Britain bans wearing of the cross

British employers may soon have the right to fire employees for wearing the cross over their office dress. The government says that Christians should not put on visible signs of their faith in the office, and London plans to defend its position at the European Court of Human Rights. 

The European Court of Human Rights is presently considering two similar cases .Nadia Eveida, a British Airways stewardess and Shirley Chaplin, a nurse lost their jobs for refusing to obey their employer’s ban on the wearing of the cross over their uniforms. The two women saw the ban as a violation of article 9 of the European Constitution on  human rights, dealing with the rights to conscience, liberty and religious  freedom. But the government has taken the side of the employers, stressing that the wearing of the cross is not an obligatory demand to the  faithful. Therefore, the ban is in keeping with corporate ethics and the dress code, and does not constitute discrimination on religious grounds.

No Christian denomination in the world makes it mandatory for the faithful to wear the cross, points out Maxim Obukhov, a Russian Orthodox Church priest. 

"The tradition of  wearing a cross has no cannonical force, meaning that a Christian should decide whether to wear the cross or not. At the same time, the  tradition is an old one, and the incident in England is part of a universal  tendency. Anti-Christianity has become the vogue in Britain and in the Anglo-Saxon world”, priest Obukhov said.

The anti-Christian attitude is snot restricted to visible attributes only, but also touches on views, lifestyle and child upbringing.

Last year, a British Christian couple was refused permission to adopt a child because there were children in the  family whose parents taught  them to hate homosexuality. Considering that in the Anglican Church, gays can become not only priests, but can also even marry, the traditional view on sodomy is in conflict with the official position of the government and state. What’s more, the Christian view on homosexuality can be regarded as an insult to  a segment of  society. From this point of view, the ban on the wearing of the cross and the condemnation of homosexuality are an attempt to defend human rights like the ban on  the wearing of full face veil in public places in a number of Europeasn countries, says Evgeny Ixlov, an expert at the movement  for Human Rights. Tape.

“It is an attempt to defend Islamic girls and women  who want to dress like Europeans. But they  are  under heavy pressure  from their  own people, who believe that girls without the face veil or head-scarf are bad. But why ban the veil, but permit the wearing of the cross. That is why people go to the court and win, because it is discrimination”, said Evgeny Ixlov.

All these efforts to  remove the display of religious beliefs  from contemporary life are fraught with the danger of even more  extremist views in society.