AN ONLINE printing company has just refused to print leaflets for free public distribution which I have written on the subjects of abortion and the LGBT agenda as they affect our national life. The reason given was that the leaflets may well cause offence.
One cannot be sure of the company’s deeper thinking and stance beyond this, but it did lead me to muse upon the fact that the rejection of a Biblical worldview is now so deeply ingrained within our society that there are certain issues which are deemed to be beyond debate, and that those who do not subscribe to the received wisdom on these issues must not even be granted the freedom to disseminate their views.
Is this not where we are in modern Britain: no-go areas in respect of legitimate criticism of fashionable causes? This is why Christians are so concerned about the government’s stance on so-called Islamophobia, and about the possibility of legal force being given to a new definition of Islamophobia. Islam and Christianity are diametrically opposed and theologically irreconcilable. The Christian loves his Muslim neighbour, but is also under an obligation to uphold the truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only way for anyone to reach heaven. This necessitates a total rejection of Islam’s way. No religion can be granted immunity to challenges, or indeed denunciations, of its core teachings. I do not demand such immunity for Christianity. Bring the challenges and denunciations on, I say: we can handle them.
In the leaflet on abortion which the print company declined, I focused on the Biblical basis for the Christian opposition, emphasising how life begins at the moment of fertilisation. Indeed, since God has ordained in eternity all that ever comes to pass in time, all persons, even all those yet to be born, are in His sight real persons. Thus the Lord told the prophet Jeremiah: ‘Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations’ (Jeremiah 1:5). Here we see the Lord referring to Jeremiah as a human being whom He knew long before even he was conceived.
The influence of militant, secular feminism has of course been a key factor in society’s acceptance of abortion, and therefore in the greater difficulty in having an open debate on this issue. However, debate is exactly what we need, even though some may be offended.
When I am challenged during open-air preaching on this issue, the ‘what about rape?’ argument frequently comes up as somehow justifying the practice of abortion generally. I pointed out in the rejected article that even if a child were conceived through an act of rape, it would be a gross injustice to punish the innocent unborn one for the sin of the father; and in any case, in around 99 per cent of cases abortion is carried out for reasons other than rape.
It is only by vigorous discussion between disagreeing parties that one can arrive at a better understanding on this emotive issue, and this is why I find preaching on the streets to be so important. Not infrequently, women passing by get very upset at any public denunciation of the enormous loss of life which has occurred in Britain since the Abortion Act of 1967 (estimated at 10million), but it is really positive when there are some who are willing to engage and talk things through, with both parties acting in a courteous manner.
Concerning the article on LGBT issues declined by the print company, I referred to the historical origins of gay rights activism and to the Gay Liberation Front manifesto of 1971 in particular. This document is still revered today, and has been commended for the way in which ‘it offers a radical critique of . . . what we now call homophobia; as well as a pioneering, far-sighted agenda for both social and personal transformation’.
The 1971 manifesto makes no attempt to hide the deeply anti-Christian roots of the gay rights movement. It states that Christianity’s ‘archaic and irrational teachings support the family and marriage as the only permitted condition for sex . . . We must aim at the abolition of the family, so that the sexist, male supremacist system can no longer be nurtured there . . . We are not in fact being idealistic to aim at abolishing the family and the cultural distinctions between men and women . . . Humanity is at last in a position where we can progress’.
So at the heart of the LGBT agenda is the notion that God’s created order of male and female (Genesis 1:27), along with the family unit overseen by a father and mother, are anachronisms with no place in this ‘progressive’ age in which we now live! It is the duty of Christian ministers to challenge such attacks on God’s created order, and to be able to do so without being silenced on the grounds that they are causing offence.
The government is directly aiding the pro-gay rights lobby in becoming a no-go area for criticism or rebuttal by its current intention to introduce legislation on banning what it calls ‘conversion therapy’. This term is being employed to incorporate not just obviously abusive practices but the normal activity of Christian ministers, including prayer and preaching, as they encourage people to abandon a God-rejecting lifestyle. One wonders if the government has ever stopped to consider that ‘conversion’ is in fact a distinctly Christian word, and represents the primary endeavour that Christians are engaged in, as they are emulate their Lord, who declared: ‘Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 18:3).
To counter the enormous success of the LGBT activists in influencing our culture and national institutions, Christians must have the freedom publicly to declare the Biblical teaching. More generally, and to repeat my primary assertion, there must not be any no-go areas for public discussion and debate in which arbitrary silencing is the establishment’s first line of defence on the grounds that alternative viewpoints will cause offence.
