Religious leaders are up in arms over plans by the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust to ban Bibles from patients' bedside cabinets.
The Bible ban plan is not due to religious or political reasons but because of medical ones. Hospital officials say that the Bibles are difficult to clean and thus notorious germ carriers. It is believed that the ban will help prevent infectious superbugs such as MRSA.
However, religious leaders feel that hospital patients will be deprived of spiritual nourishment at at time when they most sorely need it.
A spokeswoman for the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham, which oversees 300 churches, said: “For many patients Bibles have been a source of comfort and support through uncertainty and illness. It is unsatisfactory that patients may now have to ask a nurse for a Bible to look at.”
She urged the trust to look at alternative solutions such as shrink-wrapping or placing plastic covers on the Bibles.
The Hospital bosses are now going through a stringent consulting process with staff, patients and chaplains before enforcing the ban.