Should a family doctor be free to share his faith with a patient during a consultation? That’s the question considered by the General Medical Council recently as it dealt with a complaint against a GP. Their conclusion was to reprimand the doctor for what he did though he is appealing against the decision claiming that he did no more than he’s done many times before.

The details are a little sketchy but the story goes like this. A young man went to see his GP with some medical concern. After a lengthy consultation the doctor spent the last few minutes sharing about his faith. He claims he did this with the patient’s consent though the conversation did get ‘a little bit heated towards the end’ and the doctor brought the conversation to an end. On arriving home and telling his mother what had happened she decided to make a complaint. One key fact in all of this is that the patient in question is ‘of a different faith’. (All quotes from this site.) There are published guidelines for GPs to follow in such situations and they do provide a measure of freedom for practitioners. The GP in question claims he was within the rules; the patient claims he overstepped them; and the GMC have decided that he did in fact breach them.

Much Christian reaction to this story has generally been of the ‘we’re being persecuted, whatever happened to free speech, it’s political correctness gone mad’ variety. And maybe it is, but let’s consider another viewpoint for a moment. Would we be happy for a Muslim doctor to respectfully share his/her faith with us? If they ended up their consultation with us by saying that they found submission to Allah helpful in finding a balanced life, how would we react? Or a Hindu, or a Buddhist? Or what if an atheist said that holding on to our faith in miraculous healing is possibly making it harder for us to accept our illness and get proper treatment for it? Presumably no one is in favour of only Christians being allowed freedom of speech – for that would be fascism wouldn’t it?

And then there’s the whole issue of the tradition the Christian GP belongs to. To refer to only recent history, plenty have condemned Rob Bell as a false teacher and therefore quite dangerous. Would a conservative Christian, therefore, be happy if a liberal shared his/her version of the faith, or vice versa? ‘I don’t think God actually heals people today. That kind of thing belongs to the biblical era only. He’s given people like me skills to use science to try and heal you.’ Happy with that viewpoint?

Now as I say the details of this particular story are a little sketchy but one key fact seems clear – the patient was of a different faith to the GP. However gentle, respectful and non-threatening the GP was in the sharing of his faith is it possible that the message the patient heard was, ‘My faith is better than yours. What you need to do is swap sides and believe in the true God. Your false religion is making you ill’?

Then there is the issue of power. For a patient struggling with poor health and sitting in the consulting room, the GP is the most powerful person in their world. The GP him/herself, of course, may be feeling the least powerful person in the world, especially is he/she is baffled by the symptoms presented. But in that situation there is a power relationship going on and the person with the power needs to be aware of how they are perceived. Limiting their freedoms is not an issue of persecution, therefore, but an eminently sensible decision.
 
In trying to ensure that the pluralist society we live in has fairness for all there is little doubt that certain privileges we as Christians used to enjoy have been curtailed. That’s an uncomfortable fact. But as a minority among minorities could it really be any different in many areas of life?


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