Should we have new blasphemy laws?
 

The suggestion was recently raised in Parliament. Adrian Gray explains why Baptists should express their clear opposition to any proposal to re-introduce blasphemy onto the statute book

In Parliament on 27 November 2024 Tahir Ali MP asked the following question: ‘Will the Prime Minister commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions?’

The Prime Minister’s non-committal response to this was: ‘Desecration is awful and I think should be condemned across the House’ before insisting ‘we are committed to tackling all forms of hatred and division, including, of course, Islamophobia in all of its forms.’

That some form of new desecration or blasphemy law is not rejected out of hand is very concerning. We have seen with new ‘moral’ laws like the proposal for assisted dying that what can start as a fringe suggestion can creep gradually into the mainstream until it becomes a real possibility.

The price of security is indeed eternal vigilance and I am reminded of the words of Jurgen Moltmann, who lived through Nazi Germany, when he observed that ‘one never knows from which quarter the freedom of theology may be threatened’.

I believe that all Christians and Baptists especially should express their clear opposition to any proposal to re-introduce ‘desecration of a text’ or blasphemy onto the statute book.

Why Baptists?

Well, it was the Baptists John Smyth, Thomas Helwys and John Murton who first campaigned for the abolition of all laws to do with religion and we have followed an approach of separation of faith and State ever since.

In Britain our last blasphemy law was abolished in 2008 after nearly 400 years of struggle to free up religious debate from legal sanction. To re-introduce laws about religious belief would be a worrying step for several reasons.


1. We already have several laws that cover this area appropriately

If we are talking about sacrilege as the destruction of religious items, then we already have laws about criminal damage.

This is why, if a bishop decides to knock down an unwanted church and put its old prayer books in the recycling, we do not arrest him for sacrilege.

As I write, news of the vandalism of a church in Essex is coming in…which would be covered under such laws.

What if we say something that is ‘offensive’, or seen as sacrilege by someone else? If someone were to say that Hindu holy books are ‘fake’ or that Muhammad ‘made up’ the Qu’ran?

At the moment the law would consider this in terms of your intention; the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006 has the offence of stirring up hatred against persons on religious grounds. There is no offence of being ‘offensive’, only of stirring up or intending hatred, or risk of causing harm or another offence. So free expression is protected in law unless your intention is to provoke a riot, for example.

However, the sentencing of ‘hate crime’ can be affected by it being religiously motivated, where the definition is a little ‘open’ to interpretation:

‘Any incident/crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person's religion or perceived religion.’

This reliance on the ‘perception’ of a person may be problematic, but remember this is about the motivation for another crime, not one person’s hostility to another’s beliefs in itself.

We also have the ‘fundamental British Value’ of ‘mutual respect and tolerance of other faiths and religions’. For a decade or more, opposition to this idea has been one of the ways in which we define extremism. It is a fundamental of a free society that we find ways to disagree respectfully.


2. Who would define what ‘desecration’ or not of ‘blasphemy’ actually is?

There are multiple problems in this area which are potentially dangerous to people of faith. One obvious one is that one faith’s idea of ‘desecration’ or ‘blasphemy’ is different to another’s. Some Muslims have a pretty robust view of how the Qu’ran should be treated, but as a Christian I regard the Word as spiritual not physical; so if I buy a new Bible and throw the old one away, have I desecrated it?

Similarly, if an angry atheist tears a page out of a Bible, that in my view makes no difference to the lordship of Jesus Christ. How could such differences be reflected in legislation?

This rapidly becomes very dangerous when we look at the interplay between religions (watch some of the YouTube videos from Speakers’ Corner to get the idea….).

It is obvious that one person’s belief may be another’s blasphemy, but as Christians we have come a long way since we used to persecute Quakers in the later 1600s.

To believers of one religion there will always be features of another that they disbelieve – so who would decide if aspects of your faith is ‘blasphemy’ to theirs?

What we speak therefore becomes a challenge; saying that Jesus is the only sure and certain way to the Father…is blasphemy (the cousin of sacrilege) to someone.

The question also referenced ‘desecration’ of ‘the prophets of the Abrahamic religions’; so if an atheist argues Moses did not exist, or a Christian asserts that Muhammad was deceived by Satan……do we send them to prison?

In this context, many commentators have noticed that the Prime Minister did not understand that Mr Ali’s question appears to have specifically excluded some faiths. By referring to ‘prophets of the Abrahamic religions’ he left aside other major religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism and, some Christians have seen, arguably Christianity too – since Christians believe that Jesus is God, not a prophet.

Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights starts by saying ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion…’ before going on to discuss freedom of religion. Who would define what I am NOT allowed to think or believe? Freedom of thought is fundamental to freedom of faith.


3. Once the principle is established, more could follow

Once we introduce a law which legislates about what people can think and do in matters of faith, what might follow? From sacrilege to blasphemy, to laws on apostasy and heresy?

Our Baptist forefathers were very clear in determining the State should do no such thing. As John Smyth wrote in about 1611, ‘The magistrate [by which he meant the State] is not by virtue of his office to meddle with religion, or matters of conscience, to force or compel men to this or that form of religion, or doctrine.’


4. In a post-faith society, the Police would be unable to manage the issues

The existing laws are already causing complex challenges for schools and education establishments because most people in Britain today lack the religious literacy to interpret them properly – and perhaps because of fear of getting something wrong.

In addition, the slippery slope between ‘being offended’ and what constitutes a ‘hate crime’ is already proving contentious.

We have seen numerous examples of the Police floundering in this area with angry criticism from left and right. They are already lost in the midst of a society which now seems to love accusing others.

We have seen incidents of Christians arrested for preaching Christ in the street, and even people being told (wrongly) that you are not allowed to sing hymns except on Church property. The recent furore over ‘non-crime hate incidents’ has shown the morass of confusion that exists……do we want to add new criminal offences to this?


5. What punishment would be used?

In 1401 Parliament introduced a law that permitted the burning of heretics, but in England we stopped doing this after 1612…though a good few later suffered alternative punishments.

A law would be meaningless without punishment for breaking it, so what would we deem appropriate for ‘desecrating’ a Jewish religious text or tearing a page out of the Qu’ran? A £1,000 fine, six months in prison?

Given that we already have laws about criminal damage, we would be here determining what is appropriate for something said or done as a matter of belief.
 

Back in about 1617, John Murton, a Baptist, could see major problems with any law about religious faith.

Writing with King James in mind, he commented that ‘It is not in your power to compel the heart; you may compel men to be hypocrites, as a great many are, who are false-hearted towards God and the state, which is sin both in you and them.’

He saw that passing such laws was both pointless (as causing hypocrisy), but also a grave sin; I lament that this proposal was not therefore rejected out of hand with the horror it deserved.


Image | Beatriz Pérez Moya | Unsplash


Adrian Gray worked on the development of British Values when at Ofsted; he trains schools and colleges on these and also ideas around freedom of faith and, as an historian, has studied the impact of the Baptist pioneers of religious liberty

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