The head of the U.K.'s Christian Legal Centre sees persecution of
Christians in public life, looming behind controversial recent remarks
by Equality and Human Rights Commissioner Trevor Phillips.
Andrea Minichiello Williams, who directs the legal center, told CNA
that Phillips also sounded “naive,” saying he “doesn't seem to be living
in the same Britain that I'm living in.”
Williams is not the only one who wondered where Phillips got some of
the ideas he expressed in a June 19 interview with the Telegraph
newspaper.
The equality commissioner indicated that Muslim immigrants
were integrating better into British society than many Christian
populations, and said that Catholic adoption agencies were more clearly
discriminatory than Shariah courts.
Phillips also said British Christians tended to imagine
discrimination against them where none existed. And he indicated that
believers should not expect exemptions from the 2010 “Equality Act,”
with its controversial language on sexual orientation, once they stepped
outside “the door of the church or mosque.”
Williams, whose legal center advocates for the rights of British
Christians in the public square, said her country's Christian roots once
made it “a land of great freedom,” where “freedom of conscience” was
respected.
“Those things we have seen eradicated under the Equalities agenda,
which is Trevor Phillips' approach,” she said in a June 30 interview.
“Secularism, under the Equalities agenda, is not neutral. It punishes
dissenters.”
Williams said the system of equality laws, which began under Prime
Minister Tony Blair and continued with his successor Gordon Brown,
“sounds like utopia – but in fact, it leads to the beginnings of
tyranny.”
“If you enter into the public sphere, or a public sector job, you
have to speak and act the prevailing Equalities agenda. If you do not do
that, if you disagree, then you are punished. You lose your job. You
become under investigation. You perhaps get accused of hate speech.
These are our realities in the United Kingdom.”
Phillips' most blatant criticism of traditional Christianity in the
Telegraph interview came during a discussion of immigrant populations
from Africa and the Carribean.
The commissioner acknowledged that there was “an awful lot of noise
about the Church being persecuted,” but said the “more real issue” for
“conventional churches” was the influx of “people who … believe in an
old time religion which in my view is incompatible with a modern,
multi-ethnic, multicultural society.”
Williams explained that this perception of “incompatibility” came
from a caricature of Christianity, not from the Gospel of Christ
himself. “Everything that flows from him,” she said, “leads to the
recognition of the innate dignity of every human being.”
“Because Christianity is not coercive – unlike secularism, and unlike Islam – it leads to true tolerance.”
In his extensive interview with the Telegraph, Phillips said
individual believers could expect the commission to stand up for their
right to worship and believe as they pleased.
He said it was “part of
the settlement of a liberal democracy” for individuals not to be
“penalized or treated in a discriminatory way” on account of “being an
Anglican, being a Muslim or being a Methodist or being a Jew.”
But Williams charged that the commission is not upholding even this limited interpretation of religious freedom.
“What Mr. Phillips needs to do,” she said, “is to come spend a day at
the Christian Legal Centre, run through the cases, and see the
discrimination that there is out there.”
“In the Sherry Chapman case, for instance – the nurse who was told to
take off her cross after 38 years of wearing it in frontline nursing –
exceptions were made for the Muslims, with the long flowing hijab and a
big brooch.”
“Down in a South London council, Muslims are allowed to pray five
times a day, but Christians are not permitted to display Christian
calendars on their desks. These are our realities.”
She also pointed to the case of Eunice and Owen Johns, the elderly
Pentecostal couple who were rejected as foster parents – despite their
extensive experience – because they disapproved of homosexuality.
“The
Equality Commission intervened in that case. They intervened against the
Christians,” Williams noted.
“They've intervened in a number of other high-profile cases. They
have not, ever, intervened against Muslims. They've only ever intervened
in the Christian cases to stand against the Christians. This is not
equality. This is inequality.”
“There's a complete making-way for Islam, and yet Christianity is suppressed,” Williams observed.
“This notion of accommodating Shariah, of accepting it – and then, of
saying that Catholic adoption agencies, which believe a child needs a
married mother and father, should be closed – is devastating for
society.”
Williams says Britain's aggressive pursuit of secularism was creating
a “vacuum” that radical Muslims could seek to exploit. “Radical Islam
has an agenda in this nation, and works hard,” she noted.
But many English Christians fail to stand up for biblical truth in
this context.
“In many ways, the Church has herself to blame for the
state we're in. What we've got to do is find our voice. Otherwise, there
will be increased oppression and suppression.”
Williams observed that Christianity has historically “survived much
worse than attacks by Trevor Phillips.”
But she acknowledges that things
look “very bleak” at the moment.
“We've currently got a government that's consulting on extending
civil unions to religious premises,” she noted. “They said they would
never do that.”
Williams and other English Christians want authentic religious
freedom for themselves and others. But they understand the conflict with
secularism is part of the cost of discipleship.
“Jesus suffered a false trial, was hated by the world, put on the
cross,” she recalled. “But there was his resurrection, and the great
hope that flows from that.”