At Prime Minister’s Questions last week, Theresa May was asked about Christians’ freedom to profess their faith. The PM’s reply was impeccably broadminded. The “ability to speak freely” about one’s faith is a vital principle, May said. “We have a very strong tradition in this country of religious tolerance and freedom of speech,” she added, “and our Christian heritage is something we can all be proud of.”
But Christians are as used to seeing such liberties praised as they are to seeing them challenged in practice – the “gay cake” case being only the most recent example of how an ordinary citizen can suddenly be cast in the role of a conscientious objector.
A new report suggests one way for the Prime Minister to honour the national tradition. Beyond Belief, from the influential think tank ResPublica, argues for a “reasonable accommodation” clause to be slotted into the government’s proposed British Bill of Rights. It would mean that employers have a duty to work around their employees’ religious beliefs, rather than vice versa.
The report, written by the Oxford philosopher James Orr, digs deep into how we got here: a situation where Christians can lose jobs, be fined or face humiliating inquisitions for following their Christian conscience.
The stories are familiar, and they usually involve gay rights: Mr and Mrs Bull, B&B owners sued for not providing double bedrooms to unmarried (including gay) couples; Belfast’s Ashers Baking Company, fined £500 after politely declining to bake a cake with the slogan “Support Gay Marriage”; Lillian Ladele, sacked as a registrar because she asked not to officiate at same-sex civil partnerships.
Orr’s report lays some of the blame on the 2010 Equality Act, which handed great power to judges to decide whether someone’s rights had been violated. It can be invoked by a gay person who feels discriminated against on the grounds of their sexuality, and by a Christian who feels discriminated against on the grounds of their religion. The Act, as Beyond Belief puts it, has “encouraged subjective rights to become legal weapons for one minority group to wield against another.”
The report does more than lament the situation. It suggests a very specific remedy: that the government include a “reasonable accommodation” clause in the proposed new British Bill of Rights – a draft of which could appear as early as next year.
This wouldn’t solve everything: it wouldn’t save small business owners from legal action. But it could help employees in the position of Lillian Ladele, the registrar who lost her job. As Orr says, the employer might have reasonably accommodated her: colleagues could have replaced her, and it would not have cost much money or effort.
The Bill of Rights would only be a first step in securing religious freedom. The courts would have to interpret the law, too – but if, as Orr thinks, “reasonable accommodation” is gaining ground, it could become established.
Is this first change, to the Bill of Rights, likely? One discouraging sign was last week’s report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It specifically opposes any “reasonable accommodation” duty, and argues that the existing model provides “sufficient protection” for religious belief.
And the Bill of Rights is itself a controversial project: John Duddington, editor of Law and Justice, a Christian legal journal, says it would be better to amend the Equality Act to include reasonable accommodation.
Even if the Bill of Rights does go through, and does place the new duty on employers, there would still be a long way to go. The barrister and writer Peter Smith says it cannot solve “the hard legal and moral problem: what happens when measures prohibiting discrimination clash”.
Smith observes that the future will depend on judges’ decisions. “It could be that a judge decides that a Christian B&B or bakery owners can exercise their right not to permit two men to share a bed or bake a cake supporting same-sex marriage on the grounds that those discriminated against (gay people) can go elsewhere for their service. But that’s a radical departure from the current state of play.”
The ResPublica report makes a good case that “reasonable accommodation” might be a first step out of the current mess. But there is a long-term challenge too: to make it clear that Christian beliefs are reasonable. Otherwise it will become harder to persuade anyone to accommodate them.
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