BBC News - new effort to band religious hate
This legislation is potentially concerning. The government is keen to implement it. Is it going to become illegal for me to preach the Christian gospel? Will my job land me in prison? What does religious hatred mean? Could people really interpret the preaching of the good news of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ as inciting hatred?
In this Part “religious hatred” means hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to religious belief or lack of religious belief"Not sure I quite get what this means.
"having regard to all the circumstances the performance is likely to be attended by any person in whom the performance (taken as a whole) is likely to stir up racial or religious hatred.”Theoretically this will protect my freedom to preach the Christian gospel. No preaching of the gospel is designed to produce hatred for another faith or person as a response. Christians are to love those of other/no religions. And that love has integral to it the preaching of the gospel to them, appealing to them to believe. As John Piper said after 9/11 Christians are to lay down their lives in love for muslims, not to kill them.
That said... what if my preaching makes people not like Christianity... would that be inciting hatred? And more so - the Bible forces me to say that God hates us in our sin... will that be permissible? However, taken as a whole any proclamation of God's wrath is countered by his loving appeal to us on the basis of The Cross. Repentance and subsequent encounter with the loving God is always the objective. Never am I seeking to incite anyone towards a hatred for other religions... any proclamation of Islam as wrong (and Jesus says as much), is never for the purpose of stirring hatred - but the kind of love that calls them to come and know Jesus. Something they have the responsible freedom to reject.
However in a world that is spiritually blind to the beauty of the good news about Jesus this could all be easily misunderstood. Our tolerant society pours scorn on my claims to believe something absolute... A few hundred years ago, even in this country, John Bunyan spent over a decade in prison for refusing to stop preaching the gospel. For 2000 years around the world the message of Jesus has been made illegal... when that happens we keep preaching. But, know this, religious hatred is not our objective.
I've heard similar concerns from discussion at this year's Methodist Conferece, after there was an official statement made in support of the bill; that it would impact preaching.
ReplyDeleteLet's get a little perspective here. Sure, some Christians are already getting high on fantasies of being persecuted "for the sake of the gospel" and imagining that they might be thrown in jail for talking about salvation only in Jesus. But the context behind it is more serious, and perhaps more prosaic. For example;
In more deprived parts of the North, the BNP has been developing an approach of targeting Muslims as a scapegoat. They've been pushing at all other demographics; poor white, Sikh, and Hindu. They actively feed paranoias and fears, trying to play off one community against another and suggest that there's a conspiracy - that we're all culturally threatened and economically disadvantaged in comparison. They're on thin ice if they so much as talk about race, but get away with a lot by trying direct & engender hate against Islamic people by selective attention. This bill would at least block such a lunatic strategy.
Christians don't tend to cause riots so much as apathy ;P
It is interesting - I recently heard Paul Goggins, a home office minister (with a brilliant surname) whose responsibilities include this bill, discussing it on the radio.
ReplyDeleteHe was keen to point out that the bill was designed to stop people making statements that were deliberately intended to stir up hatred towards a particular religious group, and would not stop people declaring other groups to be wrong, or indeed themselves to hold exclusive truth. He outlined the same situation with the BNP PL mentioned as a reason for introducing the bill. As Christian preaching of the gospel should never incite humans to hate each other (hatred amongst humans surely being explained as one of the sins God may have issues with?!) but to love, this bill should have no impact. If it does, it's been written badly!
Hello,
ReplyDeleteFirstly, from a law perspective - although I finished my degree a year ago, so I'm a bit rusty - it is very, very common with laws for people to construct arguments based on the absolute worst case scenario, and then for nothing of the sort to happen in practice. Take, for instance, how nobody has yet to been arrested under last year's Children Act for bruising their child, which is what the Mail/Sun/Mirror/Express corner of the media suggested would happen. (There are a number of other similarities between the two laws, but I'll come to that later)
Secondly, the incitement to religious hatred bill is designed to tidy up a legal anomaly where the current law of incitement to racial hatred protects certain religious groups (Jews and Sikhs) but not others (those which are not peculiar to a particular race, mostly Christians and Muslims).
Is it going to become illegal for me to preach the Christian gospel? Will my job land me in prison?
Of course not.
What does religious hatred mean?
This is a difficult one, but my mother always told me that hate is a strong word. In terms of the obvious precedent of the incitement to racial hatred law, there have been 72 prosecutions in the eighteen years since it was introduced and fewer convictions (not sure of the precise number).
Could people really interpret the preaching of the good news of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ as inciting hatred?
Absolutely not. The central words you've used here are 'good news'. I cannot, by any interpretation of the new law, imagine how the promotion of a particular religious view will fall under the law. As you say later, your preaching of the gospel is not designed to produce to hatred for another faith.
what if my preaching makes people not like Christianity... would that be inciting hatred?
That's just silly, sorry.
the Bible forces me to say that God hates us in our sin... will that be permissible?
As long as it is within the central positive message of Christianity, I don't see why it wouldn't be.
My overall impression of the law is that it is a legal housekeeping measure with an extremely high threshold for applicable cases, likely to produce very few (but still potentially important) convictions, and offers no discernible threat to those wishing to promote their religion. It isn't even about criticism or offence, let alone positive promotion.
I'd also like, as a final point, to clarify that this law is actually designed for the protection of Christians, which seems to be lost on groups like the Christian Institute I (who dishonestly misquoted the the Home Office FAQ on the law, which is well worth a read if you're worried about it, by the way).
Thanks Martin, useful to have an informed perspective... my questions were to prompt discussion on some of the more extreme reactions I've come across to the bill.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that, and it's a good discussion to have - I wasn't supposing otherwise... Some of the reactions have been fairly hysterical, to say the least (although I'm not sure I'd quite put it in the terms Laurence has)
ReplyDelete