Florence Nightingale

=== Theology ===
Despite being named as a Unitarian in several older sources, Nightingale's own rare references to conventional Unitarianism are mildly negative. She remained in the [[Church of England]] throughout her life, albeit with unorthodox views. Influenced from an early age by the [[Wesleyanism|Wesleyan tradition]],{{efn|Her parents took their daughters to both Church of England and Methodist churches.{{Citation needed|date=January 2020}} }} Nightingale felt that genuine religion should manifest in active care and love for others.{{efn|Nightingale's rare references to Unitarianism are mildly negative, and while her religious views were heterodox, she remained in the Church of England throughout her life. Her biblical annotations, private journal notes, and translations of the mystics give quite a different impression of her beliefs, and these do have a bearing on her work with nurses, and not only at Edinburgh, but neither [Cecil(ia) Woodham-]Smith nor [her] followers consulted their sources."<ref>{{cite book |first=Lynn |last=McDonald |title=Florence Nightingale: Extending nursing |page=11}}{{Full citation needed|date=January 2020}}</ref>}} She wrote a work of theology: ''Suggestions for Thought'', her own [[theodicy]], which develops her [[Heterodoxy|heterodox]] ideas. Nightingale questioned the goodness of a God who would condemn souls to hell and was a believer in [[universal reconciliation]] – the concept that even those who die without being saved will eventually make it to heaven.{{efn|While this has changed by the 21st&nbsp;century, ''[[universal reconciliation]]'' was very far from being mainstream in the [[Church of England]] at the time.}} She would sometimes comfort those in her care with this view. For example, a dying young prostitute being tended by Nightingale was concerned she was going to hell and said to her "Pray God, that you may never be in the despair I am in at this time". The nurse replied "Oh, my girl, are you not now more merciful than the God you think you are going to? Yet the real God is far more merciful than any human creature ever was or can ever imagine."<ref name="NightingaleonMysticism"/><ref name="NightingaleonWomen" />{{efn|"Certainly the worst man would hardly torture his enemy, if he could, forever. Unless God has a scheme that every man is to be saved forever, it is hard to say in what He is not worse than man. For all good men would save others if they could."<ref>{{cite book |year=2002 |title=Florence Nightingale's Theology: Essays, Letters and Journal Notes |series=Collected Works of Florence Nightingale |author=Nightingale, Florence |editor=McDonald, Lynn |volume=3 |page=18 |place=Ontario, Canada |publisher=Wilfrid Laurier University Press |isbn=978-0-88920-371-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VcNoBNcV0XsC&q=%22nightingale's+theology%22 |access-date=6 July 2010 |archive-date=10 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210310015846/https://books.google.com/books?id=VcNoBNcV0XsC&q=%22nightingale's+theology%22 |url-status=live }}</ref>}}{{efn|Although not formally a Universalist by church membership, she had come of a Universalist family, was sympathetic to the tenets of the denomination, and has always been claimed by it.<ref>{{cite book |last=Miller |first=Russell E. |title=The Larger Hope: The first century of the Universalist Church in America 1770–1870 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FYPZAAAAMAAJ |year=1979 |isbn=978-0-93384-000-3 |oclc=16690792 |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Unitarian Universalist Association |page=124 |access-date=22 August 2020 |archive-date=21 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210121054913/https://books.google.com/books?id=FYPZAAAAMAAJ |url-status=live }} — Regarding the influence of Florence Nightingale on [[Clara Barton]].</ref>}}

Despite her intense personal devotion to Christ, Nightingale believed for much of her life that the pagan and eastern religions had also contained genuine revelation. She was a strong opponent of discrimination both against Christians of different denominations and against those of non-Christian religions. Nightingale believed religion helped provide people with the fortitude for arduous good work and would ensure the nurses in her care attended religious services. However, she was often critical of organised religion. She disliked the role the 19th century Church of England would sometimes play in worsening the oppression of the poor. Nightingale argued that secular hospitals usually provided better care than their religious counterparts. While she held that the ideal health professional should be inspired by a religious as well as professional motive, she said that in practice many religiously motivated health workers were concerned chiefly in securing their own salvation and that this motivation was inferior to the professional desire to deliver the best possible care.<ref name="NightingaleonMysticism" /><ref name="NightingaleonWomen" />