by Aaron Edwards, That Good Fight
Inappropriate Speech, Islamophobia, and Evangelical Privacy
In Christian nations like Britain, could Christianity be illegal?
I was going to call this article “If the State Bans Street Preaching…” Then I heard about Birmingham, the second largest city in England, where—as I write—police have been engaged not only in removing English flags from lampposts, but in enforcing a new public order which does, in fact, ban street preaching.
Oh, they don’t call it the banning of “preaching” of course. They simply call it the banning all things that make too much “noise”, including musical instruments or anything that uses amplification, etc. As reported, Birmingham Council made a statement saying there were fears that such activities contributed to “an environment of harassment and lack of control” in the city centre.
The state doesn’t like losing control, of course, and clearly feels it has far too little power over how we think and speak as it is. If some feel “harassed” by what some people say, presumably the best solution would be for the state to stop people saying anything at all? Or if they absolutely must speak, perhaps they ought do so without the kind of conviction that might suggest they actually believe what they’re saying. After all, there’s a chance someone else might actually hear them.