A British citizen, Stephen Green, has just been convicted of breaching the Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) in west London last year.[1] He held up a sign that quoted Psalm 139.13 in a protected zone around abortion clinics. The quote was from the King James Version, which is an odd version to be using in our day if one wants to communicate something clearly. It reads, ‘For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb’ (KJV). The English Standard Version translates the verse, ‘For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.’
What, though, does the Public Spaces Protection Order say? It is not itself a law. The government has provided a 24-page document to guide councils in setting up their PSPOs.[2] The guidance proceeds with certain presuppositions that activities in public spaces perceived to be ‘anti-social’ and that leave people feeling powerless to act can and should be proscribed. It also presumes that people who see a sign about God forming a child in the womb in a zone killing babies is anti-social for that community (though one surely will not try to argue that persons killing the unborn are the powerless ones).
PSPOs are a tool to use in carrying out the 2014 Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act. As represented in the PSPO Guidance, this act empowers councils to address activities that ‘have a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality.’ A friend of mine living in Chennai, India, tells me that the various religions have their agreed times to give religious announcements over the speakers so that they do not clash with one another, but I have to wonder about the person, religious or not, who does not want to be woken up for a call to prayer. Given England’s self-inflicted migration crisis, the question does not need to be hypothetical or in reference only to India. Although, one does have to wonder how, if multiculturalism is a sacrosanct value for society, shutting out Britain’s historic, Christian culture fits with the logic.
This example raises the question about what a society considers to be ‘anti-social’. In a religious context like Chennai, an atheist protesting against the blaring of religious propaganda over megaphones becomes the one who is anti-social. In the UK, where the population is far removed from is Christian convictions (no matter what people claim in any census), a Christian rather regularly comes up against legislation—street preachers, objections to sexual education in schools, social media statements about this or that sin that someone considers ‘hate speech’, and silent protests in abortion clinic buffer zones.
In a different era not too long ago, ‘anti-social’ behaviour in the UK would have been one way to describe the killing of unborn babies. Abortion was an anti-social act. Compare this to zones where one might pick up a prostitute. Allowing prostitution in a Christian era would also have been considered anti-social—this is not the society we wish to be. Now, a PSPO could be set up in such a way that it protects hookers picking up business on public streets from behaviour of those who seek to have a detrimental effect on their ‘quality of life’ as prostitutes, pimps, and persons seeking sex. Just ask Holland.
Walk around the streets of Roman Pompeii, destroyed by the volcano Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79, and you will see how much the city itself was sexualised. Twenty-five brothels have been discovered to date by archaeologists for a city with a population of 11,000 or so. Phallus symbols decorate the city, whether advertising sex or just used as ‘art’. They symbols are found chiselled in the stone of roads and walls everywhere. One might imagine a British town council, adopting the view of Pompeii, declaring the entire town a public space where the sexually active citizens are protected against prudish citizens decrying their ‘quality of life’.
The point, then, is that defining protected spaces is purely a matter of what people with power—a town council—think is appropriate based on their own belief systems and what they can enforce with a particular population. That is, the minority loses. The entire matter is not about what is good, but what most people want. No Christian thinks this is headed in a positive direction, for the thoughts of human hearts are continuously evil (to quote another Biblical text, Genesis 6.5, that will need to be proscribed).
British culture has already affirmed a post-Christian worldview. The Church of England churches, for example, already have under 1 million persons in church attendance on any given Sunday and, on average, just 2 children. Occasionally, a story pops up in the news about ‘zones’ being established by Muslims (in Birmingham, e.g.) or about whether Muslims might adopt Sharia Law in England (a suggestion even from a former archbishop, Rowan Williams). Christians trying to affirm their views in public spaces are no longer welcome. Cathedrals were established in former days to establish Christianity as the faith for public spaces, and the Church of England was the established Church for the nation. It is, of course, still said to be, but that is a governance issue and not a religious matter. The cathedrals would be better administered by the National Trust than by Lambeth. They are historical relics, museum pieces, like ancient sites of the Druid religion more than active religious, sacred spaces that defy the current culture. (Of course, the Druids do have their celebration at Stonehenge, but they are too small a group to be a concern for contemporary society—unless they start sacrificing humans again.)
Protected spaces, then, are no longer defined in religious terms but from a post-Christian perspective. This allows some activity still for religion, Muslim and Christian. But society itself marginalises religious expression and protects spaces for the post-religious (atheists, agnostics, and those not practicing a religion that they nonetheless claim on a national census). The views that win are those the majority wants.
As long as the English or Welsh or Scottish or Irish people want to kill unborn babies, spaces where the killings are carried out will be protected spaces by town councils. The morally reprehensible people breaking the law will be those who want to save children’s lives.
British society, with its abortion facility zones of protection, would also cancel a sign quoting the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. This horrific king, a violent man who killed countless people throughout the fertile crescent in the 6th c. BC, said,
As soon as he had created me, the lord,
the god who created me, the god Marduk, fashioned my form inside (my) mother
(so that) when I was born I myself was (fully) formed.[3]
The town council
condemning Mr. Green’s activity would have disapproved of the Nebuchadnezzar
quotation just as much as of Psalm 139.13, apparently. It might have struggled over the fact that an
advocate of Babylonian religion in west London might be celebrated for adding
religious diversity to a multicultural nation.
Yet
Nebuchadnezzar’s definition of anti-social behaviour would have included those who
do not acknowledge the gods. One might
recall his setting up a golden image before which all were to fall down and
worship (Daniel 3). Daniel’s three
friends refused to do so, standing opposed in the public space to the quality
of life of these worshippers of a false god.
The Chaldean priests, though, were watching to see who was not bowing
down. Nebuchadnezzar had Daniel’s
friends thrown into a furnace, from which the one, true God delivered them. He would have thrown the god-defying town
council of London into the fire as well, not because he disapproved of killing
children despite his claim of being formed by Marduk in his mother’s womb but
because they opposed public statements of religion. Today, however, in a secular world, there is
no god to save you from the whims of a council and culture declaring your faith
to be anti-social.
[1] Cameron Roy, ‘Christian preacher, 72, is convicted of breaching
police order for protesting against abortion inside buffer zone' surrounding
family planning clinic,’ Daily Mail (1 February, 2024); https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13034723/christian-preacher-convicted-breaching-police-order-abortion-protest.html
(accessed 2 February, 2024).
[2] See ‘Public Spaces Protection Orders: Guidance for Councils’
online: https://www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/10.21%20PSPO%20guidance_06_1.pdf
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