Ealing Town Council, Mr. Green, King Nebuchadnezzar, and Ecclesiastical Laryngitis

Feb 3, 2024 by Dave Doveton

By Rollin Grams, Bible and Mission.

A British citizen, Stephen Green, has just been convicted of breaching the Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) in west London last year.[1] He held up a sign that quoted Psalm 139.13 in a protected zone around abortion clinics. The quote was from the King James Version, which is an odd version to be using in our day if one wants to communicate something clearly. It reads, ‘For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb’ (KJV). The English Standard Version translates the verse, ‘For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.’

What, though, does the Public Spaces Protection Order say? It is not itself a law. The government has provided a 24-page document to guide councils in setting up their PSPOs.[2] The guidance proceeds with certain presuppositions that activities in public spaces perceived to be ‘anti-social’ and that leave people feeling powerless to act can and should be proscribed. It also presumes that people who see a sign about God forming a child in the womb in a zone killing babies is anti-social for that community (though one surely will not try to argue that persons killing the unborn are the powerless ones).

PSPOs are a tool to use in carrying out the 2014 Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act. As represented in the PSPO Guidance, this act empowers councils to address activities that ‘have a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality.’ A friend of mine living in Chennai, India, tells me that the various religions have their agreed times to give religious announcements over the speakers so that they do not clash with one another, but I have to wonder about the person, religious or not, who does not want to be woken up for a call to prayer. Given England’s self-inflicted migration crisis, the question does not need to be hypothetical or in reference only to India. Although, one does have to wonder how, if multiculturalism is a sacrosanct value for society, shutting out Britain’s historic, Christian culture fits with the logic.

Read here.