Matthew 6: “And when you pray, do not be as the hypocrites are. For they love to stand and pray on the corners of the streets, because they want to be seen by men."

Last weekend, US Vice President J. D. Vance was kind enough to give us an analysis of the dangers threatening Europe. He spoke at a security conference organised in Munich, at which many European foreign ministers were present. One would have expected harsh criticism of the danger posed to the West by Russian aggression. Or perhaps of China's support for Russia in its war or China's attempt to take control of various parts of the world, including countries that are our allies. But no. Vance instead said that we are our own worst enemies. Our governments are taking away our basic liberties and trying to impose their views on us. Unlike in America the land of liberty.

He said that freedom of expression was in retreat and that the fundamental freedoms of Christianity were under attack. In particular, Vance railed against the “crazy” conviction last year of Adam Smith-Connor, fined £9,000 for conducting a “silent prayer” protest in the legal “buffer zone” around an abortion clinic in Bournemouth. He said that he was praying for his unborn son, who had died as a result of an abortion 22 years previously. Quite what he was praying for though is unknown. If the son had somehow sinned in utero, it would be up to him and not the father to repent. And it seems unlikely that God’s general policy regarding the acceptance of foetuses into heaven - depending perhaps on whether they have a soul - is likely to be swayed by a person’s prayer.

Although behind a tree, Smith-Connor was in view of the clinic. After over an hour’s attempt at persuading him to move on by a community police officer, he refused, leading to his arrest and later conviction. The law does not however say that prayer in the zone is an offence, as Vance made out. But where an individual is praying within the zone, and it’s obvious that’s what’s happening and why, this will be an offence.

Vance also criticised the Scottish government. He said they had sent letters to households near abortion clinics telling residents they would be committing a crime if they prayed against abortion in their own homes. This also is untrue. The buffer zone law in Scotland makes it an offence to attempt to influence someone’s decision to access, provide or facilitate abortion within 200 metres of an abortion clinic, or harass someone while they seek to do so.

The letter said: “Activities in a private place (such as a house) within the area between the protected premises and the boundary of a zone could be an offence if they can be seen or heard within the zone and are done intentionally or recklessly.” So then, if a person living within the safe zone put up anti-abortion signs outside their houses or decided to pray at high volume, for example using a loudspeaker, using words intended to deter women who heard them from seeking abortion, then this would be a violation of the law.

But then we know that the Christian far right – as represented by Vance – seeks to uphold the so-called ‘right to life’. It is though an opinion which according to the polls is not shared by the majority of electors even in the USA and certainly not in Europe as a whole. And so one might argue that Vance is himself trying to impose a set of views on the public which they do not support.

Which brings us to the whole topic of prayer and its weaponisation. The teachings of Jesus about prayer ought to make uncomfortable reading for the modern day activist church. They are in the ‘Sermon on the Mount’:

“And when you pray, do not be as the hypocrites are. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, because they want to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward. But when you pray, enter into your chamber and shut the door to, and pray to your Father who is in secret... And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions like the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.

Today, we have a church which prays that others, and particularly those who do not uphold the so-called ‘right to life’, may be turned by God from their sinful ways. I’m not quite sure how that aligns with the freewill they tell us we have and which is required to enable us to be blamed for our sin or to repent from it. If God can override our sinful intentions, then surely he ought to do this continuously?

But those same churches seem to think that God will only act if they ask him to. And it seems that they also think that the more they ask and the more of the faithful who pray for such an outcome, the more likely he is to say yes. So then, they have prayer meetings galore going on for hours and encourage their many members to be present in order that the will of God (as interpreted by them) should be carried out.

This also opens up the question of why the war between Russia and the Ukraine is still going on. The Orthodox Church in Russia affirms that what Putin is doing is morally justified. It also offers the certainty of eternal life to Russian soldiers killed in the war and prays for Russian success.

What’s a god to do? Can he then justifiably act on the prayers of those not directly involved in the war - all those activist Christians in America perhaps?

But continuing his scatter-gun approach, Vance also accused Europe of opening the floodgates to millions of unscreened immigrants. And so he lauded a Brexit motivated by anxiety about migration and condemned German politicians for trying to censor the hard-right AfD in the run-up to the election there later this month. 

And he complained that the British authorities had been jailing journalists.

This is presumably the far-right activist ‘Tommy Robinson’, who in October 2024 admitted ten breaches of a High Court order made in 2021 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison for contempt of court. The background to this is that, In October 2018, a video went viral showing how Jamal Hijazi, a Syrian lad in West Yorkshire, had been attacked by another teenager at school.

Yaxley-Lennon (Robinson) then posted a response to this video to his one million Facebook followers alleging that his own investigation had established that Mr Hijazi was in fact a violent thug, a claim that was untrue. The Yaxley-Lennon video however spread widely and the Syrian teenager and his family  received death threats. Mr Hijazi won £100,000 in damages when the High Court ruled Yaxley-Lennon’s claims were defamatory and also imposed an injunction banning him from making the false claims again. 

Three years later, Yaxley-Leonard began repeating his claims and went on to post online a film claiming he had been “silenced” by the state. Last July, he showed the film to thousands of his supporters in Trafalgar Square, saying he would not be silenced.

So then, a situation not unlike that of Trump in respect of the finding against him by a jury that he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll, for which she was awarded $5 million in damages, an award followed by a further award of $83 million by another jury for his defamation of her in continuing publicly to deny that he had in fact assaulted her.

Vance is against the ‘woke’ agenda which has certainly been taken to excess but nonetheless endorsed by the Democrats. Wokeness puts pressure on people to act in certain ways – e.g. in the trans debate - which many consider to be irrational. But Vance is obviously in favour of putting pressure on people so that they instead follow his version of morality. So then what he opposes is not the idea of putting pressure on people to conform. It is instead what they are being pressurised to conform to. Approved of by Vance: good. Not approved of: bad. And, as we can see, the use of truth in the arguments put forward is an early casualty: bad, very bad.
Paul Buckingham