Theos whines over less priests in hospitals

On today’s BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme, christian “think tank” Theos complained about the NHS’s lessening support for chaplaincy in healthcare, although specifically from a religious angle.

Aside from the show’s usual confused conflation of “religion” and “ethics”, the question on the table was should public money should be used to fund NHS chaplaincy? It’s worth a listen.

Meanwhile, over on the Theos web site, researcher Paul Bickley, writes:

Cue secularist delight, with something like the following logic. “The NHS exists to provide clinical care. The NHS necessarily subsists on a limited budget. NHS funds, therefore, should not pay for anything but clinical care.” In the words of Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society:

“We want nurses and doctors in our hospitals in sufficient numbers to take care of our health properly … if you want a chaplain and can’t afford it, the church [here a lazy cipher for the many traditions, including humanism, represented in healthcare chaplaincy] should pick up the tab, not the taxpayer.”

I doubt anyone will ever convince Terry Sanderson otherwise. But those who share his views should consider the services that chaplains provide before they campaign for, or celebrate, their removal. Healthcare chaplains exist to meet the pastoral needs of all patients, relatives or members of hospital staff who request it. They do not primarily exist to deliver services that are, in some way, narrowly ‘religious’, such as prayers or communion. Rather, they are there, to answer needs that are simply human: coping with the death of a loved one, the suffering of a child, the fear that comes with injury or sickness.

[S]ecularist delight? A very poor straw-man. As far as I can tell, Sanderson isn’t advocating the removal of the rôle of chaplains, he’s saying that if they’re required, and to be of a particular faith tradition, then that church should pay for them.

Bickley continues:

The chaplain’s role is less that of a cleric and more of someone who has time, experience and wisdom; who is willing to sit with the needy, listen to their stories, and share their burdens; who will act as an advocate for those who lack a strong voice.

So, if such a chaplain’s rôle is not clerical, then why the need for it to be fulfilled by clerics? Surely such services could be provided by anyone who is experienced in providing the kind of personal support that chaplaincy supposedly entails, regardless of their particular faith bias. What particular quality does a priest bring that is unavailable to a support worker or other personal advocate? The only one I can think of is vapid platitudes of the “little Timmy’s with god now” variety.

Where chaplaincy provision is removed it is not replaced by secular pastoral support – assuming “You are only a ‘lumbering robot’ programmed by your genes so you shouldn’t fear an eternity of non-existence,” qualifies as pastoral support. Instead, it is simply lost to those most in need.

My emphasis.

I will agree that some kind of support service could be required by some, but Bickley seems to presume, by setting up another completely ridiculous straw-man, that a bona fide and worthwhile support service can only be provided by the religious faithful.

This, of course, is complete bollocks.

Anyone who has ever attended a secular funeral knows that there is plenty of humanity in evidence, and one doesn’t need religion to find it. To claim that humanity can only be expressed as a reflection in the mirror of “faith” merely devalues any humanity that these people lay claim to providing.

I can see the value of chaplaincy, and I can see how it might help those that need it, but if the religious sects are going to claim to provide such a service and promote their own dogma, then they can pay for it themselves – the state shouldn’t be bolstering any kind of sectarian proselytism, even if all sects are equally supported. If spreading dogma is not the point, the there’s no need for people who provide this service to be religious.

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