In 2024, demonstrations were a big part of how we showed, rather than simply telling people about the goodness of God’s ways. Alexandra Teng from our communications team looks at what we’ve organised this year.
With extreme legislation being tabled in Parliament, a snap election, landmark cases for Christian freedoms and pivotal moments to stand for all human life, this year has presented many opportunities for us and our wonderful supporters to rally around important causes.
Justice is done in the light
In April, the Supreme Court heard the case of Rashid and Aliya Abbasi, and Lanre Haastrup, parents who were the subject of ‘best interests’ proceedings brought by hospital trusts who withdrew, against their wishes, life-sustaining treatment from their children.
Because of extremely broad worldwide reporting restrictions on their cases, the press was prevented from exploring serious and legitimate concerns that both sets of parents raised about the treatment of their children. Reporting restrictions in such cases usually cease when the child’s life ends, but the High Court ruled in these two cases that they should continue indefinitely.
This decision was overturned in the parents’ favour at the Court of Appeal, and their case was now being heard in the highest court in the land. Joined by the parents of Sudiksha Thirumalesh, Archie Battersbee and Indi Gregory, we held up pictures of their late children and said: “Justice is done in the light.”
Please continue to pray for a good outcome for the Abbasis and Lanre Haastrup, that will ensure freedom of the press to report on legal proceedings in medical cases, including highly controversial end-of-life ones.
Don’t make doctors killers
At the debate on assisted suicide in April, we jointly organised a rally with Distant Voices, Christian Medical Fellowship and other campaigners following a concerted push by pro-euthanisers calling for assisted suicide to be made legal.
Our message was clear: Don’t make doctors killers.
The Hippocratic Oath taken by physicians for centuries promises: “Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.”
Doctors, nurses, therapists and other healthcare practitioners work around the clock to help, heal and preserve life, rather than to kill. There is no question that administering poison to end a life is killing.
With representatives dressed in scrubs, lab coats and blood-stained gloves, we wanted to make it clear to MPs that doctors largely want nothing to do with assisted suicide – in fact, the ones who spend the most time with patients at the end of their lives were most opposed to a change in law.
Say no to abortion up to birth
The tagline for this campaign may sound like a given, but in May, two amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill were proposed that would radically liberalise abortion laws. They would have allowed mothers to end their babies’ lives at any stage of pregnancy, right up to the moment of birth.
This would include sex-selective abortions or an abortion merely because the mother has decided she would rather discard her baby. This means that a woman could falsely obtain pills for a DIY abortion late into her pregnancy and take them at grave risk to herself and her baby with no legal consequences.
Together with many other pro-life groups, we rallied in the hundreds to say “No to abortion up to birth.” Thankfully those two amendments were eventually rejected. However, we can expect future attempts to further decriminalise abortion. Please pray for laws to be made in the UK that cultivate life rather than open the door to death, and encourage your MPs to take a stand for the protection of unborn babies.
Jesus: hope for our nation
On the evening before the general election in July, about 300 Christians including many church and ministry leaders joined us outside Parliament to lift up praise and prayer.
We gave thanks to God for his work in our nation across generations, and asked that he would restore the Christian foundations that we have forsaken.
Justice for Kristie: let Christians speak
Back in 2019, Kristie Higgs, a mother of two, shared two personal Facebook posts raising her concerns about inappropriate sex education that promoted transgender ideology to young children in her son’s Church of England primary school. She was sacked for gross misconduct and had her Christian beliefs compared to neo-Nazism.
Kristie’s landmark free speech case, supported by the Christian Legal Centre for more than five years now, and involving five interveners including the authoritative official human rights watchdog, Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), culminated in a hearing at the Court of Appeal this October.
Many clients supported by the Christian Legal Centre are similarly pursuing justice after being wrongfully dismissed and discriminated against for expressing Christian beliefs. Joshua Sutcliffe, Bernard Randall, Felix Ngole, Aaron Edwards and Victoria Culf were among the many who joined Kristie Higgs outside of the Royal Courts of Justice.
With each of their stories summarised on a placard, they showed Kristie’s treatment by her employment was not a solitary case.
