The issue of free speech is not as simple and as clear-cut as most people think it is. Obviously, my title gives the game away before you have read it – as to what I will argue, but to coin a phrase, “It’s the journey that matters.” So, bear with me for the ride as I describe where the belief in free speech came from. Is it Christian or a deformity of it? Why are Christians confused with it? Is it a good and necessary thing? Is Christianity pro-free speech or not? Should Christians defend it? Why should we not be ashamed that we are not pro-free speech? Finally, how might a Christian society manage speech in a new Christendom?
The issue is pertinent as the collapse of classical Liberalism (the real home of the idea of free speech) has led to a soul-searching amongst many in the West who feel and see the erosion of the Western Enlightenment project and the growth of a virulent form of Islamic fundamentalism in term of Salafist Islam and its Shia equivalent in Iran. This has led to an existential need to try and reframe the West as a Christian society; one of the touchstones of this debate is the question of free speech.
The arguments in favour of free speech, like much of what is taken for Western Christian civilisation, come out of the Enlightenment. The fathers of this idea were John Milton, John Locke, and Voltaire, and when considering how they argued, one can discern something Christian and also something that is profoundly not Christian in their thinking. In Milton’s thinking, expressed in his works such as the Areopagitica, he argued from ‘Natural Law’ that to restrain the speech of man was against the design of man. Locke argued from reason, as a created attribute, that man should be free to express his reason, and to do so required free expression, which helped in the process of reasoning in an early echo of Hegelian dialectic. These two authors argued from ‘design,’ essentially to establish the value of free expression. This move to build so heavily on natural theology is criticised by Eastern Christian thinkers such as David Bradshaw, Richard Cross, Alexey Fokin, Paul Gavrilyuk, Travis Dumsday, Dionysios Skliris, and Richard Swinburne. Rightly so, the West took a miss-step at the Enlightenment wherein Western Europe pushed revelation out of the frame of reference and balanced what was built in the crumbling ruins of Christendom on natural theology, which, during the Enlightenment, was an existential source of its basis. This is why so many Enlightenment thinkers were Deists, and the debate between Christians and the ‘Enlightened’ spun on that axis of natural theology. Voltaire, however, was different. He was a fiery, hot preacher of the Enlightenment, particularly for the ideals of the French Revolution (an Enlightenment blood-soaked revolution), and a rapid anti-Catholic. He did not so much argue but attacked the Church for restraining freedoms. So, the idea that Christianity gave rise to free speech is true, in a way. The idea emerged from the Christian milieu; Christians made the arguments by reasoning out of ‘natural law theology’ in response to the Christian civil war called the ‘Reformation.’ They wanted to recast the world in a way to stop Christians fighting one another over religion. That is your first clue that perhaps Christianity is not as pro-free speech as its fathers, who did not appeal to Scripture to make their case but to an auxiliary paradigm that emerged from Christianity. Perhaps a picture metaphor can make my point: It’s like trying to build your house not on the foundations but rather on the scaffolding you build on the foundations. This is why some Christians and those sympathetic to Christianity have argued that free speech is a Christian value, because it is, in a way. However, it is in the same way that cancer is still your body, as it is wholly argued from the perspective that does not genuinely hold onto what the apostolic tradition teaches in Scripture. Rather, it is an idea that came out of that tradition but a deformity of the Christian faith. So, it is Christian, ‘kinda.’ The idea of free speech is a collection that was born at the same time, all from the same reasoning, and all of which rested on a Christian foundation of metaphysical realities, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, the dignity of every man, the idea of the rationally understandable universe, of the rightness of rational inquiry, and so on. This article, however, focuses on just one of these ideas. We have touched upon the subject more broadly in other articles. I am saying here that ‘free speech’ is not rooted in proper reasoning from nature when such reasoning does not start from revelation.
