A crime to be a Christian?

"We are entering the early stages of what could become persecution and outright criminalization of Christianity if it is not exposed and fought vigorously by all freedom-loving people." Joseph Farah.

The Cestello Annunciation, Sandro Boticelli,
c.1489; Uffizi, Florence (source Web museum).

In the Sunday Telegraph this week, there is the disturbing story of Pauline Howe, a 67-year-old  grandmother who became the target of official spite after writing to Norwich City Council to complain about verbal abuse she received whilst handing out leaflets at the city's gay parade.

Mrs Howe is a Christian, and it is her sincere belief that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God and, as she said in her letter, that it "contributed to the downfall of every empire". Whether or not we agree with such views, what happened later to Mrs Howe should concern us all, because it is like something from the files of the Romanian secret police in the era of Ceausescu. 

Some weeks after sending her letter to the council, Mrs Howe heard a bang on the door. When she opened it, two burly coppers came barging into the house and, after informing her that she had been reported as having committed a "hate crime", proceeded to grill her about her beliefs and the contents of the letter. The interrogation left the pensioner frightened and shaking. It was, she said, "a very unpleasant experience", though fortunately for her the bullies in blue left after deciding not to press charges. 

George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, about a future totalitarian state, featured a fictional cadre of political enforcers called the Thought Police, whose task it was – with the help of a pervasive network of spies and informers – to detect and punish deviations from orthodox thought, or "thoughtcrime". Evidently our own East Anglian flatfoots, aided by publicly payrolled local government informers, can do a convincing impression of Orwell's Thought Police – at least when the "thought-criminals" are defenceless old ladies.

Unfortunately, this kind of vicitmization is not limited to Norfolk, and it is not perpetrated solely by the police, because within each of our public services – education, health, local government and so on – there seems to be a hard core of zealots dedicated to the strict enforcement of "correct" opinion and the punishment of dissenters. Christians like Mrs Howe seem to have been a specially favoured target, probably because aspects of their moral philosophy are incompatible with the prevailing doctrine of moral laxity and relativism. Below are a few recent examples of violations of Christians by police and other officials in various parts of the country.

September 2009. Liverpool hoteliers Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang are charged under Section 5 of the Public Order Act for "insulting" a Muslim guest. They are alleged to have said, in a conversation about religion, that Mohammed was a warlord and that Muslim women's dress is a form of bondage.

July 2009. Manchester street preacher Miguel Hayworth is bundled into a police van and interrogated for over an hour following a complaint of "homophobia".

June 2009: Islington Council registrar Theresa Davies is bullied and threatened with dismissal after declining to register gay "marriages" because of her Christian beliefs. She tells of a powerful “militant political-sexual libertarian lobby" within the council.

May 2009. A poll carried out by the Sunday Telegraph reveals that thousands of British Christians believe that they have been discriminated against just for being Christian.

April 2009. Easter leaflet distributors are surrounded by mounted and armour-clad police after a caller complains that it is "offensive" for the Chorlton Evangelical Church to be advertising in a largely gay neighbourhood. One of the distributors, church worker Julian Hurst, is cross-examined next day by an officer from Manchester's "Race and Hate Crimes Unit".

February 2009. Five-year-old Jasmine Cain is reduced to tears after being reprimanded by a teacher at Landscore Primary School in Devon for talking to a friend about Jesus.

December 2008. Nurse Caroline Petrie, a Baptist, is suspended without pay by North Somerset Primary Care Trust for offering to pray for an elderly patient during a home visit.

November 2008. Constable Graham Cogman, an Anglican, is sacked for "misconduct" after criticizing a bombardment of gay posters and propaganda at the Great Yarmouth police station where he was based. Responding to the case, Colin Hart, director of the Christian Institute, said: "Very often ... gay rights trump religious rights".

May 2008. Police in Birmingham threaten two evangelists with arrest for "hate crime", telling them that they are not allowed to spread the Christian word in a Muslim area.

International news often contains stories of Christians being persecuted abroad, especially in Muslim countries. But it is worrying indeed to find Christians being routinely bullied by the authorities here in Britain, a nominally Christian country.

Perhaps today's senior-level public officials (I refuse to use the term "public servants", for obvious reasons) are the first generation to have been subjected to Marxist indoctrination from their  earliest years, and the effects of that indoctrination are now being felt by the public. Whether or not that is the underlying reason, there is no doubt that we find ourselves increasingly at the mercy of police, social workers and council functionaries who are incapable of independent thought, and seem to fear it in others.

With a rapidly growing Muslim presence in Britain, an increasingly powerful gay lobby, and the continuing secularization of schools, state-sponsored victimization of Christians and other traditional groups by tunnel-minded zealots – real-life Thought Police devoid of compassion or common sense – looks set to increase.
Pauline Howe, the Norwich pensioner whose ordeal was recounted at the top of this article, is presently seeking advice from the Christian Institute, a non-denominational Christian charity. One of the Institute's spokesmen is Mike Judge, who said in response to this latest case:

"For democracy to survive people must be free to express their beliefs – yes, even unpopular beliefs – to government bodies without fear of a knock at the door from the police. It’s not a crime to be a Christian, but it increasingly feels like it."