When the gospel is criminalised, who really suffers the results?

In Colchester, considered one of Britain’s oldest recorded settlements, a complete church community is facing the potential for being criminalised for his or her street ministry.

The church, Bread of Life Community Church in Clacton-on-Sea, has been issued a Community Protection Notice that risks criminalising the whole church, no matter their personal involvement, for preaching the gospel in nearby Colchester town centre.

Over the last decade, we’ve got defended a whole bunch of church ministries and street preachers who’ve been censored for his or her outreach ministries.

And the frequency of those cases is just increasing.

The message is obvious: authorities, each in Colchester and beyond, are curtailing the type of Christianity which may disrupt our complacent culture.

And the gospel has at all times been disruptive.

A Christianity without evangelism?

Whether it’s preaching the gospel, providing food to the homeless, or just offering educational resources to those concerned about Christianity, church ministries that reach into the guts of local communities are vital to the spread of the gospel.

Jesus calls us to be disciples who exit and make more disciples.

You cannot have Christianity without evangelism.

And you can’t have evangelism without going to where the persons are. 

But by this sort of motion, there may be an actual danger that councils will seek to restrict this sort of public proclamation of our faith to throughout the partitions of the church.

In Colchester, it began with claims that the church was being too noisy. But the general public space protection order in place doesn’t ban amplification. Council wardens were enforcing rules on this church’s ministry that didn’t even exist.

Many preachers should take care of these sorts of tensions. But this case has gone one step further by restricting the very message of the gospel.

The church is accused of using ‘religious messaging’, particularly mentioning ‘hell’, that might cause ‘harassment, alarm and distress’.

All their outreach activity is livestreamed and recorded. Anyone is free to leaf through these records. They is not going to see a church that’s aggressive or harassing. They will see a really typical street outreach ministry specializing in the gospel, salvation by faith, the distinctiveness of Jesus, the authority of Scripture and private testimony.

Heaven and hell are mentioned on this gospel context. And after all, people often react strongly to the message of the gospel – sin and redemption, salvation for our sins and rescue from hell. 

The council is greatly overstepping its authority in in search of to manage the gospel message of everlasting salvation; of life-giving hope. This is the gospel and it belongs on our streets.

Sharing truths about everlasting destiny is an act of affection

But even when the church were causing alarm, we must understand that not all ‘alarm’ is ‘harassment’.

Sometimes the reality, especially the reality about our state as sinners deserving God’s judgement, distresses and alarms people. If the gospel is true, people have every right to be alarmed by it. 

Christians cannot claim to like others and yet not tell them the reality of the gospel – even when that truth might offend or distress them.

As the renowned magician and staunch atheist Penn Jillette said: “If you think that there’s a heaven and a hell, and folks may very well be going to hell or not getting everlasting life, and you think that that it’s not likely price telling them this because it could make it socially awkward … how much do you have got to hate any individual to not proselytise? How much do you have got to hate any individual to consider everlasting life is feasible and never tell them that?”

But the sort of alarm this evangelism might cause could be very different to inciting panic or creating undue and dangerous alarm in a public area.

The glory of the gospel is that this urgent message never ends with alarm: through Christ’s death on the cross, we are able to offer people an answer to this problem – a way of salvation and a restored relationship with God.

Alarm over sin that then results in biblical repentance, salvation and lasting life-giving change can only be helpful, each to the person and to the community.

Word and motion must go hand in hand

Proclaiming the word of the gospel goes alongside living out the gospel.

Bread of Life does this by helping individuals with practical needs, comparable to clothes and food.

Councils and native government love these facets of churches’ ministries. They need to know that our actions and our beliefs go hand in hand.

If we only have actions, without the life-giving message of repentance and salvation within the gospel, the Church is promoting the social gospel – no gospel in any respect.

But if all we do is speak the gospel, without allowing those truths to permeate every area of our life and repair – motivating us to serve the needy, each with physical and spiritual assistance – we’re nothing greater than mental ‘Christians’ who’re willing to talk for truth, but to not live for it.

As James so clearly warns: “So also, faith by itself, if it doesn’t have works is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I actually have works.” Show me your faith aside from your works, and I’ll show you my faith by my works… You see that an individual is justified by works and never by faith alone… For because the body aside from the spirit is dead, so also faith aside from works is dead” (James 2:17-18, 24, 26).

Many street outreach initiatives mix ministry to the needy and the homeless (comparable to offering free hot meals or compassionate support) with sharing the message of Christianity.

Similarly, pro-life groups, often Christian-led, are sometimes the primary to offer practical support to women in crisis pregnancies.

They are proving their words through their actions.

And for this reason it’s so necessary that we defend the ministries targeted by restrictions in public places.

Bringing hope to those that need it, each on the streets and in our communities, is a good looking picture of the multi-faceted nature of the Christian life and the change that our salvation works in us.

Which truly brings people hope – Islam or Christianity?

Yet, while Christian street preachers and outreach ministries are increasingly being restricted and censored, Islam is being ushered in to take the place of Christianity in the general public sphere.

In 2021, the Adhan (the Islamic Call to Prayer) was broadcast from Tower Bridge to mark the tip of Ramadan.

In March this yr, the Trafalgar Square Iftar saw the mass ritualistic Islamic prayers in public, which many have rightly called an act of Islamist domination.

From Iftars being held in Cathedrals to our King issuing a Ramadan message whilst concurrently neglecting to supply an Easter message, the warning is obvious: Islam is welcome in our public spaces, but Christianity shouldn’t be.

But only considered one of these religions offers true hope and the salvation and redemption that our broken nation so desperately needs … and it’s not Islam.

Who really pays the value for our silence?

The gospel is what our nation needs probably the most.

Our politicians may not prefer it and the general public could also be offended.

But the actual fact stays: only the true gospel and real repentance will bring restoration, each on a person and a national level.

When the gospel is criminalised and silenced in public, those that pay the value are those who need this hope probably the most.

Silencing the gospel doesn’t protect people from offence – it just builds yet one more barrier to people finding the hope of salvation in Jesus Christ.

In attempting to ‘protect the general public’ from ‘religious messaging’, our authorities are literally further trapping them in an internet of sin and hopelessness while withholding the one solution.

Christ is the one answer to the brokenness and division wreaking havoc in our nation.

And only once we, individually and as a nation, recognise our sin and our rejection of God’s laws, and are available repentance to hunt his forgiveness, will we see the healing and restoration we so deeply desire.

Andrea Williams is chief executive of Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre.