It’s Time to Admit That Christians Are Being Persecuted in Two-Tier Britain

No one has yet been killed in the UK for their Christian faith as Charlie Kirk was in the US. But many are aware that an attack on Christianity is going on.

Just last month a street preacher was arrested in Congleton because someone objected to his preaching. But when an elderly Christian woman objected to preachers of Islam she was the one the police arrested.

Concerned that the ability of Christians in the UK to practise and manifest their faith is deteriorating, Voice for Justice UK set up the Commission of Inquiry into Discrimination Against Christians (CIDAC). Tasked with investigating the nature, context and scale of this discrimination, CIDAC would arrive at solutions for what could be done. Its final report is will be published in spring 2026 and will be sent to all MPs.

For the past two years, CIDAC has been collecting disturbing and at times harrowing testimonies from a range of respondents. Those working in education, healthcare, politics and business have found themselves on the receiving end of hate-filled communications, loss of job, position or training. Some have even been harassed by the police.

The extent of discrimination, even persecution, which Christians are facing in this once Christian country is more befitting of a communist regime.

For example, one elderly street preacher was approached by 14 police officers who then ‘frogmarched’ him to the police car, claiming that he was engaging in hate speech. Apparently, there were multiple complainants, although evidence was not provided. Complainants should simply have been told Pastor Simpson had done nothing wrong.

In another case the police actively sought out complaints from those who had gathered to hear a street preacher to build a case against him. Despite their efforts, the police did not have a leg to stand on and felt compelled to settle out of court.

Perhaps the most egregious and infamous actions of the police have been their custom of arresting individuals praying silently on the street. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce explained:

Their focus was on my prayer and they were claiming I’d broken the PSPO. Until that was mentioned there was no arrest… it was because I’d been praying that they seemed to suddenly focus on arresting me. The second time I was even told “you know your prayers are an offence”. I think that is an attack on my Christian beliefs. My prayers are my thoughts turned towards God.

This mistreatment by the police adds to the growing impression of a persecution of Christians. Under the British concept of ‘policing by consent‘, going back to Robert Peel, police officers sign up to “maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police“.

Further, “the police [are] only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence”.

The implication is that if the police arrest people for praying or preaching, the public should be doing so as well.

Police are also repeatedly ignoring violence against Christians. A pastor described how he was spat at, had liquids thrown at him and was once knocked unconscious and left injured for weeks. His wife was hit hard in the face with a potato thrown from a crowd. No action was taken against the assailants.

A pro-life (anti-abortion) student campaigner described how protesters would overturn tables, hurl abuse, steal personal belongings and how she was eventually threatened with rape.

Another pro-life campaigner, a priest, described how someone drove at a high speed, mounted the kerb very close to him, slammed his brakes on and got out of his car, shouting, swearing, making threats of serious violence and pushing the priest in question into the hedge.

These were regular occurrences. Despite being repeatedly reported to the police, their response was negligible or non-existent. This is despite the fact that two of the cases involved ministers of religion, offences against which carry a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment or indictment.

The reason the police almost seemed to condone this criminal behaviour was because, as the police explained, they thought it was the Christians’ fault they were being targeted.

A pastor called the police nine times in response to violence. When they eventually came he was told: “You’ve asked for this. You’ve called it upon yourself you shouldn’t be here speaking on this subject. If you want to be safe go home.”

When Vaughan Spruce explained to the police that the volunteers were afraid of being assaulted, a police officer similarly explained: “Well if you don’t want to be assaulted you don’t have to come out of your house do you. Right?”

When Father Sean Gough was trying to get police to take action against his attacker, he too was made to feel he was the one at fault:

I spoke to one of the Sergeants on the phone and it was a horrible conversation. I was a victim of criminal behaviour and he was making out it was my fault. That I had what was coming. He was incredibly rude to me. At one point he made an implicit reference that we could be part of the BNP.

These police appear, if we’re being charitable, to have been the passive and even brainwashed recipients of a self-styled ‘progressive’ agenda. But they are not alone. The progressive agenda has shaped our legal systems, been taught in schools and reinforced by all organisations which directly or indirectly receive government funding. If anyone steps outside this, complaints are generated to bring the person down.

While charges against Christians are often dropped for want of a victim and evidence, or lost on appeal, the punishment is the process: the profound difficulties caused to the individual through loss of employment, reputation and income, the toll of endless legal wranglings and the distress caused to his or her family. This persecution of those of Christian faith does an awful lot of harm.

CIDAC has been engaged in an in-depth investigation of this and identified a number of factors contributing to this undermining of Christianity.

Firstly, what emerged from the testimonies was a profound ignorance of Christianity. This is even at the level of the judiciary and the highest levels of our education system. It is pervasive in schools, the health service and police force. Sixty years of secularists and socialists shaping our education system in their image have been sufficient to embed the rot.

Ignorance of Christianity is not like ignorance of geography or history. It was Christianity which taught us the value of every single person. When, as Christians believe, God stooped to become man through Jesus Chris, we were taught what it meant to be “made in the image of God”. Where there is no knowledge of this imago dei it is easy to forget every person’s intrinsic value. A person will be assessed according to their usefulness, likeability or extent to which they support our belief system or agenda. If they don’t, their value declines.

Another issue is that the law appears to allow legal action to be taken against another person based on subjective feeling. All too often Christians are pursued for alleged harassment or discrimination because they said something which could cause someone somewhere offence. People who had actually been offended were difficult to find. While often these cases never reach court due to lack of evidence, or collapse on appeal, there is still plenty of harm done in the gruelling process.

Discrimination is facilitated by the way in which social media can be weaponised by one disgruntled individual to magnify his or her discontent. Well networked groups of activists can be triggered into action, spawning endless tweets and letters of complaint about the target who has failed to submit sufficiently to the progressive agenda. Social media can hugely amplify a single and insignificant voice.

However, this bullying would be ineffective without the cowardice and complicity of the individuals working in these institutions. They capitulate to the bullies instead of making it clear that it is no concern of anyone if someone wants to take offence.

Another feature was an unwillingness to engage in conversations. The Christians who testified to CIDAC, whether street preachers willing to sit down with Muslim and LGBT activists, pro-life campaigners seeking to engage with those who attacked them, or those wanting to explain the Christian perspective to others working in education, their attempts at dialogue were repeatedly rebuffed.

While the attack on Christianity appears to be the result of an organic process of secularisation and ‘progressive’ idealism, deep beneath the surface lie ideologies  such secular humanism and socialism. These have used weapons such as feminism, gay marriage and transgenderism, and, one suspects, most recently Islam to undermine the Christian faith.

CIDAC will be discussing the findings of its investigation with a number of thinkers and campaigners from the field of human rights, free speech and the law. Tickets for our conference are available here.