In fact, her case has significant ramifications for the freedom of any employee to express biblical principles on marriage and family, in public or private, without the fear of losing their livelihoods.
While we await a result from the Court of Appeal, will you pray with us for justice in Kristie’s case?
Kill the bill, not the ill
The threat of assisted suicide being legalised has only grown since summer. During the first reading of Kim Leadbeater’s bill in October, we put up “gravestones” outside Parliament with statistics and stories showing how assisted suicide laws have been abused in Canada, Oregon, Belgium and the Netherlands, despite legislators’ best intentions.
The following week, we repeated this demonstration outside the Senedd in Cardiff. We praise God for the fruitful interactions we had with the public, and that Assembly Members in Wales voted to reject a pro-assisted suicide motion.
Safe spaces for women
In May, five nurses went public in the media with how they had been forced to change in front of a biological male ‘identifying’ as a female at work, and unhelpfully told by HR that they needed to be “re-educated” and “more inclusive” after submitting a formal complaint letter co-signed by 26 nurses.
Their story resonated with supporters all over the world, including the likes of J.K. Rowling, Sharron Davies and Riley Gaines. The nurses have since started the first-of-its-kind Darlington Nursing Union (DNU) to support women in the workplace on these issues, and produced proposals to NHS Trusts on ensuring that changing rooms, showers or toilets may only be shared based on biological sex, not self-declared gender identity.
We set up a CitizenGO petition calling on the government to do whatever is necessary to ensure women have access to single-sex changing rooms and toilets. In November, when we handed it in to 10 Downing Street, the petition had amassed over 48,000 signatures.
We thank God that the nurses were able to meet with Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Shadow Equalities Minister Claire Coutinho, both of whom expressed their support and commitment to looking into improving the safety of single-sex spaces in the NHS. We pray that the government will heed the DNU’s proposed guidance to set a safe, lawful precedent for all public services in the UK.
Christian teaching is not extremism
In November, we were at Lambeth Palace delivering a petition signed by 40,000 people calling on Justin Welby, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, to give Rev. Dr Bernard Randall his life back. Later that day, Justin Welby resigned as the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Bernard was wrongfully sacked as a Church of England school chaplain five years ago for preaching the Church’s own doctrine about marriage during a school chapel service. For telling students they were free to disagree with LGBTQ+ ideology, he was reported to the government counter terrorism unit, Prevent.
After being vindicated by Prevent, the LADO, the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) and the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), he remains barred by the Church of England from ministry and preaching.
Pray with us that Bernard will be restored to ministry, and that the Church of England will return to sound, scriptural doctrine around marriage and sexuality under God’s leadership.
Assisted suicide: if in doubt, vote no
Since November, pressure on Parliament to legalise assisted suicide has been at an all-time high, with pro-euthanasia reports dominating the headlines for weeks leading up to the second reading of Kim Leadbeater’s bill. We gathered with Not Dead Yet, Distant Voices, Care Not Killing, Christian Medical Fellowship and hundreds of supporters to expose how the bill was in fact not the “safest choice” and “strictest” in the world as promised.
While stories about people supporting assisted suicide were sensationalised in editorials and tube advertisements, we focused on the costs of medical treatment in the UK for patients who would qualify for assisted suicide under Leadbeater’s bill, and compared those with the cost of a lethal injection in Canada. Even though it was only a hypothetical comparison, it was an astonishing and sobering one.
We also brought back the towering figure of a judge which had been used at a rally against assisted suicide in 2015, but was more apt now than ever. Bitter experience from the Christian Legal Centre’s end-of-life cases tells us that judges and the courts of law should never be trusted to decide whether human life is worth living. More recently, it was revealed that the need for a High Court judge to sign off on every assisted suicide ‘could be dropped amid fears of lengthy court backlogs’.
Demonstrating the love and truth of Christ in 2025
We are amazed by how the Lord inspires and uses these displays that live on through images in media circulation many months after. Images and footage from our displays are frequently used in news reports for years after they have taken place.
The presence of our supporters has also been crucial at each of these displays. Will you join us next time? Be sure to sign up to our weekly newsletter to know when our next one is and share this post with someone who could join us next time.
