A Christian health worker has begun a legal challenge after being disciplined by the NHS for praying with a Muslim colleague.
Victoria Wasteney, a senior occupational therapist in one of the country’s most racially diverse areas, was also accused of bullying the colleague after giving her a book about a Muslim woman who converts to Christianity.
In addition, senior managers told Miss Wasteney that it was inappropriate to invite the woman to a community sports day organised by her church.
The complaints led to Miss Wasteney being suspended on full pay for nine months.
Three charges were upheld against the 37-year-old Christian at an internal disciplinary hearing in February and five charges were found to be unsubstantiated. She had to accept a final written warning at work which will remain on her records for 12 months, as well as accept a range of other requirements designed to stop her discussing her faith and beliefs with colleagues.
Miss Wasteney said she was challenging her employers in court because political correctness in the NHS was stifling ordinary conversations about faith.
[…]The young Muslim woman was appointed as a newly qualified occupational therapist in a team of 30 managed by Miss Wasteney at East London NHS Foundation Trust.
I do not recommend speaking to Muslims about anything other than work at work, because of cases. If you want to say something, come home and blog what you want to say under an alias. We are not in the same world we were in 50 years ago. The things we used to do then are no longer safe. You can still have an impact, you just have to be smarter about how you do it.
Virginia taxpayers are footing a $25,000 bill after a public community college stopped a student from preaching on campus.
According to Christian Parks, who identifies as an evangelical Christian, campus police officers at Thomas Nelson Community College stopped him from preaching in a central courtyard on two separate occasions last semester. Campus police cited a policy from 1968 which said that only organizations which were recognized by the college would be allowed to demonstrate on campus. These groups would also be restricted to designated areas.
However, last week in a U.S. District Court, a judge ruled that the Virginia Community College System designates outdoor areas on campus as “venues for free expression,” thus ruling in favor of Parks. The 23 community college campuses that make up the system are therefore not allowed to place limits on free speech.
The Virginia Community College System will have to pay $1 in nominal damages and $24,999 in legal fees to the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian conservative nonprofit organization, which sued Thomas Nelson Community College on Parks’s behalf.
“Students at 23 community college campuses have greater free speech,” Travis Barham, the lawyer on the case, told Campus Reform. “Because one student took a stand at Thomas Nelson [Community College], students at 23 difference campuses have greater free speech as a result.”
According to Barham, the Virginia Community College System served as a prime example of colleges and college systems should work to make their policies better benefit students.
“The folks at Virginia Community College System really serve as a model of what colleges should do,” Barham said, praising the system for having “pleasant and fruitful” conversations with ADF.
The lawsuit, filed in March, took only three months to resolve.
Alliance Defending Freedom is where you turn for help when you face free speech violations on campus.
“The electoral result, declared so far, indicates a landslide win for the BJP, which should propel the stock markets to new heights,” said Clifton Desilva, director of Altina Securities Pvt Ltd, as he spoke to AsiaNews about India’s election results and the BJP victory.
According to the latest projections, Modi’s party has 277 seats out of 543. The BJP and its coalition partners together now hold 336 seats. However, “Now that the BJP is likely to attain a sweeping mandate it does not have to depend on allies as was the case with the UPA government,” Desilva said. The UPA or United Progressive Alliance was the Indian Congress Party-led coalition that lost the election.
What is more, the BJP “has the reputation of being a business-oriented party,” Desilva noted. Thus, “all the big reforms that the UPA could not implement it is hoped that the BJP will implement them. [. . .] In fact the last five to six years we have seen the stock market sliding to new lows with the GDP [growth] slipping from 9.5 per cent to 4.5 per cent”.
Under a BJP administration, “it is expected that the investment cycle, which was stalled for various reasons, will get a kick start.” As a result, “projects worth over Rs 6 trillion (US$ 100 billion) that were stalled are likely to be revived, which will have a positive impact on reviving the growth of the Indian economy”, especially in terms of infrastructure, capital goods and banking sectors.
As soon as the BJP victory appeared to be a foregone conclusion, foreign governments rushed to congratulate the new leader.
Advocacy officials say policies of the influential Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has contributed to an atmosphere of hatred towards Christians. The BJP is the ruling party in three of the five Indian states with laws that forbid forced religious conversions.
The legislation is frequently used to shut down churches or intimidate Christians who speak about their faith, according to rights activists.
The party has proposed stiffer penalties in one of those states, Madhya Pradesh, India’s second-largest.
Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat, another BJP-ruled state with anti-conversion laws on the books, is “the poster child for India’s failure to punish the violent,” said Katrina Lantos Swett, vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and Commissioner Mary Ann Glendon in a joint November opinion column.
While under BJP rule, Karnataka state had the country’s highest rate of attacks against Christians from 2010 through 2012, according to Christian estimates.
[…]National parliamentary elections are scheduled for May, and Narendra Modi is the BJP’s candidate for prime minister.
Hindu militants have expressed anger over the spread of Christianity in India, a predominantly Hindu nation of over 1 billion people.
In a reaction, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) made clear it was closely monitoring the situation saying it had urged believers to “Pray for God’s protection over all Christians living in Andhra Pradesh” especially “for pastors and Christian workers…that they would continue to place their trust in the Lord and engage in missions in spite of the present situation.”
It was also important to “Pray that the Lord would grant repentance to those who are instigating violence against Christians,” stressed the WEA, which claims to represent some 600 million evangelical Christians in 128 countries.
I want India to do well, and Modi’s pro-business record in Gujarat cannot be questioned. However, I am worried about his Hindu Nationalism and the price that Christians might pay for evangelizing, which is a normal part of the Christian faith. Hinduism is a non-cognitive religion, so they are not used to arguments and evidence. It’s a community/family/culture thing. So they don’t understand how a person can evangelize except by non-cognitive means, e.g. – bribes. I am worried especially for the Dalits and other low-caste Indians in this environment.
WINTERY KNIGHT 