Judge: Christian beliefs have no legal standing. Evangelicals call it persecution

Gary MacFarlane wanted special religious accommodation.

In 2008, Gary MacFarlane, a Bristol sex therapist and relationship counselor, refused to offer services to a same-sex couple because it conflicted with his Christian beliefs. His employer, counseling service Relate Avon, fired him. MacFarlane brought a religious discrimination case before an employment tribunal and lost. He sought the right to appeal.

The case brought great media attention in the UK, and even received a supporting statement from the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey. Carey raised the specter of “future civil unrest” if anti-Christian rulings continue:

The description of religious faith in relation to sexual ethics as ‘discriminatory’ is crude and illuminates a lack of sensitivity to religious belief.

The comparison of a Christian, in effect, with a ‘bigot’ . . . is further evidence of a disparaging attitude to the Christian faith and its values . . .

It is, of course, but a short step from the dismissal of a sincere Christian from employment to a religious bar to any employment by Christians. I believe that further judicial decisions are likely to end up at this point and this is why I believe it is necessary to intervene now.”

Carey, it would seem, believes (as do many American Christians) that it is acceptable job performance to take a position with duties that one is not willing to perform based on religious beliefs, and then refuse to perform those duties. We have seen such cases in the United States, in which pharmacists are fired for refusing to dispense prescribed drugs such as RU-486 (the “morning-after pill”, common name for Mifepristone, an abortifacient).

Lord Justice John Grant McKenzie Laws presided over the MacFarlane case, and determined that MacFarlane did not have the right to appeal. He responded to the case, and to Carey, in part:

We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs. The precepts of any one religion – any belief system – cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other. If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic.

The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments. The individual conscience is free to accept such dictated law, but the state, if its people are to be free, has the burdensome duty of thinking for itself.

In a free constitution such as ours there is an important distinction to be drawn between the law’s protection of the right to hold and express a belief and the law’s protection of that belief’s substance or content . . . the conferment of any legal protection of preference upon a particular substantive moral position on the ground only that it is espoused by the adherents of a particular faith, however long its tradition, however long its culture, is deeply unprincipled.

Laws went on to state that “religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence,” a difficult position to argue against . . . unless you take the Bible (or other religion’s texts) as proof or evidence.

This is just one of several cases of secular values of tolerance and nondiscrimination being upheld over the right to religion-based bigotry in the UK. British evangelicals are crying foul, claiming that they are being oppressed.

This past weekend, the Bible by the Beach conference in Eastbourne featured a number of Evangelical speakers. Among them was Bishop of Lewes, the Rt. Rev. Wallace Benn. Benn warned attendees that “rampant, illiberal secularism” was taking over the UK, and urged more political involvement:

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.

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.

Mike Ovey, of Oak Hill Theological College, set forth one of religion’s favorite fallacies — “absence of belief is a religion” — and added one I’ve never experienced — “faith is objective because it can be taught”:

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.

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.

I can rationally communicate my dislike of beets. Does that make my dislike of beets objective, or subjective? The fact that I dislike beets is objective. However, my like or dislike of particular root vegetables is subjective.

Andrea Williams of the Christian Legal Center and Christian Concern for Our Nation, laid out the case for the Christian persecution complex so commonly heard in the United States:

The law is being used to oppress. Judges don’t understand that for a Christian, being free doesn’t simply mean being free to think like a Christian. It means that when a Christian goes to work they need to act like a Christian and work like a Christian.

We are certainly seeing the marginalization of Christianity. In a biblical interpretation, it could be persecution, not like our brothers and sisters losing their lives in other countries, but the next step is criminalization.

It’s time to say ‘not on my watch’ and in love and grace, speak the truth to a broken and heartbroken society.

Rather than accept that the world is moving on around them, Evangelicals are ramping up their efforts to restore theocracy in Europe, and establish it in the United States. They use cries of “oppression” and “persecution” whenever courts refuse to give them special accommodations based on their religous beliefs.

Theocracy could be our future. How will you stand against it?

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Mike Daniels is co-editor of Secular News Daily.

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