16th June 2009
Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006
By Mark Hanson
In its original form, the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill would have very seriously affected free speech and religious freedom. It would have created the offence of using ‘insulting words likely to stir up religious hatred’.
Although never intended to prohibit Christian teaching, the loose terminology of this could well have had an effect of seeing those proclaiming Christ as the only way being criminalised.
The House of Lords, during the passage of this bill, introduced some very important amendments. Firstly, ‘insulting’ was changed to ‘threatening’, and ‘likely to stir up religious hatred’ was replaced with ‘intending to’ These changes are vital. In addition, a ‘free speech’ clause was introduced, which allows for debate, ridicule and dislike, amongst other get-out clauses.
The Government fought against these amendments, yet they were passed by the House of Commons and are now included in the Act.
Much credit needs to be given to the Christian Institute who mobilised Christians to campaign on this. Many Christians also prayed.
Yet Rabel feels that there are dangerous precedents introduced by this Act, and that even in its greatly neutered state it has the potential for putting Christians at the very edge of legality.
Christians should, by no means, be engaged in hating or stirring up hatred against people. Indeed, we are called to love, and love even our enemies.
Christians should, however, be strong in their hatred of false belief systems which have as their origins the ‘father of lies’. It is a fine balance between loving adherents of counterfeit faiths whilst at the same time hating that deceitful belief system.
Rabel is concerned that voicing or writing that a faith is “deceptive, hateful and should be abhorred” may well come under this Act’s definition of “inciting religious hatred”.
The precedent set by this Act, whereby the State lays down the legal and illegal expressions of religious belief, is also regrettable.
Rabel is, therefore, engaged in continuing resistance against this Act. Ideally we would like to see it repealed. As a first course of action, however, we have set up a petition calling for the Act to be amended to clarify that “hatred of a religion does not constitute hatred of a person or group of persons”.
