-Christian persecution is at hand, says the Church of England Newspaper. "The Government had better start building more prison space - for Christians and moral conservatives generally," it said in a recent editorial.
People were used to hearing of Christians sacked for daring to air any view which disapproved of homosexual sex. But the new Equality Bill and a Government bid to delete a free speech protection from a "homophobic hatred" law would lead to more intolerance of Christian views, it said.
The Equality Bill placed a duty on public bodies, like schools and police, to promote homosexual rights and gave Parliament the opportunity to strip away religious liberty protections from various discrimination laws, it said.
Christians, and Muslims and others who disagreed with the homosexual line, the paper said, were being told "to shut up and get into their closet - the gays are not tolerant of dissent and have got the state to crack down."
Which brings me to the case of Anand Rao. Although it may have nothing to do with homosexuality, it certainly seems to have to do with Christian persecution.
Mr Rao is 71 years old and a committed Christian. He has been a nurse for 40 years, in recent years in hospitals run by the University of Leicester NHS Trust. He decided to go on a training course organised by the Leicestershire and Rutland Organisation for the Relief of Suffering, and found his own funds to pay for the course.
During the course, in a role play situation to do with palliative care, Mr Rao was placed with a couple playing the part of man and wife. He was told the wife had a serious heart condition, a doctor had told her she would not live long and this had caused her stress. How would he advise them? He suggested to the couple - in a role play situation on a training course, notice - that going to church might ease her stress.
The course directors were dissatisfied with this and the course organiser reported him to his employer. He was suspended and later sacked - apparently for breaching the Nursing and Midwifery Council's code of conduct respecting a person's dignity.
Mr Rao, who is considering taking legal action against his former employer for religious discrimination, said he is staggered that someone who has given four decades to caring for people can be treated in the way he has.
Andrea Minichiello Williams, of the Christian Legal Centre, said "How is it possible that a nurse who has served the public for 40 years should find himself dismissed because in a training session he advised someone to go to church? To seek to censor and suppress this kind of language and belief is the first fruits of a closed society."