This leaves the question: can free speech be good if we do not arrive at it from the correct starting point? Well, yes. The modern Liberal world, as a distorted Christian world, is still better than all the rest of the options on the table currently. Until recently, Christianity framed the Liberal world and was scaffolded from a heavily Christianised worldview, reasoning Christian priorities from Christian assumption of natural theology. Christians need to re-absorb the Enlightenment from a Christian worldview that assumes the correct basis of revelation prior to natural theology and our reasoning. In other words, it is a Christian revision of the Enlightenment. Free speech, right now, for a disempowered and increasingly discriminated against (but still significant) minority is one of the necessary axioms we need to keep open due to increasing restrictions on expressions of faith. Christians have been arrested for preaching, praying, and even just thinking in the United Kingdom and elsewhere! The only cultural resource we currently have to wield against this kind of oppression is the classical Liberal idea, as expressed best by Locke, that reasonable thought helped society to progress. Thus, Christians also must be allowed to speak in public debate. It is in the Church’s best interests to wield this value and defend it, not because it is truly Christian, but because, right now, it’s one of the few weapons we can use to defend our rights. So, do not take this article as saying we currently oppose free speech. Instead, we should defend it until we revise it according to the Apostolic tradition.
So why isn’t Christianity pro-free speech? Any Christian can immediately see the argument’s validity by thinking, would they agree to ‘free speech’ from the pulpit? Obviously not! We would not want people teaching false doctrines from the pulpit, so in most Christian environments, we do not practice it or want it to be practiced. This reflection is obvious. It then follows that if we were to achieve a Christian society again – the pulpits of society, such as what is on TV or in the media at large, would also be to some degree. I address to what degree shortly, subject to Christian restraint.
Consider the Ten Commandments, for example, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain” (Deuteronomy 5:11, ESV).
To take the name of the Lord in vain has two meanings; the first is a council to every Christian who says, ‘GOD told me to do it/say it.’ Such words are heavy, which is an understatement. You should tremble before you dare to ascribe anything to GOD that you are not certain has come from GOD. Many pastors should heed this council, as for every abuse of the name of GOD, in this way, will be held to account for all that you do ‘in His name.’ The second way this idea goes forward is not to mock or ridicule God or be subject to scorn. The Jewish mindset is that if the name of GOD is holy, how much more is GOD Himself? Indeed, the name of the thing says something about the character of the thing or person named. The name of GOD ‘I AM’ speaks ever of GOD’s transcendence – His utter otherness and above and beyond all that is, as well as His imminence – whatever the circumstances – GOD is and is above all that you can think of, and the highest embodiment of all you can think.
Augustine of Hippo said, “But now the Lord speaks to Moses—you know all this, and I won’t keep you longer on it, for lack of time—I am who I am; He who is sent me.” When he asked God’s name, you see, this is what was said: “I am who I am. And you shall say to the children of Israel, He who is sent me to you.” What’s this all about? O God, O Lord of ours, what are you called? “I am called He is,” he said. What does it mean, I am called He is? “That I abide forever, that I cannot change.” Things which change are not, because they do not last. What is, abides. But whatever changes was something and will be something; yet you cannot say it is, because it is changeable. So the unchangeableness of God was prepared to suggest itself by this phrase “I am who I am… He is the first and greatest existence, who is utterly unchangeable and who could say most perfectly, “I am who I am,” and you shall say to them, “He who is has sent me to you.” As a result, the other things which exist could not exist except by him, and these things are good insofar as they have received the ability to be . . .. Magnificently and divinely, therefore, our God said to his servant: “I am that I am,” and “You shall say to the children of Israel, He who is sent me to you.” For He truly is because He is unchangeable. For every change makes what was not, to be. Therefore, He truly is, who is unchangeable, but all other things that were made by Him have received being from Him, each in its own measure . . .. For although that immutable and ineffable nature does not admit of was and will be but only is (for it truly is, because it cannot be changed), and therefore it was proper for Him to say, “I am who I am” and “You will say to the children of Israel, ‘He who is has sent Me to you,’ ” nevertheless, on account of the changeableness of the times in which our mortality and our changeableness are involved, we do not falsely say was and will be and is. Was, in past ages; is, in present ones; will be, in future ones. Was, because He was never lacking; will be, because He will never be lacking; is, because He always is” (c. 400; Confessions).
