Prison Preacher Silenced
A gardener, employed at a sex offenders’ prison in Cambridgeshire, has been silenced for speaking to the prisoners about God’s forgiveness. Barry Trayhorn, an ordained minister, worked as a gardener at HMP Littlehey. When given an opportunity to conduct prison services there, he spoke of the grace of God in forgiving those who repent. On a particular occasion he spoke on 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, where the sins of adultery, homosexuality, greed and drunkenness are highlighted. Mr Trayhorn emphasised, “As I led the service, I spoke about the wonder of God’s love and the forgiveness that comes through Jesus to those who recognise their sin and repent. I said that I am the worst sinner I know”. Several days afterwards, some prisoners made complaints; consequently he was banned from taking part in future services.
Over subsequent weeks, issues were raised about his gardening work, which ended in disciplinary proceedings. Mr Trayhorn says that, after the complaints over his preaching, he was “bombarded” by officials alleging bad behaviour. Matters became so difficult that he was signed off with a stress-related illness and he ultimately resigned from his job, stating that he had been harassed for his Christian faith and so could not return. Mr Trayhorn believes that the treatment meted out to him was directly related to the complaints about his preaching. He therefore went to an employment tribunal claiming that he was discriminated against on the grounds of his religion.
Last March, however, his appeal failed when an employment appeals tribunal ruled that there was no discrimination, but rather accused him of speaking about God’s forgiveness in an “insensitive” way which “failed to have regard for the special nature of the congregation in the prison”. The tribunal seemed to indicate that there was a problem, “because of the way his message was received”.
Mr Trayhorn states, “This case is alarming on a number of fronts. The tribunal’s reasoning was based on the effect that my message, which included the Bible verses, had on those who heard them, yet those who attend chapel do so voluntarily . . . to learn what the Bible has to say. The congregation know that the Bible will be preached on, and therefore complaints should have been considered in the light of that.”
Of course we do not know how skilled Trayhorn was as a gardener, or what genuine questions there may have been over his work, but it looks as if the work problems began when he started to preach the gospel to the prisoners. He says, “The tribunal has effectively said that inmates will no longer be able to listen to sermons preached from the Bible which could change their behaviour for the better”. He warns, “The ever growing political correctness will soon be hitting pulpits and, if congregations do not like what they hear about sexuality, complaints will be made”.
Andrea Williams of Christian Concern concludes, “This is a chilling judgement and should alarm MPs and church leaders alike. What we are seeing, month by month, is a systematic marginalising of Christians in public life. It happens slowly, case by case, sector by sector, but before long no Christian, whether they be ordained like Mr Trayhorn, or simply an office worker, will be able to openly state what their deep, sincere convictions are without fear of being reported to their employer and called a bigot.”
It is a solemn time when those who so desperately need the gospel – as we sinners all do – follow those in Isaiah’s day “which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits” (Is 30:10). KHM
The “I” in “LGBTI”
Some readers may have wondered what the “I” stands for in the sadly-familiar acronym “LGBTI”. Recently the BBC and some leading members of the Scottish Parliament have been, as they would think, promoting the interests of the “Ts” (transgender persons, or people of one sex who wish to live as members of the opposite sex) and the “Is” (intersex persons, that is either hermaphrodites or people who do not wish to be identified as belonging to a particular sex).
One well-known “I” was a very distant relative by marriage of the present writer, her married name being Georgina Somerset. Physically she was somewhat abnormal (hermaphrodite), and genetically she was probably “mosaic XO/XY”; for the first 30 years of her life she was identified as a male under the name of George Turtle. She was a dentist, and an officer in the Royal Navy after the Second World War. In 1957 she had an operation and began to live as a woman, and in 1962 she was married to Christopher Somerset. From pictures on the internet, it can be seen that she made an unmanly naval officer, but an attractive if slightly masculine-looking woman.
A News of the World interview in about 1960 brought her fame, and she started to receive letters and visits from “Ts” from all over the world. She recorded in her autobiography: “It was not long before I realised that, as far as I could make out, all were, within a reasonable scale of variation, really physically normal people, and not like me at all. . . . It must, nevertheless, be said that most of all those I saw and heard from were basically sincere, nice people, who were so very happy for me and so very grateful that I was even prepared to listen to and understand their own troubles.” She continued living as a woman until her death, aged 90, in 2013.
This shows that the correct approach with “Is” is to try to determine their nearest sex and to help them to settle into that. Similarly, with “Ts” the aim should be to reconcile them to their God-given sex. This, however, will not be the purpose of the sodomites and their friends, either in the BBC or in the Scottish Parliament. Instead they are using the “Is” as a stalking-horse for furthering their subversion of the morals and fabric of society. If one had a child like George/Georgina Turtle, one would not consult sodomites as to what was best for that child. We are sorry for the “Is” in whom these people are taking an interest. It will not be for their temporal or for their eternal well-being. DWBS
First woman minister in Skye
The Church of Scotland has just inducted a woman minister in Skye, the first woman minister on the island. The step shows an open disregard for the Word of God, in which the Apostle Paul says, “I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (1 Tim 2:12). The Apostle’s reasoning is based, not on customs in the Roman Empire, but on what happened with Adam and Eve at the Fall (vv 13-14), showing the permanent nature of this principle. There may be many incomers in Skye, and increasing irreligion, but the people responsible for this step cannot plead the same ignorance that there is in some other parts of the country. The fact that this is the first woman minister there should have made them think. However people may glory in these things now, it will not be a matter of glory at the Day of Judgement to have been the first to do something wrong. DWBS