Prayer in the Daily Mail

Today's Daily Mail ran with a story about how a hospital nurse who asked an elderly hospital patient if she wanted her to pray for her has been suspended from work and faces the sack. Read more here.

There's a lesson to be learned from this story, although it's certainly not the lesson which the Daily Mail journalists were trying to sell. What they have to say we've heard a thousand times before. Woe is Britain; cherished traditions are falling away; Christianity is persecuted; political correctness runs wild. No, these perennial Daily Mail subjects are not the ones I want to talk about here. What's more interesting is to look at what they're actually trying to defend - whether they know it or not - in this specific instance.

To judge from the information contained in the article, the nurse in question had "asked" her patient if she wanted her to pray for her. Now that's important. I very much doubt any of the health officials the article mentions would have had a problem if the nurse had tottered into a quiet corner to say a few words of prayer on her behalf without asking. Then there's the underlying implication which attaches to the fact that she asked if she would like to be prayed for. Was permission needed? If not, what was the point in asking? The answer to this question takes in a number of issues and relates above all to the form of Christianity which the nurse was giving expression to.

Of course, the whole exchange has all the hallmarks of Biblicist evangelicalism (the article stiplulates that the nurse is a worshipper in just such a tradition, a 'Baptist' one). In this tradition, people can and should be put on the spot and asked difficult questions; not only that, but people are asked if there's anything they should or might like to have prayed for on their behalf. In itself, this way of doing things no doubt irritates some people (though not the woman concerned in this instance) but is not really particularly harmful.

But what if someone is lying on their deathbed and you are from a tradition which believes that people who don't 'follow Christ' (in the way you see fit) will be damned. Then the 'prayer' question can represent a whole different agenda. The underlying implication is 'I'll let you know that I'd like to pray for you right now, because if you don't submit to Christ pretty soon, you'll be stewing with Satan before too long: prayer, therefore, is the least I can do'. If that was anything like the impression left by the nurse on the woman she was dealing with, or with anyone else for that matter, it would be no surprise whatsoever if complaints were made.

A final point is worth mentioning here and it relates to the ethics, not to mention the eticet, of prayer. Prayer can and should happen whateverthe people being prayed for think about it. They don't have to know about it. To pray for someone, I don't, and should never, need a permission slip. In this respect, prayer is like forgiveness. It should be done whether my adversary forgives ME or not. Or like love. I must love my enemies whether they love me or not.

The person who asks someone permission to pray for them is not listening hard enough either to God or to their neighbour. 'Would you like me to pray for you?' is not a question any Christian should ever have to ask. They should be praying for the person concerned anyway. Underlying their prayers should be the belief that deep down, in the heart of hearts of the person they are praying for - however far from God they might seem, that person WANTS to be prayed for. Now that's far more non-PC. Questions of this sort, of course, are - alas - not the Daily Mail's strong suit.