by Peter Simpson, TCW
LAST Saturday, as I was preaching in the open air, I was confronted by a militant atheist who vigorously claimed that Christianity is a nasty religion which endorses slavery. He got very agitated at my refusal to accept his arguments and my defence of the Bible’s authority. He then threw the contents of his can of orangeade in my face. I did not after this ring the police and say that I had been the victim of hate speech and ‘Christianophobia’. This kind of interaction is all par for the course in taking the gospel message into the public square.
The incident, however, leads me on to consideration of the Government’s new Islamophobia definition, rebranding it as ‘anti-Muslim hostility’, and I offer this follow-up to Bepi Pezzulli’s recent insightful piece in TCW.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s new definition is bound to influence all our public bodies, such as the police, councils and educational institutions, museums and libraries. The business world and the media will also be affected. Indeed, the definition will inevitably permeate most layers of society. It includes the following: