A 77-year-old retired pastor stands outside a hospital in Northern Ireland and gives a short message based on a Bible verse that many learned as children: “For God so loved the world…”
For that, Clive Johnston is now on trial.
His alleged offense is not harassment, obstruction or intimidation. It is preaching a sermon — including the words of John 3:16 — within a legally defined “buffer zone” near a hospital where abortions take place. Prosecutors argue that he may have “influenced” those accessing such services, thus breaching the law.
That word — “influence” — is doing extraordinary work.
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Johnston did not speak about abortion. He did not approach anyone. The case rests on the idea that passers-by might have inferred his beliefs about abortion from his Christian message that had nothing to do with abortion, and that this alone could constitute unlawful “influence.”
If that standard holds, it not only regulates conduct, it regulates belief, through a kind of guilt-by-association. Put simply: the Bible is on trial.
For American readers, this may sound implausible. The United States has long treated religious expression as a core liberty, protected even — and especially — when it is controversial. But in parts of the United Kingdom and across Europe, a different approach is taking hold.
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In Finland, Päivi Räsänen, a former interior minister, has recently been convicted of “hate speech” over a pamphlet she wrote in 2004 outlining her church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality. In England, individuals have been convicted for silently praying on certain streets.
These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a broader shift: a growing willingness to treat public expressions of Christian belief not as contributions to democratic debate, but as potential harms to be managed.
If quoting the Bible can be criminalised in case it offends, then what is unfolding is not simply a domestic legal dispute. It is a test of the values that underpin one of the world’s closest alliances.
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The United States and the United Kingdom have long described their bond as a “special relationship,” rooted in shared history, shared language and, crucially, shared commitments to fundamental freedoms — including free speech and religious liberty. That assumption is now under strain.
Speaking ahead of his trial, the U.S. State Department warned this week that cases like that of Clive Johnston represent an “egregious violation” of fundamental rights and “a concerning departure from the shared values that ought to underpin U.S.-U.K. relations.”
Alliances depend on more than mutual interests. They depend on a baseline agreement about the rights of citizens — what can be said, what can be believed, and whether the state exists to protect those freedoms. When that baseline shifts, so too does the relationship.
The irony is that this moment of legal restriction comes just as faith is resurging across the West. In both the United States and Europe, members of Generation Z are rediscovering Christianity in unexpected numbers. Churches report growing youth attendance. Bible sales are rising. A generation once assumed to be post-religious is beginning to take belief seriously again.
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But while the resurgence is shared, the response is not.
The United States has, for now, resisted Europe’s censorial trajectory. Its constitutional tradition reflects a confidence that citizens can encounter competing ideas — even uncomfortable ones — without the state policing their expression. But that confidence is not guaranteed. The value of freedom of expression needs perpetually reinforced to a population which may feel too easily drawn to the false compassion of “safe spaces” and “hate speech bans”.
Clive Johnston’s case across the Atlantic may seem small: a single man, a single sermon, a single Bible verse. But it raises a question with transatlantic consequences. If preaching the Bible in ‘the wrong place’ can be treated as a form of unlawful influence by one of America’s closest allies, what does that say about the durability of the freedoms they claim to share?
The special relationship has long been described in near-sacred terms. But it rests, ultimately, on shared values. It may not be quite accurate to say it is living on a prayer. In this case, it may be living on something more fragile: whether a man is free to speak a Bible verse in public.
