The Public Space Protection Order in Birmingham city centre is not an act of persecution, it doesn’t target Christians because of their faith. However, I’d like to draw your attention to comments I made in an article about a previous situation.
“Situations like this may be messier than anyone acknowledges. There may be genuine concerns from a local authority and community. However, there also are likely to be some ideological reasons underpinning responses to Christians both in that the content of the Gospel causes offence and that causing offence is an unforgivable sin in our postmodern age.”
I believe that this is generally true of situations like this. On the one hand, noise pollution prevention is not persecution however, it can be used by those, not just with other agendas but as part of an expression of an ideology that comes into conflict with Christian beliefs and practices.
What do I mean by this? Well, first of all, where local authorities are acting on behalf of those who have complained about nuisance, you often find that whilst they did not like the noise, it was also the message they were picking it up. Search any social media discussion about the issue and you’ll find that people will tolerate the buskers but they particularly have an issue with what they perceive to be a message of hate from preachers, that offends them. Now, we may have opinions about the methods and priorities of some street preachers, however, we also want to recognise why things are offensive to others. Accompanying this will be those who believe that people should never be offended. This leads to a wider ideology. The idea that people should be able to live their lives in a self contained bubble, undisturbed by the world around them.
Then there is another factor. It’s helpful to consider what happens with geographical crackdowns. We could always tell when there had been a city centre crack down on rough sleeping or prostitution because we saw increased instances of both when we were in Bearwood. Expect the same here. The noise nuisance will be funnelled into other parts of the city centre. Why? Well because one concern here is to protect the commercial profits of the big retail brands and of wealthy landlords in the city centre. This will take priority over smaller traders and even the tenants living in the city centre. Why? Well because a bankrupt local authority is highly dependent upon their income from business rates. In other words, the competing ideology is that old idol, mamon.
These are the reasons as toy why I believe that although not persecution, we should not see these actions as morally/spiritually neutral.
Faithroots 