(LifeSiteNews) — According to a Whitestone Insights survey of 2,088 British adults last month, up to a quarter of young people are open to the idea of banning the Holy Bible over “hate speech” concerns. Religious illiteracy and anti-Christian attitudes have been spiking precipitously in the U.K. for years, and this is the result.
Whitehouse Insights posed the following question to respondents: “Unless the offending parts can be edited out, books containing what some perceive as hate speech should be banned from general sale, including if necessary religious texts such as the Bible.”
They found that 23 percent “of those between the ages of 18 to 34 agreed with the statement that the Bible should be banned if it didn’t have the offending parts cut out,” that “17% between the ages of 35 to 54 supported the statement,” and that “13% of those over the age of 55 also agreed.” Thus, nearly a quarter of younger adults believe that if the Bible cannot be edited, it should be banned.
This is only surprising to those not paying attention. I would not be surprised if many prestigious clerics of the Church of England supported this proposal – or at least called for inserting “context” around those annoying bits that condemn homosexuality and other protected and celebrated practices. Anglicans who speak up and defend biblical teaching on sex and sexuality are certainly attacked by the hierarchy with fervor.
Additionally, the younger generation is incredibly censorious and, for the most part, no longer believes in or understands freedom. The notion of a libertarian society was always a myth. The reality is that all societies have blasphemy laws, and when we got rid of one set of codes, it was inevitable that we would draft new ones. Thus, we can now profane everything truly sacred – but we cannot laugh at men dressed as women (I’m serious: a Scottish construction worker was fined for it); we cannot condemn certain practices; we cannot condemn sin by its name. To do so would be “hate speech” – or what we used to call blasphemy.
We are, as I have noted many times in this space, seeing a judicial realignment underway. Our society was once based on the values of Scriptural Revelation. Now our values are derived from the Sexual Revolution. Over the past decades, we have slowly but surely seen our legal system realign behind our new value system. It is very possible that, at some point, the Bible will be considered hate speech. Zealous prosecutors spent years trying to convict Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen of just that.
We are also beginning to reap the results of the ignorance we have sown. As ignorance of Christianity and the Scriptures grows, the young people affirming that they support banning the Bible don’t even know what it is they’re banning. I don’t simply mean that they are ignorant of spiritual truths – although that is obviously true, too. I mean that they are ignorant, period. Back in 2018, as I’ve noted before, a poll revealed that 2 in 5 U.K. millennials couldn’t identify the baby in the manger.
A 2017 survey by ComRes commissioned by the Church of England found that 60 percent of those who identify as Christian do not read their Bibles. Additionally, 36 percent admitted to never turning up at worship services, 29 percent said they never pray, and a mere 6 percent – again, of those who call themselves Christian – stated that they read the Bible, pray, or attend church regularly.
The scale of de-Christianization in the U.K. is hard to overstate, and we cannot outrun the consequences long-term. The rising generation not only disbelieves the Bible but is entirely ignorant of what it says, which means that LGBT activists pushing for a Bible ban in the future may be pushing at an open door. I’d say the writing is on the wall, but few would get the reference.
