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Multi-Faith
Group for Healthcare Chaplaincy
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.....advancing multi-faith healthcare chaplaincy. |
| MFGHC Hosts Lauch of NHS Chaplaincy Documents | ||
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The Hon Barney Leith, Chair of the Multi-Faith Group for Healthcare Chaplaincy opened a gathering held at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London on 5 January to launcy two important new NHS Chaplaincy Documents.
Good morning, ladies
and gentlemen. I am Barney Leith, Chair of the Multi-Faith Group for
Healthcare Chaplaincy.
We shall hear more
about each of these documents shortly. The Multi Faith Group's predecessor body, the Multi Faith Joint National Working Party, began its work in 1998, following the Joint National Consultation in 1997, run by the Hospital Chaplaincy Council at the request of the Department of Health. In the intervening
years, the working party and the Multi Faith Group - with representation
from the nine major faith communities of the UK - laboured long and
hard on the text of the document that is being launched today as the
Department's guidance on multi-faith chaplaincy. It is something of a commonplace now to say that Britain is a multi-faith and multi-cultural society. We have heard the Prime Minister on many occasions state his personal commitment to a multi-faith and multi-ethnic future for this country. The Home Office
is currently undertaking a major review of the government's relationship
with the faith communities, in pursuance of a manifesto commitment. But now we can come out! We can openly admit that we have a faith, that our faith is central to our lives. And we find ourselves out in the sunshine. Religion is back in the public square. It is a force to be acknowledged and people of faith turn out to be - by and large - sane and having useful, if challenging things to say. Of course, it is
one thing to say this. It is quite something else to make it a reality.
Right now, it is the thing to do, to consult representatives of the
various religions. I don't know what the Department of Health's motives were in 1996 and 1997 - I am not sure I know what they are now - but the Department was in some ways ahead of the game. By launching the process that has led to today, they were setting in motion something that would be very much needed in the 21st century. I am sure that, if those of us who first sat together round the table with Robert Clarke, the then Chief Executive of the Hospital Chaplaincy Council and co-ordinator of the Joint National Working Party, had known that it would take five years of work to get to this point, our hearts would have quailed. But God was kind and protected us from foreknowledge! And we set our feet to the road that brings us here today. As I have said, we have had (and continue to have) our challenges. I hope it is not inappropriate on a day of celebration such as this to say that the Department of Health has not always been as helpful as it might have been. We have been through several Secretaries of State, and we have had to redraft more than once to meet the requirements of each of them. However, I would
like to thank Chief Nursing Officer Sarah Mullally for her support over
the last year or so. Her energy and commitment have given us the boost
we needed to get through the final stages of the preparation of the
document. I would like, on behalf of the Multi Faith Group, to pay tribute
to this commitment. It is no longer
enough to pay lip service to equality. If we are to take the notion
of a multi-faith society seriously, we have to make it possible for
those communities that do not have a history or tradition of engaging
in the political and community processes of this country to do so. Level playing fields cost money. Today is both an end and a beginning. It is the end of our five years of drafting. It is the beginning of an indefinite period of implementation and training and standard setting and monitoring. The Multi Faith Group stands ready to continue its work, in partnership with the faith communities, with other chaplaincy bodies and with the Department to promote the development of multi-faith chaplaincy to the highest professional levels. I would like to
pay tribute to all my colleagues, past and present, on the Working Party
and the Multi-Faith Group. Perhaps the most important thing we have
learned over the years is that what unites us is more important that
what divides us. We are a living example of how people of different
faiths can work together for the good of all, we are a living example
of how true and lasting fellowship and friendship grows out of our collective
acts of service to others. |
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