BRITAIN: Evangelical Christians demonstrated outside the British parliament yesterday against government moves to introduce a new law against incitement to religious hatred.
Hundreds of evangelicals, singing and waving placards, converged opposite the Palace of Westminster in a protest timed to coincide with the second reading of the racial and religious hatred bill in the House of Lords.
The demonstration was organised by a coalition of Christian groups including the Evangelical Alliance, the African and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance (ACEA) and the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship.
The Rev Katei Kirby, ACEA's chief executive, said the right to debate and discuss without fear of prosecution was threatened.
"It affects everyone so deeply. This is not just about doctrine, this is not even about theological opposition, this is about our basic freedom to speak and to preach.
"It affects people's freedom to discuss and to critique anything because it might upset or offend somebody else and that is very serious."
The National Secular Society was at the forefront of the demonstration. Terry Sanderson, its vice-president, said the group had been campaigning on the issue for the past three years.
"We are coming at it from a completely different angle from the Christians. They are looking at the restrictions on their right to evangelise," he said. "We are looking at the restrictions on our being about to criticise religion per se so we can make common cause with them on this.
"I think this is an indicator to the government of just how wide the opposition is."
The campaign received support yesterday from former lord chancellor Lord Mackay. He said the religious hatred offence had been so broadly defined that Tony Blair and his ministers could find themselves falling foul of it. The prime minister, home secretary Charles Clarke and other members of the government had repeatedly blamed terrorism on people who subscribed to "a perverted form of Islam", Lord Mackay told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
"That is just as much a religion, of course, as Islam itself," he said.
"Therefore, when they are making it a crime to stir up hatred on religious grounds, what they are doing is exactly that in relation to those who follow the perversion of Islam." - (PA)