The Future of Christian Free Speech

Prison for Preachers ?

by Jay Ray, Presidential Prayer Team: You will be frightened by this story of police overreaction – or at least you should be – even though it doesn’t involve any baton beatings of innocent civilians, overzealous use of Taser guns or even the excessive application of pepper spray. This story of police overreaction involves only a question, not a weapon.

It wasn’t even a harsh question, really. The English police officer who posed the question asked it ever so nicely, with a touch of innocence. He was professional and restrained and unfailingly polite. And when the answer to the question wasn’t quite satisfactory, the policeman remained cordial. He didn’t even handcuff the preacher before hauling him off to jail.

The incident took place in Wimbledon, England earlier this month, and the preacher was a street evangelist named Tony Miano. He was delivering a sidewalk message warning against sexual immorality and frankly drawing very little attention. But when he identified homosexual behavior as a sin, someone called the cops.

Miano, it turns out, had been reported under Section Five of Britain’s Public Order Act, which says that “A person is guilty of an offence if he uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour.” Although the Act was recently amended to exclude the word “insulting,” it has been used repeatedly to single out Christians who express a belief that homosexual behavior is unbiblical.

In a remarkable exchange that was captured on video, Miano explained to the police that he was simply preaching from the Bible about all forms of immorality. But then came the question that led to his arrest: “What specific parts have you been preaching from in the Bible?”

The authorities, it seems, don’t mind the Bible as long as you leave out the parts that might be offensive to someone. In a strangely similar incident separated by 50 miles and 350 years, John Bunyan was arrested in Bedford, England for much the same transgression. A magistrate charged him with preaching unlawfully and thus causing a “great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this kingdom.” Bunyan was eligible for release from jail just as soon as he would agree to stop preaching, but he wouldn’t do it. He spent many years in a dark and clammy cell, accepting every hardship without complaint for the sake of his faith.

But this type of thing couldn’t happen in America, could it? The United States has always preserved an unequivocal right to free speech, hasn’t it? The law, in actuality, is not quite so reassuring. Professor Toni Massaro of the University of Arizona, a noted expert on so-called “hate speech” and the law, has researched the Supreme Court’s collected rulings on freedom of speech and found them to be a bit of a mixed bag. “The Court has acknowledged,” she writes, “that in some circumstances, with certain types of expression, the state may interrupt the message or even ban it all together.”

Take Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., for example, who authored a famous Supreme Court opinion in 1919 in which he wrote that “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre.” The idea behind the ruling is that if the words create a danger to someone else, the speech may not be permissible.

Some activists argue that this is exactly what occurs when someone speaks out against homosexual rights or behavior. After a crazed Neo-Nazi named Jacob Robida attacked several people in a Massachusetts gay bar in 2006, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Executive Director Matt Foreman attributed the event to the “hatred and loathing” of Christian leaders. “The blood spilled,” he said, “is on their hands.”

Given the upward trajectory of homosexual rights and the extreme marginalization of those who hold to traditional biblical views, prison for preachers may not be far away.

Today, BOLDLY pray that America’s leaders will preserve your right to freedom of speech that was hard-won by our Founders. And, resolve to be equal to any persecution that may come. John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress from a dungeon, and it was there also that he responded to a well-meaning friend, who suggested he give up preaching so that he might be freed. “I am not running myself into sufferings,” Bunyan replied, “but if godliness will expose me to them, the Lord God make me more godly still.”
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Jim Ray is a writer, fundraiser and consultant. He and his wife Stacey have two children and reside in Nashville, TN. Article via Morality in America, Presidential Prayer Team Site.

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