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Blasphemy law in the United Kingdom

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This article describes the blasphemy law in the United Kingdom.

Contents

England & Wales

Before the common law era

The offence of blasphemy was originally part of canon law. In the 17th century, blasphemy was declared a common law offence by the Court of King's Bench, punishable by the common law courts.

Common law treatment

From the 16th century to the mid-19th century, blasphemy against Christianity was held as an offence against common law. Blasphemy was also used a legal instrument to persecute atheists, Unitarians, and others.

All blasphemies against God, including denying His being or providence, all contumelious reproaches of Jesus Christ, all profane scoffing at the Holy Scriptures, and exposing any part thereof to contempt or ridicule, were punishable by the temporal courts with fine, imprisonment, and corporal punishment. In 1656, the Quaker James Naylor suffered flogging, branding and the piercing of his tongue by a red-hot poker.

An act of Edward VI (repealed 1553 and revived 1558) set a punishment of imprisonment for reviling the sacrament of the Last Supper.

In the 1676 case of Rex v Taylor, the Lord Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale stated that "Such kinds of blasphemous words were not only an offence to God and religion, but a crime against the laws, State and Government, and therefore punishable in that Court.... Christianity is parcel of the laws of England and therefore to reproach the Christian religion is to speak in subversion of the law."

Those denying the Trinity were deprived of the benefit of the Act of Toleration by an act of 1688. An act of 1697-1698, commonly called the Blasphemy Act, enacted that if any person, educated in or having made profession of the Christian religion, should by writing, preaching, teaching or advised speaking, deny that the members of the Holy Trinity were God, or should assert that there is more than one god, or deny the Christian religion to be true, or the Holy Scriptures to be of divine authority, he should, upon the first offence, be rendered incapable of holding any office or place of trust, and for the second incapable of bringing any action, of being guardian or executor, or of taking a legacy or deed of gift, and should suffer three years imprisonment without bail.

In the 1729 case of Rex v. Woolston, the court declared that they would not suffer it to be debated whether to write against Christianity in general was not an offence punishable in the temporal courts at common law, but they did not intend to include disputes between learned men on particular controverted points. Woolston was imprisoned until his death in 1733.

It has been held that a person offending under the statute is also indictable at common law (Rex v. Carlile, 1819, where Mr Justice Best remarks, "In the age of toleration, when that statute passed, neither churchmen nor sectarians wished to protect in their infidelity those who disbelieved the Holy Scriptures"). An act of 1812-1813 excepts from these enactments persons denying as therein mentioned respecting the Holy Trinity, but otherwise the common and the statute law on the subject remain as stated.

In 1841 Edward Moxon was found guilty of the publication of a blasphemous libel (Percy Bysshe Shelley's Queen Mab), the prosecution having been instituted by Henry Hetherington, who had previously been condemned to four months imprisonment for a similar offence, and wished to test the law under which he was punished. In the case of Cowan v. Milbourn (1867) the defendant had broken his contract to let a lecture-room to the plaintiff, on discovering that the intended lectures were to maintain that the character of Christ is defective, and his teaching misleading, and that the Bible is no more inspired than any other book, and the court of exchequer held that the publication of such doctrine was blasphemy, and the contract therefore illegal. On that occasion the court reaffirmed the dictum of Chief Justice Hale, that Christianity is part of the laws of England.

The commissioners on criminal law (sixth report) remarked that although the law forbade all denial of the being and providence of God or the Christian religion, it is only when irreligion assumes the form of an insult to God and man that the interference of the criminal law took place. In England the last prominent 19th century prosecution for blasphemy was the case of R. v. Ramsey & Foote, 1883, 48 L.T. 739, when the editor, publisher and printer of The Freethinker were sentenced to imprisonment.

Profane cursing and swearing was made punishable by the Profane Oaths Act 1745, which directs the offender to be brought before a justice of the peace, and fined an amount that depended on his social rank.

20th and 21st centuries

The Rushdie case stimulated debate on this topic, with some arguing the same protection should be extended to all religions, while others claimed the UK's ancient blasphemy laws were an anachronism and should be abolished. Despite much discussion surrounding the controversy, the law was not amended.

Scotland

By the law of Scotland, as it originally stood, the punishment of blasphemy was death, a penalty last imposed on Thomas Aikenhead in Edinburgh in 1697. By an act of 1825, amended in 1837, blasphemy was made punishable by fine or imprisonment or both. The last prosecution for blasphemy in Scotland was in 1843 when bookseller Thomas Paterson was sentenced at Edinburgh High Court to 15 months in prison for selling blasphemous books.

Northern Ireland

Bibliography

See also

External links

 

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