Paul Huxley gives a Christian perspective on free speech
On Monday, comedy writer and women’s rights activist Graham Linehan flew into Heathrow Airport. Waiting for his arrival were five armed police officers. They arrested him on the spot, claiming that three posts he made on X were inciting violence towards trans people.
All sorts of public figures were quick to leap to his defence. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said that the government needed to review the legislation given how it was being implemented. Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley defended his officers for making the arrest but said that the government needed to change or clarify the law. The Prime Minister said the police must “focus on the most serious issues”.
On top of that, Reform leader Nigel Farage was in Washington DC speaking to a congressional committee decrying the lack of free speech in the UK, a topic that Vice President JD Vance has brought up several times.
Free speech is clearly having a moment.
But how should Christians think about free speech? Just how free should speech be?
Upholding freedoms in law
The first thing to notice is that speech is more free in countries that have been deeply impacted by Christianity than anywhere else. Countries that have been dominated by rival beliefs like Islam and Communism do not enjoy these kinds of freedom at all. Sometimes a totalitarian government clamps down on anything that is at odds with State doctrine. Sometimes it’s less systematic where other citizens turn on those who share beliefs that are not politically or religiously ‘correct’.
Free speech is a kind of tolerance – it recognises that not everyone’s opinions are identical and that we needn’t come to arms over every disagreement. It recognises that everyone has value, made in God’s image and that you should avoid harming or imprisoning people for simple disagreements.
With Jesus Christ’s golden rule ringing in our ears, the West has learned that the freedom to say what you genuinely believe is highly valuable. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Let them speak their mind because, one day, you may want to speak yours. Because of this, we can talk to each other and persuade each other rather than talk past each other or go to war.
Freedom of speech is, to a large extent, a blessing that God has given to (much of) the world through Christians. And we shouldn’t be ashamed of it.
Fire and incitement
Are we free speech absolutists then? Should there be absolutely no laws or rules against saying anything at any time?
Even where free speech has flourished, its limits have always been recognised. The most common example is deliberately inciting dangerous panic by falsely shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre. This example comes from the United States of America; even the country with arguably the strongest free speech protections in the world does not protect this kind of deliberate, false, dangerous speech.
Another example is pornographic images – these are not speech at all, no matter what some claim. Christians can gladly accept some kinds of limitations on speech.
Incitement to violence?
At the heart of Linehan’s arrest is the similar question of incitement to violence. Like shouting ‘fire’, urging people to commit violence against others can be legitimately stopped in the interest of public safety. But context is crucial. We can’t prosecute someone for shouting ‘fire’ if there was a fire, if there was no crowd or if everyone in the theatre knows it’s part of the performance.
Similarly, an alleged incitement to violence needs to really be a call to violence.
People use violent imagery metaphorically all the time. Sports fans will call on their team to ‘beat’ or ‘crush’ the opposition. People might talk about others having punchable faces. People talk loosely about wishing bad things would be done to politicians and celebrities they dislike. These examples are not necessarily pleasant but nor are they real calls to violence.
Graham Linehan’s X post was along these lines. The key post read:
“If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
In context, this ‘call to violence’ is seen by Linehan an act of self-defence. In his view, a male in a women’s changing room is committing a violent act and, as a last resort, a woman should be able to physically defend her right to a single-sex space.
This is certainly not a call for generalised violence against trans people. That would be an obvious misreading, but it’s also highly unlikely that anyone would read it and decide to start being violent towards anyone.
And even if were incitement, sending five armed police officers to arrest Linehan would be wildly disproportionate. No wonder that, after his long haul flight, Linehan suffered from acute stress and had to be taken to hospital.
Are the scales of justice balanced?
The kinds of transgender activists who have gone after Linehan, and whose reports led to this incident, are known frequently make far more obvious and tangible calls to ‘punch terfs’. Among some ‘trans women’ (i.e. men), there is a distinct subculture that normalises acts of violence, supposedly in defence of transgenderism.
