Hate Crimes Bill must not stifle Christian message – Gavin Matthews

We can use the law to imprison people for saying something ‘hateful’, but it would be ironic if the same legislation was used to block a way to change people’s hearts, says Gavin Matthews

Humza Yousaf has spoken of the kind of appalling threats he and his family have faced (Picture: Andrew Cowan - Pool/Getty Images)

Tom Tarrants’ life reads like a Hollywood movie. Growing up white in America’s Deep South, he absorbed prejudices which boiled over into paranoia, hatred and far-right terrorism. Viewing himself as a noble defender of America against a conspiracy led by Communists and racial minorities, he set out to assassinate a notable Jewish leader. Following a tip-off, the FBI lay in wait and riddled Tarrants with bullets, killing his accomplice but sparing the lives of his intended victims.

Tarrants would have resisted the idea that black lives matter. To him, both black and Jewish lives were expendable. It was while Tarrants languished in solitary confinement in Mississippi’s Parchman Prison, that something radically changed him. Reading classical philosophy opened his mind to bigger questions of meaning but the fundamental break with race hate occurred when he read the life of Jesus, depicted in the Biblical gospels. Seeing his actions as sins against God and his fellow humans, Tarrants underwent a profound conversion experience. Sceptics thought that he was “getting religion” to gain clemency. However, the subsequent decades he has spent working for reconciliation alongside new friends in African-American and Jewish communities, demonstrated that the change was sincere and permanent.

Here too in Scotland Hamza Yousaf has revealed the kind of appalling threats he and his family face. It is appalling to read. While the Scottish Twittersphere can be laced with vitriol and threat; it is by no means restricted to there.

So what is the answer to the problem of hate? One an wer is to radically curtail free-speech, freedom of expression, debate and discussion; imposing a policing of thinking. A whole host of agencies from churches to secularists, to comedians and authors are raising concerns about the way the law is being marshalled to address the problem in the Hate Crimes Bill. Many of these concerns hinge around who controls what defines “hate”, and the effect on rights to hold and debate unpopular opinions.

We share many of those concerns, but one overlooked Christian perspective on this is that while the law can be used to imprison people, it can’t change their hearts. Tom Tarrants’ hate-filled prejudices were actually inflamed by his belief that the government and judiciary were conspiring against him. What he needed was a complete spiritual renewal, what the Bible calls the “law being written on the heart”. This happened when Tarrants encountered the claims of Jesus Christ, believed them and Jesus’ transforming love reconfigured his life from within. In writings such as “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and “America Must Be Born Again”, Martin Luther King Jr argued that what his hate-filled country needed was to be more, not less, truly Christian. So too, here in Scotland, I have known violent offenders completely transformed by the message of Jesus.

Wouldn’t the bitterest irony of all be if hate-crime legislation restricted free proclamation and debate of the very message which killed the hatred of men like Tom Tarrants and filled him with love for his erstwhile enemies?

Gavin Matthews for Solas