Christian Groups Welcome Rejection of Religious Hatred Bill

The Evangelical Alliance and CARE have commented following the defeat of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill in the House of Lords Oct. 25th. Christians, religious groups as well as comedians celebrated as the government’s proposed Racial and Religious Hatred Bill was overwhelmingly defeated.

|TOP|The Bill had been proposed by the government to outlaw incitement to religious hatred; however it has been widely criticised and condemned as going too far.

House of Lords’ peers voted by a majority of 149 to support a cross-bench move to implement freedom of speech safeguards into the proposals.

Opponents to the Bill have been hugely diverse, from the Evangelical Alliance and Christian Party, to comedian Rowan Atkinson and various Secular groups have all condemned the Bill as being drawn too widely and have expressed concerns that it could outlaw criticisms of beliefs.

Speaking after the vote in favour of an amendment by Lord Lester, R. David Muir, Director of Public Policy at the Evangelical Alliance said, “Peers have done the only sensible thing with this legislation and forced the Government to rethink its position. The strength of opposition to this Bill in the House of Lords is a timely reminder to ministers of the importance this country places on free speech.”

Don Horrocks, Head of Public Affairs at the Evangelical Alliance added, “We have worked tirelessly with a number of organisations to keep this issue in the headlines. The overwhelming backing of Lord Lester’s amendment is testimony to the belief that, although well-intentioned, this Bill is seriously flawed. We now urge the Government to consult with the relevant people to get the Bill right, which they should have done at the start.”

Meanwhile, Christian social concern charity CARE has welcomed the move by Members of the House of Lords to throw out the Bill, but is warning Christians not to become complacent.

Roger Smith, Head of Public Policy at CARE, said that the Government will still try and push ahead with the Bill and that Christians should be more active than ever in writing to their local MP on the issue.

Smith said, “The Government are ideologically committed to this Bill – they are bound to its passage because it is an election manifesto pledge. They also have the majority in the House of Commons to overturn these welcome changes.

|QUOTE|“Now it is for everyone who values freedom of speech and good community relations, not just Christians, to appeal to the good sense of Members of Parliament to support these new protections offered in the Bill when the Government do challenge them in the House of Commons.”

Smith said that a vote in the Commons is likely within the next month, “We need Labour MPs to rebel against what is likely to be a Government three-line whip - they need to know that their constituents would support any decision to so. The smaller the Government majority on any vote, the more difficult it will be for them to use the Parliament Act against the House of Lords to pass this legislation.”

Home Office Minister Lady Scotland also stated that she was already looking at ways to overcome the divide of opinions on the Bill. In addition, Lord Hunt has said he would be willing to sit down with ministers to try and improve the proposals, however, he still forced the Lords vote to test the degree of resistance to the current proposals.

Earlier this month on Oct. 11th thousands of Christians gathered outside the Houses of Parliament in a protest organised by a Christian coalition, against the proposed Religious Hatred Bill.

Rev Katei Kirby, the African and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance (ACEA) Chief Executive told, "It affects everyone so deeply. This is not just about doctrine. This is not even about theological opposition. This is about our basic freedom to speak and to preach."

"It affects people's freedom to discuss and to critique anything because it might upset or offend somebody else and that is very serious."

Revealing the width of the opposition to the bill, the National Secular Society also took part in the demonstration. Vice-president Terry Sanderson said: "We are coming at it from a completely different angle from the Christians. They are looking at the restrictions on their right to evangelise. We are looking at the restrictions on our being about to criticise religion per se so we can make common cause with them on this."

"I think this is an indicator to the government of just how wide the opposition is,” Sanderson told the BBC.

In addition, last week a group of opponents to the Bill, including former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, and comedian Rowan Atkinson suggested a series of amendments.

The new proposals call for insurances in the Bill that nobody is found guilty of a religious hate crime unless it is proved that they intended to stir up hatred. They said only “threatening words” should be banned by the Bill, and not those that are simply abusive or insulting.

The Home Office did say after the Lords defeat that it would not accept the Tory and Liberal Democrat proposals, which were also backed by some Labour peers, because they could make it almost impossible for courts to convict under the law.

However, Charles Clarke is expected to amend his plans for the law after the heavy defeat on the government last night.