One Christian preaching the faith, 14 police silencing him

Sep 20, 2021 by

by Peter Simpson, TCW:

OVER recent weeks the manner in which the Metropolitan Police prevented a Christian pastor going about his lawful duties has been in the hands of solicitors in a formal legal process seeking redress. It is therefore only now possible to make known the shocking police action on August 20 in Uxbridge, West London.

On this date I was preaching the gospel in the open area near to the entrance to the Underground station. I began preaching at around 1.05pm on Bible texts including, ‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23), and referring to the sinful hearts of all men. I moved on to speak of the state of the nation, and made a brief reference to the immorality of abortion and to the biblical teaching that marriage can be only between one man and one woman. I had been preaching for 15 or 20 minutes at the most when two police officers came up to me and said that ‘multiple complaints’ had been received about ‘hate speech’. A few minutes after that there were no fewer than 14 police on the scene.

Why was it necessary for so many officers to rush to deal with a pastor preaching from the Bible? The police were trying to give the impression that they were dealing with a serious public order problem, when there was no such problem at all. At one point they told onlookers to disperse, but the only reason for the increasing number of onlookers was all the police officers! In fact, there had been no adverse responses at all to the preaching in terms of heckling or gesticulations from passers-by.

The officers did not enter into any discussion about what had actually been said, and were unwilling to consider my own account. They were also unwilling to countenance the possibility that the complaints received may simply have been the subjective response of those who dislike Christian teaching anyway. Is it not the task of the police to investigate rather than to presume?

The officers expressed their concern about those in society with ‘protected characteristics’ (namely LGBT people), but did not demonstrate any parallel concern about the protected characteristic of religion, and, more particularly, about the protected characteristic of Christians who believe what the Bible teaches.

Read here

Please right-click links to open in a new window.

Related Posts

Tags

Share This