A church in Britain is facing criminal charges for preaching Christianity in public. The United Kingdom has made a habit in recent years of criminalizing Christian preaching and prayer on public streets (including silent prayer near abortion clinics), but this might be the first time the authorities have targeted an entire church and not just an individual.
Bread of Life Community Church in Essex this week was issued something called a Community Protection Notice, which could criminalize its pastor, a man named Stephen Clayden, as well as church members for preaching in public—something the church has done without incident for six years. A hearing is set for May 1, but in the meantime breaching the notice is a criminal offense, which means Clayden and his congregation could face prosecution if they continue their street ministry.
The notice was served following months of escalating pressure from local authorities in Essex, which at first cited amplification (despite no prohibitions on amplified sound in the area where the church members were preaching) but eventually accused the church of using “religious messaging” that mentions “hell,” causing “harassment, alarm and distress” to local residents.
“The notice continues by saying that wardens have ‘tried to educate’ the preachers, but the preaching is ‘unreasonable’ and having a ‘detrimental effect on the community,” according to a statement about the case from Christian Concern, an organization that advocates for the rights of Christians in Britain.
Clayden, the pastor, was quoted in news reports saying that his congregation has “preached the Bible lawfully and peacefully in Colchester for six years. We have harmed no one. We cannot and will not stop preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. No council has the authority to silence the church.”
A lawyer for the church said that “public order powers designed to address genuine antisocial behavior are now being used to clamp down on Christian preaching. Today it is amplification, tomorrow it is the content of the message itself. We are seeing a slippery slope from managing noise to policing theology.”
All of this is as obvious as can be. In a healthy, functioning Western society, no one would question the right of Christians to preach on public streets and share the gospel, nor would local authorities arrogate to themselves the right to “educate” preachers on what Christian teachings are or are not “unreasonable.”
But Britain is not a healthy Western society. It is a rapidly de-Christianizing society, which means it is becoming increasingly hostile toward the Christians who still call it home. Note how the British authorities never use these police powers to target Muslims praying in the streets or deliberately gathering to pray outside churches. Public noise complaints are never issued for amplified Muslim calls to prayer. The law is applied only to Christians—and in this case, specifically to suppress orthodox Christian teaching about sin, judgment, and hell.
The stark reality is that as British society continues down the road of de-Christianization, public authorities will become less and less tolerant of any Christian doctrines or worship in public spaces. They will, as we see here, actively persecute—and perhaps even jail—Christians who refuse to confine their religion to strictly private settings. In time, they will come for the private spaces as well.
Shocking as this is in an historically Christian country like Britain, it is nevertheless to be expected. Britain, along with the entire West, has been shedding its Christian heritage for many decades now, and in so doing it is repudiating the very source of its vitality and coherence as a Western country.
Civil liberties like free speech and freedom of religion are inextricably tied to Christianity in Britain and the West. Without that Christian heritage, there is no liberal or secular basis for free speech. That’s why you see basic civil rights under threat in every Western country that has rejected its Christian patrimony.
Just last month, for example, Finland’s supreme court convicted Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola and Member of Parliament Paivi Räsänen for publishing a pamphlet about Christian theology regarding sexual differences. They now face thousands of euros in fines, and their pamphlet, by order of the court, must be “removed from public access and destroyed.” The effect of the ruling, if it isn’t appealed and overturned by the European Court of Human Rights, will be to criminalize orthodox Christian teaching in Finland and prohibit Christians from speaking or writing about what the Bible teaches and what Christians have professed for thousands of years.
The booklet in question was written by Räsänen, a medical doctor and the wife of a pastor, in 2004—seven years before the Finnish law that was used to criminalize it was passed. As my colleague Joy Pullmann has written, “Pohjola published the booklet online and in print as part of a theological education series. Finland’s top prosecutor began to prosecute them in 2019, after Räsänen tweeted a Bible verse to publicly rebuke Finland’s state church for sponsoring a queer parade.”
The ensuing case, known in Europe as “the Bible trial,” included a vast investigation of Räsänen’s writings and speeches going back three decades. She was interrogated by police for 13 hours. All for a booklet about biblical sexual differences entitled, “Male and Female He Created Them”—a line taken directly from the book of Genesis.
No matter. Räsänen and Pohjola were prosecuted anyway under Finland’s Soviet-style hate crime law, which protects people in certain identity groups from being insulted. Indeed, according to Alliance Defending Freedom International, which provided legal support, “The Court found Räsänen and the Bishop guilty for having ‘made available to the public and kept available to the public opinions that insult homosexuals as a group on the basis of their sexual orientation.’”
These are not the actions of a democratic, Western government but of an authoritarian one. They are the direct consequence of rejecting Christianity as the basis for public morality and justice, which is what created liberal democracy in the first place. As the West abandons its Christian heritage, and as fewer and fewer practicing Christians are to be found in Europe and the United States, we should expect real persecution—not just ostracization or mockery, but the full weight of the law—to descend on the Christian remnant in these countries.
You cannot keep the culture without the cult. If we reject our Christian patrimony, we will be rejecting all those things which rely on it—like free speech, freedom of religion, and the very concept of human rights or government by consent of the governed. All of these things rely for their coherence and vitality on the Christian faith that birthed and sustained them. Without it, as we see in Britain and Finland and across the West, a completely different kind of society will arise, one that has no use for Christianity and the civilization it created.