For example, there is an ex-police officer who has been jailed twice for weapons offences. His YouTube channel, still live, shows him modifying baseball bats with glass, nails and barbed wire to inflict damage on watermelons. There is a real subcommunity which normalises this kind of aggression – making a call to ‘punch terfs’ risks being taken literally.
Yet it is Christians, and others like Linehan who stand for reality, that so often find themselves targeted for what they say. As we have seen in many Christian Legal Centre cases, police have made visits or referrals have been made to counter-terrorism over the simple expressions of Christian beliefs.
Trans-identifying people are consistently portrayed as highly vulnerable and as a result, their complaints are taken far more seriously than others.
If the police could learn to be more neutral, that would solve some problems.
But we really need a much higher bar to be cleared before police interfere with people’s speech in these ways. Police and other agencies need to quickly dismiss untrue, trivial or deliberately malicious referrals. These claims are often used as weapons against ideological opponents: even if someone is cleared, they are put through the stress and other costs of facing a police investigation.
Those who repeatedly make these kinds of false claims about others should also face consequences. Deuteronomy 19:16-21 applies the principle of ‘eye for eye’ (lex talionis) to those who maliciously make false accusations. We must do something to dissuade people from weaponising our institutions against people they simply disagree with.
Another kind of fire
But that is not all there is for Christians to say about speech.
The Bible has a lot to say about how we speak, much of which consists of warnings:
“Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” (James 3:5-6 NIV)
“…everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew 12:36-37 NIV)
“Those who guard their mouths and their tongues
keep themselves from calamity.” (Proverbs 21:23 NIV)
“The tongue has the power of life and death,
and those who love it will eat its fruit.” (Proverbs 18:21 NIV)
Taming the tongue in our current age of constant self-expression is quite a challenge. X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook give us all opportunities to set the world around us on fire. But Christians must rise to the challenge.
Not everything lawful is profitable. Just because someone is free in law to say something, does not mean that freedom should be used.
There are plenty of false and unhelpful things anyone can say without getting into trouble with the law. We don’t need to be deliberately rude about other people, even though mere insults shouldn’t be criminal. Even if something is true doesn’t mean we always have to say it. Plenty of gossip is true, but should not be spread.
Jesus Christ remained silent at his trial.
Freedom of speech is badly misnamed if we are not in control of how we use it. If we simply say or write whatever comes into our heads and throw it out into the world, we are acting as slaves to our own emotions and impulses. Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is true freedom.
We can and should defend freedom of speech robustly, particularly for other Christians who speak truthfully. But we can and should hold ourselves to higher standards. We don’t need to ‘cancel’ people who gossip (Proverbs 26:20), speak crudely (Eph 4:29) or seek after arguments (2 Tim 2:23) but we can notice them and avoid being drawn into those unfruitful behaviours.
And we need to offer life and love even to our ‘enemies’ when we speak.
Transgenderism, sexual immorality, false religions and any other kind of evil destroys those who practise them. We long to see repentance and life, not hardened hearts and destruction.
Convicted for inciting his own assault
Freedom of speech is far from a new problem in the UK.
In 2001, 69-year-old street evangelist Harry Hammond held up a sign saying “Jesus Gives Peace, Jesus is Alive, Stop Immorality, Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism, Jesus is Lord”. As he started to speak, about 40 people surrounded him, pushed him to the ground, threw water and soil at him and pulled down his sign.
Unbelievably, the police arrested Hammond, not anyone who assaulted him. He was then prosecuted and ultimately found guilty for provoking the attack he had suffered.
Those calling for more free speech are right. Action is long overdue to defend free speech in practice, not just theory.
But as much as we need to uphold the principle of free speech, as Christians, we need to use that freedom to speak life.
In the present environment, it may be risky. Telling the truth may get us into trouble at work or even with the police.
Nevertheless, as Christian Legal Centre clients consistently say – whether they win or lose – it’s worth it. For Jesus.
