The Christian employee who successfully won his appeal to display a palm cross in his company van has been suspended.
Colin Atkinson had faced dismissal after refusing to remove the eight-inch woven palm cross from his dashboard after a complaint from a tenant. He had placed them in his van throughout the 15 years he had been working for the Wakefield and District Housing (WDH) association and had never previously received any complaints.
Despite a dramatic U-turn by his employers, which allowed him to display the cross, Mr Atkinson has reportedly continued to face problems at his work.
"WDH have broken faith with me and not restored me to my job as they promised," said Mr Atkinson.
After a holiday in June, he says he returned to find the agreement, which was made in April, "completely blown apart" when he was told to transfer to a new workplace, Winston House in Wakefield.
He said that he had no van at his new workplace and was told to either use his own or use public transport.
"I was told to travel in by bus and I suffered harassment at work. This is all because I wanted to keep a small palm cross in my van. I have not done anything wrong and I just want to return to my normal workplace."
"They said I could go back to a normal workplace and a normal job but I was told I must transfer to a new workplace. I was absolutely appalled by it. I was flabbergasted - I couldn't believe what I was hearing. So I lodged a grievance, saying they had broken the initial agreement signed in April."
Mr Atkinson was then suspended after speaking to the media about what happened to him.
"I've got a right to speak out in the national interest, the interest of the British public and a right to defend myself," he said.
Europe’s biggest new monastery will harvest rainwater and plant 1,500 trees, while Bradford Cathedral becomes the first UK cathedral to be solar powered. A new £3m Carmelite monastery for 30 nuns will be built in Allerton, Liverpool, with a wildflower meadow, solar panels and ground source heating. The new building will restore a peaceful atmosphere for the nuns, who are currently surrounded by two growing schools in west Derby. Sister Mary said: ‘The new monastery will allow us to be much more energy efficient and the gardens will also enable us to be self-sufficient.’ Meanwhile, Bradford Cathedral will be the first in the world to install solar panels to provide its electricity. Costing £50,000, the panels will be fitted on the roof of the south aisle.
A group of atheists in New York have filed a lawsuit to prevent a cross from being displayed at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.
American Atheists, a Texas-based group that describes its mission as protecting civil rights for non-believers, claims the government installation of the cross is an unconstitutional "mingling of church and state".
The group’s president, Dave Silverman, insists that no religious symbols should be included in the memorial of the 9/11 terror attacks at Ground Zero if the Christian cross is the only symbol being represented.
As a public accommodation, the memorial must allow us (and all other religious philosophies) to include our own display of equal size inside the museum, or not include the cross. Equality is an all-or-nothing deal.
The lawsuit names the museum, New York and New Jersey, as well as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Chris Christie, among others, as defendants.
The cross is made up of two intersecting steel beams that were found intact amid the rubble of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York. Originally erected on the side of St. Peter's Church on nearby Church Street, the cross was placed inside the 9/11 memorial museum during a ceremony on Saturday.
According to museum organisers, construction worker Frank Silecchia discovered the 17-foot-tall cross in the vicinity of 6 World Trade Center after the attacks. Since then, the cross, the only thing left standing amid the rubble, has become a symbol of hope and comfort for many citizens of New York.
Joe Daniels, the 9/11 Memorial president, described the cross as:
an important part of our commitment to bring back the authentic physical reminders that tell the history of 9/11 in a way nothing else could. Its return is a symbol of the progress on the Memorial and Museum that we feel rather than see, reminding us that commemoration is at the heart of our mission.
In 2010, the same atheist group also challenged the constitutionality of roadside memorial crosses erected to honour fallen Utah state troopers. A federal court ruled in favour of the crosses, but an appeals court ruled against them.