Therefore, since, as Christians, we pray that their name be made holy, or hallowed be thy name, and that such a name is thrice holy, how much more sacred the one who bears the name? Thus, as Christians, it is our honour, nay our duty, to defend the name, and we should not be ashamed to do so. Christians, do you think, in a Christian society, the Jerry Springer Show should have been broadcast? If so, do you think that all those Christians who wrote, in the hundreds of thousands, to stop it from being aired were wrong? We as Christians should be in favour of a blasphemy law to prevent blasphemy against the holy name of GOD that mocks our Lord or His Apostles, or His mother, or His Holy Church, that bears His Spirit. We should not be ashamed of this stance. We literally pray for it in the Lord’s prayer. As good, adopted sons, we should seek to see the name of our Father honoured and seen as holy by all! Therefore, to abandon free speech is not a source of shame but a source of honour if we do so for the honour of GOD.
Cyprian of Carthage said, “We pray ‘Hallowed be thy name,’ not that we wish that God may be made holy by our prayers but that His name may be hallowed in us. But by whom is God made holy, since He Himself is incomparably holy? It is because He commands us, ‘Be holy, even as I am holy,’ that we ask and entreat that we who were sanctified in baptism may continue in that which we have begun to be. And this we pray for daily, for we have need of daily sanctification, that we who daily fall away may wash out our sins by continual sanctification” (Cyprian of Carthage, On the Lord’s Prayer, Chapter 13). Thus, as Christians, should GOD grace us again to guide Western civilisation aright, we could not allow GOD to be mocked, for by it, men may be led astray and to spiritual harm, thinking GOD be some ever so light a matter of concern, like mocking a president, a prime minister, or intemperate king.
How, then, might Christians manage free speech in a new Christendom? I would offer this suggestion as the rubric of a revised understanding of free speech in a new Christendom, where most Christian communities agree are the boundaries of good taste vis-a-vis aspects of the faith; in the case of speaking, criticising, or mocking them, there should be the boundaries of free speech. Therefore, blasphemy and ridicule of the divine Trinity would be out of bounds; this would flow outward to other subjects and areas, like His apostle, His mother, His prophets, and so on until Christians could no longer find a consensus. These boundaries should be applied to all those receiving government funds, whether a government employee, a member of a governmentally funded quango, or even those receiving state benefits or society working within a government institution. Indeed, all such recipients would be expected to speak as a Christian (or to uphold the Christian worldview) or be silent on all matters mentioned above. However, to any organisation, society, business, or individual not receiving money from the state, ‘free speech’ should be allowed, fully and completely. The public sphere is a state sphere so that rules would be applied there as in any other sphere funded by the state, but free speech would be allowed in a privately run business. Punishments and penalties would vary according to the time, place, context, actor, and motivation of the one who infringes upon these laws.
Furthermore, as knowledge of the truth shall set you free, all Christian speech – should be free, and no Christian should lose their jobs because, in their private life or in a reasonable way, within their employment, they spoke as a Christian. Think of nurses who offer to pray for their patients or Christian students who publish something Christian on Facebook. Where the state upholds a Christian value or belief as a matter of public policy – such as pro-life and where Christians assume a clear consensus of such values, this would be beyond critique (as a principle – though maybe not its implementation) by a state employee. Obviously, many aspects of how ‘speech’ would be governed in a new Christendom are not addressed here. The point is not to give a complete manifesto to a far-off horizon that is unlikely to be recognised in my lifetime. Instead, it demonstrates that Christians are not bound to the Enlightenment principles of free speech (or any other of its precepts) and should be trying to envision a Christian civilization if we want to offer an alternative to the world, unafraid to blaspheme any value that is not Christian in root and branch (and Liberalism is only Christian in root, not branch).
