An Evangelical in Court (part 2)

Reflections on My Employment Tribunal and Christian Justice

We have often imagined that legal justice has little or nothing to do with the Gospel or mission. But there is often far more at stake than we think.

In part 1 of this pair of articles, I talked about why I decided to take legal action against the Bible college that dismissed me for defending Biblical truth in the public square. I began a series of reflections on why evangelical Christians tend to avoid thinking about (let alone participating in) legal proceedings. I also gave four reflections that occurred to me as a result of the tribunal experience, regarding 1. Formality and Consequence; 2. The Weighing of Evidence; 3. The Giving of Evidence; 4. The Authority of the Bible.

On this latter point, one of the unexpected highlights of the experience was hearing passages of the Bible read out loud in a British courtroom. These were read as examples of what might also cause “disrepute” the way my Tweet had apparently done. I mentioned this in a brief conversation I had with Jamie Bambrick (of Clear Truth Media) midway through the tribunal.

There is a splendid irony in all of this, of course, that a Bible college may well find the Bible to be “inappropriate”. Appropriately enough (!) this also leads onto another series of reflections, including how we think about “public” authority.

1. The Judge’s (and Preacher’s) Authority

It was interesting, and notable, that the judge in the courtroom did not know the Bible passages which were read out (e.g. 1Tim. 2; Jude; Matt. 23) and requested that he and the panel have them printed off in front of him. No doubt this was a sensible enough request for anything that needed looking at, but it got me wondering: how long ago would it have been that a judge would have known the Bible such that this would not have been as necessary? How long ago was it when judges were expected—perhaps even required—to have a good working knowledge of the Bible’s contents as a key aspect of their role as adjudicators of justice within a self-professedly Christian society?

When I was off the stand, back on the back row, my eyes occasionally wondered to the royal coat of arms behind the judge’s head, on which is written: Dieu et mon droit (“God and my right”). This is another of those remnants of Christendom: a reminder of the ultimate judicial authority above all judges and rulers who seek justice in these lands, however far from God such nations may seem to have drifted today.

The judge’s own authority was especially evident when, due to some of the reporting in the national press on the case (mentioning details about vulnerable students) the judge issued a court order, as soon as it was brought to his attention, that henceforth no details about those students were allowed to be disclosed to the pubic (this made a lot of sense, of course, for the sake of those students, and is probably something both sides should have thought about in advance).

After a journalist in the room asked for clarification on what this did and did not mean, it was then asked if the judge’s order would be put into writing. The judge said it would be written up at some point but that it did not need to wait for that in order to come into effect. So, from that moment—literally from the moment he said it—what he had ordered was binding.

To those who are more familiar with court proceedings, I’m sure there is nothing particularly unusual or profound about this. But as someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about the authority of preaching, I could not help but see an analogy between the authority of the judge’s word (with that distinctive coat of arms above his head) and the authority of the preacher’s word (with that distinctive Bible in his pulpit).