Trey Paul, FISM News
A legal appeal is underway for a school chaplain in the United Kingdom who says he was left without a job and reported as a terrorist because he told students during a 2019 sermon that they don’t have to identify the way some LGBTQ activists say they should.
Rev. Dr. Bernard Randall is suing Trent College in England, where he served five years as a chaplain, for discrimination, harassment, victimization, and unfair dismissal.
Randall lost his unfair dismissal case last week when an employment judge ruled against him. The ruling that was handed down argued “the duty to safeguard pupils from the risk of harm and the requirement to comply with the Independent Schools Standards Regulator outweigh the Claimant’s right to express his beliefs in the manner he did in a school environment.”
Despite the inflammatory characterization of the sermon by the school, Randall spent most of the speech addressing how Christians should respond when they are having an agenda or ideology pushed on them that conflicts with their religion.
“And in our own school community, I have been asked about a similar thing,” he said. ‘This is one of the requested topics, and the question was put to me in a very particular way – ‘How come we are told we have to accept all this LGBT stuff in a Christian school?’ I thought that was a very intelligent and thoughtful way of asking about the conflict of values, rather than asking which is right, and which is wrong.”
“You should no more be told you have to accept LGBT ideology than you should be told you must be in favor of Brexit or must be Muslim.” Despite stressing “the need to treat each other with respect,” Randal was reported to the government’s counter-terrorism watchdog by the school as a potentially violent religious extremist.
News of Randall’s loss in court prompted Christian conservatives like writer Bart Marcois to express their shared fears on social media.
Marcois tweeted: “This is the end goal of the Left: to criminalize religion and speech. Don’t allow it. Fight it everywhere. Every time.”
This is the end goal of the Left: to criminalize religion and speech. Don’t allow it. Fight it everywhere. Every time.
“A UK school chaplain was fired and reported as a terrorist for questioning LGBT activists. He will appeal a legal ruling against him.”
https://t.co/6W222yyCtZ— Bart Marcois (@bmarcois) February 28, 2023
Another Twitter user, a USMC veteran, shared this thought: “This is why we must fight LGBTQ ideology. It criminalizes people of faith. They don’t believe in live and let live.”
This is why we must fight lgbtq ideology. It criminalizes people of faith. They don’t believe in live and let live.
Chaplain reported as terrorist for questioning LGBTQ activists digs in for legal battlehttps://t.co/pnwfC4Knwe
— republicanolatino (@republicanolat) February 26, 2023
Randall described the ruling as a “blow for free speech and Christian freedoms.”
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Center who backed Dr. Randall’s case, said,
The message from this judgment to Christians is you cannot disagree or express disagreement with LGBT teaching – you must comply, celebrate and promote. It is not enough to be tolerant and liberal in the original sense of those words. You have to actively promote and celebrate.
“I’m being charged with wrongthink,” Randall said in a statement before a preliminary hearing. “There is no allegation that my behavior toward any person has ever fallen below proper standards. Only my thinking is being checked. Even the Spanish Inquisition told people what the charges were.”
Randall says he will appeal the legal ruling against him because he feels he was targeted for defending his Christian views.
“People in the Church are accusing me of the crime of thinking what the Church thinks, because I preached what the Church teaches, they think I am too dangerous to be allowed to preach in any Church,” he said.
“We will stand with Bernard and all others who continue to live and speak out the Christian faith in public life for as long as it takes,” Williams said.