I know several hospital chaplains, and respect them not least because they work hard, and so feel I want to defend them against the campaign of the National Secular Society to abolish their NHS funding.
I recently went to the farewell do of one such friend who worked in one of London's largest hospitals. The biggest room in the place had been booked, and yet still it was packed. There were many patients present and staff, not all believers by any stretch, and yet all quite clear that this chaplain had fulfilled a role that no-one else could, and that it was a hugely valuable role in terms of the healing the institution can bring - in no small part because the role of the chaplain is often to stand outside the formal structures of care that such institutions otherwise need to function. (Incidentally, taking services is a tiny part of their work; the NSS talks as if it is the main part. One wonders whether they actually talked to any chaplains during their research.)
All this means that it is hard to quantify the benefit of having chaplains. Their work is not amenable to a cost-benefit analysis. The NSS argues that chaplains might still work in hospitals, only paid for by churches, synagogues and the like. But that misses the point: chaplains are there to aid the healing process. I've had my own experience of that. It just seems clear to me that they are a valuable part of the NHS, probably under-resourced if anything.
Moreover, the NHS spends tens of billions of pounds a year; a few million saved on chaplains would be neither here nor there, even in credit crunch times. So, it's hard not to presume that the NSS issued this press release during the week before Easter knowing that media organisations would be likely to pick it up. They may even have thought that chaplains are an easy target, though I imagine that most who've had dealings with a chaplain whilst in hospital would conclude that the campaign is misinformed.
Of course, for the NSS, removing religion from public life is a point of principle, not just a PR strategy. There is certainly a balance to be struck on that in a secular society. But to my mind, the hospital chaplain shows why such a straightforward eradication policy is just too clumsy - inhuman even, given we're talking about staff, patients and their wellbeing.
