Why should Christians care about free speech?

This article was first published in our recent Social Issues Bulletin – Issue 58 which is available to download here.

Free speech can be a thorny issue. We are rightly concerned about the threats to Gospel freedom posed by laws threatening free speech: the Online Safety Act, proposed legislation on conversion therapy, and amendments to hate crime legislation, to name just a few. But on the other hand, we can rightly feel uncomfortable with the vile content awash on social media.

How are we to respond as Christians? Should Christians defend all free speech? I offer these five reflective angles as a starting point to begin thinking through this important issue.

1. A Creational Case: Freedom to speak is granted by God

Speech is a precious gift from God. It is part of what distinguishes us as humans, made in the image of God. As God is a communicative Being, so we too are communicative beings. Of course, this is by way of analogy. God’s speech is not a matter of syllables sounding and then dying away – his Word is eternal. Nevertheless, we understand the accomplishment of God’s Word:

• It nurtures relationships, principally within the Trinity but secondarily with his creatures (John 1:1);
• It communicates truth, expressing his own being (Proverbs 2:6; John 1:14; 2 Timothy 3:16);
• It exercises dominion through its creative power (Genesis 1:3-4; Psalm 33:9).

If human speech is a sharing in this aspect of the divine nature, then our speech has a similar end. Fulfilling relationships (Ephesians 4:29; 1 Thessalonians 5:11), increased knowledge (Proverbs 1:5-7; Romans 10:14-17), true self-expression (Psalm 142:1), and righteous dominion – which incorporates our work, creative endeavours and advocacy for justice (Genesis 2:18-20; Proverbs 31:8) – are the goods that speech can accomplish.

In passing, it may be helpful to note how these ends correspond closely to the cultural mandate given by God in Genesis 1:28, to ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it’ and to have ‘dominion’. Thus, it is our moral duty to exercise speech to these ends. God intends us to speak.

2. A Natural Law Case: The government should ordinarily preserve that natural liberty

There is a natural order of things which precedes any human construct or government. God determines the blueprint for human flourishing. Nations lacking in liberty are those that invert this order and where a state presumes to determine for itself what is good for human flourishing, based upon its own ideological convictions. This is precisely what we see in the advance of 21st century cancel culture: ‘good’ is redefined and then censorship applied accordingly.

On the other hand, Christians have argued that liberty is built upon the foundation of natural law. The purpose of civil Government is to uphold the conditions whereby a person can pursue the happy ends for which they were created.  As C.S. Lewis wrote:

The State exists to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden – that is what the State is there for.

The close connections between speech, the cultural mandate and human flourishing makes freedom of speech an integral part of liberty. If a government is too restrictive regarding speech, it risks trampling on God’s purposes and leaving society a distorted shadow of all that it was intended to be.

This is obvious to us. A society where people can be reported to the police for saying the ‘wrong thing’ is one that breeds mistrust between people – thus destroying relationships, rather than establishing them. A law restricting free speech limits the human capacity to discern what should be said and thought – a key part of human maturity.

And righteous dominion too is threatened. Proverbs 31:8-9 shows the connection between dominion, speech and justice: ‘Open your mouth for the speechless, in the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.’ Restriction on speech very quickly impacts on justice. Think of how, in our own nation, state enforcement of gender ideology has discouraged large swathes of the nation from speaking out against puberty blockers in what is now recognised as one of the greatest medical scandals of our time.

A right to ‘freedom of speech’ is therefore based upon the right to carry out God’s commands and purpose in the world. Thus, freedom of speech can be defined as an instrumental good – it is good insofar as it enables man to live out his God-given duties. To put it another way, the State becomes illiberal when it curtails the right to live in that God-honouring way – with flourishing relationships, God-honouring worship and righteous enjoyment of the world – or compels ungodly speech or action.

Whilst it may seem counter-intuitive, any other foundation for freedom of speech either fails to support its weight or even undermines it.

A Utilitarian approach to freedom of speech which states that a person may say anything on condition that it causes no harm to others, raises significant questions around the definition of ‘harm’ – a conundrum that can only be resolved through appeal to a moral standard. This is illustrated in the Government’s plans to pass a conversion therapy law. Their understanding of what is ‘harmful’ is determined by their own ‘moral standard’ that no person should be told that their sexual conduct or transgender identity is wrong. 

Conversely, an absolutist approach to freedom of speech, which includes a right to engage in incitement to violence or gross obscenity, clearly opposes the purpose of speech itself in ultimately destroying society through physical or moral violence.

If we are going to counter the two extremes of our day – liberal cancel culture on the one hand, and the anarchic promotion of all that is evil on the other – then we need to grow in confidence in our Christian understanding of freedom of speech, resting upon natural law. 

3. An Anthropological Case: Free speech recognises man’s suppression of the truth

In Romans 1, Paul teaches us how sinful man seeks to ‘suppress the truth in unrighteousness’ and instead seeks to cling with vehemence to his own creations and ideas. Consequently, the truth is always in a battle to be heard.

This universal human tendency should dispel any idea that Government is omniscient and can justly discern all that society should hear. The only difference between the individual deadening their conscience and the Government is that the latter has more tools and greater power to suppress.

We recognise that no government is morally neutral – they are constantly seeking to impose their values on society, often through control of speech. Christians must be vigilant about this reality and be proactive in defending the right of the truth to be heard. This includes being aware of any legislation that is passing through Parliament which may seek to take away our right to speech, protected under natural law. Our best counter then, as outlined in Romans 1, is an appeal to conscience.

