Planted by Water

Two weeks ago, before I went on my retreat, I wrote something about the Religious Hatred Bill. It received a fair bit of comment, and a number of people have asked me about it. So I’ve been doing a little more thinking about it.

The Racial and Religious Hatred Bill is about adding to the Public Order Act of 1986 to make it a crime to ‘stir up hatred against people on religious grounds.’ The motivation for the new law was especially to protect Muslims from attacks on them, which have apparently become more common since 9/11.

The concern of many Christians is that it will be used (or mis-used as these are presumably not the purposes for which the government intend it) to try to silence us from preaching the gospel, claiming that Jesus is the only way to God or being critical of other religions or even occultic practices in a moderate and appropriate way.

Of course, if the law is used appropriately, then it could actually be rightly used against some of the methods of the organisations BNP and against fundamentalist Islamic preachers who preach hatred and terrorism.

On balance, however, I would not support it, and will write to my MP to say so, because:

• It seems to me that the current laws are enough to stop genuine incitement to religious hatred against Muslims or any other religion.
• It does possibly make it easier for the law to be mis-used against Christian preachers who have absolutely no intention of ‘stirring up hatred.’
• It may actually lead to greater intolerance and animosity between different religious groups, working against the community cohesion that it  is presumably trying to achieve.

Having said that, I will not be taking up the invitation from some Christian groups to join them at a rally in Westminster against the bill, or signing petitions or generally getting hot under the collar about it. I think the reaction of some Christians has, once again, been disproportionate. My main reasons for not reacting are:

• We need to choose our battles carefully.
• Often our responses are perceived as irrational defensiveness. My God and my gospel don’t need defending against the world. (The defence of the gospel is against the perversion of it within the ‘confessing church,’ not the misunderstanding of it within the confused world.)
• Whilst we should not be unaware of the schemes of the enemy (though I am convinced that there are others of his schemes that should give us more concern) we should not get all wound up by them either.
• Even if they do try to inhibit us in speaking the truth, we are always free to preach the gospel. One of the things that has most amazed me in listening to some Christians about this is how they admit that such a law would inhibit them speaking out!! Why?! We must obey God rather than men. It is an odd thing that whilst some Christians have a persecution complex, they are also unprepared for actual persecution.
• Jesus warned us that we would be persecuted. That does not mean that we let people walk over us, that we don’t appeal to the law at times (as Paul did) or that we don’t resist the misuse of power. But it does mean that we keep things in perspective.

I believe that it is very important, in our times, to demonstrate in the public square that it is possible to disagree and state beliefs that others find offensive without actually being offensive and disagreeable ourselves. My problem is that many of the Christians who are up in arms about this bill actually are ‘disagreeable’ in their approach, and that their adversarial approach is very unhelpful. We should reject the political correctness of pluralism that says we cannot claim to know the truth or say that someone else is wrong in what they believe; but we should do so with an attitude of peace (because we know that God is in control no matter what happens) and of grace (as we are trying to win people, not arguments). With any opportunity we get to speak on this issue in the public square we should show total peace and grace about it, demonstrate that we are most definitely  against actual incitement to religious hatred but explain that such a law may be misused to stop us all from learning how to disagree agreeably in a multicultural society.

But there are greater and more important battles ahead - so let’s reserve our energy!