The Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital is a 314-bed facility located in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Last month the Board of Directors of the River Valley Health authority, the body that operates the hospital, made a decision to remove all bibles that had been placed in patients’ rooms by the Gideon Society. according to the Health authority, the holy books posed a threat to the health of patients.
Jane Stafford, a spokesperson for River Valley said that the hospital had to take steps to fight infectious germs in the institution and although other objects could be disinfected, the hospital had no method to disinfect books.
Not surprisingly, the hospital’s policy was criticized, at least in some circles. Brad Woodside, the mayor of the New Brunswick capital, called the move "absolutely ridiculous" and "political correctness at its extreme." Woodside also said that he had received many calls from residents of Fredericton complaining about the removal of the bibles.
Rev. Karl Csaszar, the president of the Fredericton branch of the Canadian Family action Coalition and a chaplain at the hospital argued that there were other objects in patients’ rooms and wondered what would next to be removed (as if anything else would).
Last week the River Valley Hospital authority announced that the bibles would be returning to the rooms of Chalmers Hospital. The hospital found a germ proof plastic cover in which to enclose the holy books. If patients do not want to take the bibles home with them when they are discharged, the bibles will be stored for a period of 90 days, ensuring that any germs that are on them will have died.
The story of the bible banning received very little attention in the Canadian mainstream media. CBC reported it but a Lexis-Nexis search revealed only a total of six articles about the hospital’s new policy. That was about five more articles that reported the reinstatement of bibles in patients’ rooms. Since contracting illnesses within a hospital setting has attracted a lot of attention in the media recently, this was somewhat surprising. It appears that much of the media just didn’t want to get involved in a story that had a religious aspect to it.
Was the decision to remove the bibles from hospital rooms solely a health issue or was this an act of religious intolerance? It is hard to argue that there was absolutely no basis in patient health that led to the initial banning of the bibles. But it would be foolish to suggest that religious intolerance played no part in the River Valley Health authority’s decision to remove the holy books from patients’ rooms.
Mayor Woodside was correct when he described the matter as extreme political correctness. No one would have dared to even consider a book ban if that book was the Koran. But in multicultural Canada, the land of tolerance and diversity, Christians are always fair game for actions such as the ones that were taken in Fredericton. There are a couple of things that indicate that this was not just a matter of the health of patients.
The first was that prior to removing the bibles from the hospital rooms, there was absolutely no evidence to suggest that any patient had become ill as a result of being exposed to a hospital bible. There was medical problem that justified the immediate removal of the Gideon-placed bibles. Had the hospital authorities had at least a modicum of respect for the views of their Christian patients they could have waited until they found a solution to the problem before simply removing the bibles. The fact that the hospital came up with a way to solve the problem quickly after being criticized shows that they just didn’t think that the religious feelings of their patients mattered.
The spokeswoman, Jane Stafford, pretty well gave it away when she indicated that patients at the Chalmers hospital had other alternatives; they could bring in bibles from home. There isn’t an intolerant practice that cannot be justified by pointing out alternatives. after all if blacks in the 1940s southern United States didn’t like riding at the back of the bus, well, they could have just walked.
The banning of the bible was nothing more than religious intolerance of Christians.