Storm Brews Over Religious Jewelry
Christians Who Wear a Crucifix Necklace Face Job Problems
Sep 21, 2009
Many Christians wear the symbol of their faith like a crucifix necklace, this but that is causing trouble for some. And in a few cases, employment has been threatened by wearing religious symbols as jewelry.
The latest row in Britain highlights the contrast between an outward show of religious piety and the practice of a religion’s particular values. The contrast has fuelled many theological debates and arguments on the pros and cons of accepting, following and even tolerating the practice of religion.
Conservative Christians, meanwhile, have contrasted the criticism of jewelry crucifixes with the fact that members of other religious faiths are allowed to wear the symbols of their own religion, for example Muslim veils and Sikh turbans.
British Nurse Faced With Sack for Wearing Crucifix
Recently, a British nurse has been threatened with the sack for wearing her inch-long metal crucifix on a chain around her neck while caring for patients. The National Health Service claims the jewelry breaches its health and safety rules.
But other faiths are allowed to wear signs of their own faith — which do not involve jewelry — and Christians have claimed it as an example of workplace discrimination.
The British nurse has taken her case to an employment tribunal, claiming that she has been targeted because of her faith. She is being helped by the Christian Legal Centre which seeks to promote religious freedom and to protect Christians.
Airport Christian Loses Fight to Wear Cross Necklace
This case echoes a similar controversy from 2006, when a check-in clerk working for British Airways at London's Heathrow Airport was told that she couldn't openly wear a similar necklace crucifix which she said she wore as a sign of her passionate Christian faith. The problem was that she was wearing it as jewelry and company policy insisted that jewelry must be worn underneath the neck-scarves borne by female BA staff as part of their uniform, not on top in an open display.
Some commentators immediately grabbed her case as some kind of politically correct persecution of Christians in favour of other faiths while others highlighted it as a reason to keep religion in the private sphere. The British Airways employee lost her fight. The nurse, meanwhile, has been threatened with suspension if she does not remove the crucifix while in the wards.
What Does Religious Jewelry Mean?
One factor has largely been ignored in both cases, however. Whilst it can be argued that the wearing of modest and appropriate religious symbols should never be banned in a free society, what are the issues raised by the wearing of the sign of a religion of humility and non-materialism in the form of a jewelry cross, a sign neither known nor approved by the person after whom the religion is named? Also, should a religious symbol whose religious symbolism has been massively diluted by its use as a fashion item maintain its high religious significance? These are questions that swirl around the debate.
Most people who wear gilded jewelry crosses are not Christian and wear a crucifix as a fashion item. Many of those don't even know what the symbol at the heart of their often very expensive piece of vanity means in religious terms. So the fashion industry has ensured that the cross as jewelry has little remaining religious meaning.
Other religious symbols - the turban and the various styles of Muslim veils, for example - are not yet worn as fashionable items, but purely and simply as religious symbols. They denote membership of a particular "tribe" but it is probably true that all of the people who wear such symbols are followers of the religion they denote, and know what they are committing themselves to by following that religion.
Facing a Choice on Wearing Religious Jewelry
Those who profess the Christian faith have to ask whether they want to be a proud, gold-toting member of a particular tribe of people broadly called Christian. The individual must also decide if he or she wishes to defend that tribe’s rights in a pluralist society, or whether they want to try their hardest to carry out the specific teachings of the man who inspired their religion about praying and fasting in secret, giving alms without being conscious of it, loving their neighbour and forgiving their enemies.
Sources: BBC News and archives, Daily Telegraph news and archives, The Times news and archives.
