Christians in the UK are facing increasing marginalisation and oppression under new laws originally intended to safeguard equality, Christian leaders have warned.
The frank warning was delivered to around 1,000 Evangelical Christians at the Bible by the Beach conference held in Eastbourne over the weekend.
They heard how equality laws have led to the dismissal of Christians who offered to pray for clients or patients, the closure of adoption agencies that refuse to place children with same-sex couples, and charities losing funding because of their Christian ethos.
The conference explored the court ruling last week involving Gary McFarlane, a relationship counsellor with Relate Avon who was dismissed for telling his employers that he could not counsel same-sex couples because of his Christian beliefs.
He lost his legal bid to bring his dismissal before the Court of Appeal after Lord Justice Laws ruled that the Christian faith was “subjective” and “incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence”, and that it would be “divisive, capricious and arbitrary” to protect a moral position held on purely religious grounds.
The Bishop of Lewes, the Rt Rev Wallace Benn, argued that the Church of England was still the established Church and one of the UK’s three constitutional guarantors of civil freedoms, alongside Parliament and the monarchy.
He warned that Christians needed to be aware that “rampant, illiberal secularism” had become the prevailing attitude in the UK.
“We need to understand what’s going on at this moment in time. We are at a very, very tricky point as a nation because there is not a consensus commitment to anything else except hardline illiberal secularism and it’s a very dangerous place to be,” he said.
“We need to know what our heritage is, encourage people to return to it, and encourage Christians to be informed and stand up and be counted – graciously, but clearly and firmly.”
The conference was joined by Mike Ovey, Principal of Oak Hill Theological College, who said he had been “shocked” by the “intellectual incoherence” and “godlessness” of Lord Laws’ judgement.
He said: “If one of my students in their first year had written that I would have failed them ... Why? Because the Christian faith is not just subjective but it is rationally communicable.”
He asked the audience: “Do you believe? Did someone transmit and explain the faith to you? Yes. So to say that [the Christian faith] is just subjective is simply not true. Somebody made you believe.
“Lord Laws also believes something, he fails to see that he has a faith too ... secularism fails to understand that it is a religion.”
He went on to say that Christianity was not only being marginalised in the UK but that there was a “deeply held antipathy” to the Christian faith and that other faiths were being treated more fairly than Christianity.
Alistair Begg, senior pastor at Parkside Church near Cleveland, Ohio, quipped: “Climate change is a protected belief in our society but Christianity is not.”
