UNITED KINGDOM, May 19, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Christian minister Rev. Dr. Bernard Randall, a school Chaplain in the U.K., said his mind was “blown” and he thought the world had gone “mad” when in 2019 he was reported to the government’s terrorist watchdog group and forced out of his position at his Christian school after preaching a sermon to students on the “ideas and ideologies of LGBT activists.”
“I never ever thought that giving a sermon would lead to me being dismissed and reported,” said Randall in a May 11 video interview by Christian Concern, the legal group that is representing him in his lawsuit for unfair dismissal from Trent College. “I never thought giving a sermon on respect would lead to me being accused of being a terrorist.”
Christian Concern outlined last week how Randall, 48, gave a homily to the students under his charge in the wake of an LGBT activist having come to the school to train staff how to “embed gender, gender identity and sexual orientation into the fabric of your school.” The school later adopted the activist’s program as policy.
When students approached Randall and asked him why a Christian school was accepting LGBT ideology, the minister decided to deliver a sermon about it to students.
“Delivering the sermon in the school’s chapel entitled ‘Competing ideologies,’ [read full sermon here] Dr. Randall moderately and carefully presented the Christian viewpoint on identity questions, encouraged debate and stressed that no protected characteristic is more protected than another,” reported Christian Concern.
At one point Randall stated in his homily: “So I want to say to everyone, but especially to those who have been troubled, that you are not obliged to accept someone else’s ideology. You are perfectly at liberty to hear ideas out, and then think, ‘No, not for me.’ There are several areas where many or most Christians (and for that matter people of other faiths too), will be in disagreement with LGBT activists, and where you must make up your own mind.”
One week after the homily, school administration interrogated Randall for the homily, saying that it had hurt people’s feelings and undermined the school’s policy of inclusivity. He was immediately suspended. After the meeting, school administration reported the minister to the government’s counter-terrorism watchdog, Prevent.
Randall commented about his case in his recent video interview, stating that what happened to him was “just so mind-blowing.”
“I was thinking I’m never going to work again because I've been accused of being a terrorist,” he said.
The minister said that what happened to him sends a clear message to Christians that there is no real tolerance in the LGBT movement for those who have a different perspective.
“My story sends a message to other Christians that you are not free to talk about your faith. It seems it is no longer enough to just ‘tolerate’ LGBT ideology. You must accept it without question and no debate is allowed without serious consequences. Someone else will decide what is and what isn’t acceptable, and suddenly you can become an outcast, possibly for the rest of your life,” he said.
“I was ‘too religious’ for them in a Christian school. When I read that there had been a ‘Prevent’ referral, it was just so mind-blowing, the fear. If the world is mad enough to say that a Church of England minister talking about the Church of England's beliefs is a violent extremist, then somebody else might be mad enough to act on it,” he added.
An employment tribunal is expected to hear the case next month.