4. An Epistemological Case: Free speech concords with humility and learning

All truth is grounded upon and presupposes God – his revelation is our epistemological foundation. This means that reason itself is founded upon God. Whether the Athenians in Acts 17 realised it or not, when they engaged in true reasoning they were thinking God’s thoughts after him. Indeed, this is partly what Paul means when he says that God is ‘not far from each one of us’ (Acts 17:27). Their reasoning itself demonstrated the truth and existence of God – even though their hearts lay darkened to God.

This helps us to hold the place of debate in perspective. Through reasoning – which involves weighing up contrary arguments – the Athenians were sometimes able to come to a knowledge of true things. Reason was an essential instrument. But at the same time, we understand autonomous reason not to be the ultimate ground of that knowledge, which is the revelation of God alone through Scripture and nature.

This means that with the 19th century Utilitarian philosopher and poster boy for classical liberal proponents of free speech, John Stuart Mill, we can affirm the utility of engaging in dialectic discussion. But as Christians, we can have a certainty of what is true beyond (though not entirely detached from) this – based upon a Pneumological foundation, as the Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts. Thus, the Christian is not hoping merely to ‘stumble upon’ the truth.

Nevertheless, this does not at all remove the importance of a Christian discussing, debating and hearing contrary views. Indeed, they are essential to helping buttress and increase our confidence in the faith. The church has always professed, in the famous words of Anselm of Canterbury, ‘I believe in order to understand’. Our starting point is belief in what is said, but then through that prism we grow in understanding as we see contrary arguments in the light of it. Our scholastic Christian forebears therefore had great confidence in engaging with a full panoply of arguments – e.g. from classical pagans and Islamic sources – some of which were true, others not, to show the reasonableness of faith and so build greater confidence in the truth.  

Thus, Christians should not be afraid to hear arguments that are not true because in God’s purpose they serve to strengthen and sharpen their faith.

To this extent, John Stuart Mill was absolutely right when he argued in his 1859 essay On Liberty that understanding, born out of polemic, helps develop our ideas from dead dogma to living truths and convictions. And this is exactly the place that God wants us to be, as Paul writes in Romans 14:5: ‘Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind’ in matters of conscience. This, in turn, assists us in our apologetics as we seek to engage with an ever-confused world – just as it did Paul in debating the Athenian philosophers in the Areopagus in Acts 17.

This reasonable approach also helps give us credence in the eyes of the world. It is often said that we live in a social media age, where people exist in their own echo chambers and engage with ‘the other side’ through strong, unsympathetic rhetoric. But by being willing to test our ideas against alternative points of view, we are demonstrating counter-cultural humility.

Whilst we are assured of the truth insofar as our beliefs correspond to the Word of God, the whole of Christian tradition calls us to recognise our own fallibility. As 16th century Italian Reformer Jacobus Acontius (an important historical figure in arguments around toleration) expressed it: ‘Forasmuch as it is a property of Mankind to err, no one person that is but a mere man ought to be so confident, as to persuade himself he cannot err…’. 

A wise Christian will embrace Proverbs 12:15: ‘The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who heeds counsel is wise.’ Christian learning is rooted in humility, and this relies upon hearing ideas with which we disagree. 

5. A Prudential Case: Christian prudence suggests a pragmatic case for free speech

History is full of examples of those who have sought to suppress ideas through force but found that their measures served only to advance them. For example, the pre-Constantinian Roman Emperors wished to suppress Christianity. But they quickly learnt that coercive suppression was ineffective. Eusebius records how, eventually, Emperor Marcus Aurelius had to do an about-turn because he realised that coercive suppression of Christians was achieving precisely the opposite of this intention:

You get them into serious trouble by your accusations of atheism [against the Christians], and thereby strengthen their existing determination: and if accused they would choose apparent death rather than life, for the sake of their own god. And so they are the real winners, when they part with their lives rather than agree to carry out your commands.

As Christians there are ideas that we well might wish would disappear. However, if we are prudent, we will learn from this and other examples that the defeat of ideas is not always best served through censorship.

Such prudential arguments are important. Pragmatism can often be seen as a dirty word amongst Christians today. However, we must give it its right place, under the domain of Christian prudence. Prudence uses practical reason to discern our true good in each circumstance and helps us choose the right means of achieving it.

The goal of civil Government is, as we argued above, for a society to flourish in accordance with virtue. Any means we use must be suited to achieve this end, whilst being in accord with the Word of God.

In his City of God, Augustine defines virtue as ‘rightly ordered love’. Government, he argues, can promote this end by the coercive force of justice helping people reorder their loves to the benefit of human flourishing. But its effectiveness will certainly depend on the matter at hand.

Take, for a modern example, the law around wearing a seatbelt. In punishing this offence, the State are partially trying to force the individual to think about which they value more highly: their freedom not to wear a seatbelt or the money they would lose in a fine. The law is largely effective because most people decide that their money is more valuable to them than defying the State. 

But the force of the punishment can break down the higher the love –a fine to outlaw a particular religious belief is likely to be ineffective. This is because a person’s love for their god is, by definition, nearly always going to be higher than their love of keeping their money. In fact, such a law may be counter-productive, and increase the fervency of their love for their religious belief. Thus, it would be imprudent.

Nevertheless, making prudent decisions in such matters can be difficult. Above all, Christians should want righteousness to flourish. It should cause us to pray for wisdom in all these matters. But this prudential argument also leaves us with a challenge: if suppression is not the right answer, how can we work to make our speech most effective and persuasive to help people love the right things under God?