Prestigious conference accuses Christian pro-lifers of doing “damage to fellow believers,” calls on police to silence them.
(The Stream) Britain’s longest-running and most prestigious evangelical convention has sparked controversy after blacklisting pro-lifers for displaying the intact image of a nine-week-old baby a few hundred yards away from the conference site.
Pro-lifers have also slammed the organizers of the Keswick Convention, which has been held in the town of Keswick in the Lake District of Cumbria since 1875, for promoting a secular “non-directive approach” to women who are faced with the question of whether to murder the babies in their wombs.
Organizers of the Keswick Convention told a local newspaper they opposed Brephos, a pro-life evangelical organization that trains pastors and churches to respond to abortion, displaying a banner with an image of a nine-week-old baby in the town center.
“We are saddened by this approach to targeting Keswick Convention visitors, which we recognize also impacts others within the town,” convention organizers told The Keswick Reminder on July 31, the day Brephos exhibited the banner with the image of the baby.
“Keswick Ministries are delighted to work closely with the police who we have made aware of the situation,” the statement from the Keswick Convention noted.
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“Reputational damage”
In comments to The Stream, Dave Brennan, director of Brephos, a project of the Centre For Bio-Ethical Reform UK, said that Keswick Ministries Chief Executive Mark Ellis had told the pro-lifers “in no uncertain terms” not to come to Keswick during the convention.
Brennan said Ellis spoke to him both on the phone and by e-mail on July 23, complaining of “reputational damage” and lamenting that Brephos’s pro-life display during the 2023 conference had caused Keswick Convention “significant harm” as well as “damage to fellow believers.”
The committed evangelical Christian lamented that passersby and even evangelicals in Keswick could be “upset by a beautiful image of a living baby in the womb — a stage each and every one of us passed through on our development.”
“Keswick Convention is supposed to be one of the most conservative evangelical conferences in the UK,” Brennan remarked. “If they are almost allergic to the displaying of a living image on public property, you can imagine how the rest of the Church in the UK responds.
“It is no wonder the baby genocide has gone from strength to strength, largely unchallenged, even by those who say they are pro-life.”
Asked if they were breaking any law by presenting the banner in the town center, Brennan replied:
On the contrary, the police commended and thanked our team for their conduct. The police were happier with our presence than Keswick Convention was!
We had let the police know that we were coming, and we told Keswick Convention that we had. So it is bizarre that the convention organizers told media they let the police know as soon as they heard we were coming.
Also, the way they put that — ‘heard we were coming’ — somewhat misrepresents the situation. We ourselves told them we were coming, as a courtesy.
Opposition from pro-aborts
Keswick Mayor Louise Dunn tried to stop Brephos’s educational display, saying the organization needed a license to advertise, even though the display wasn’t advertising and CBRUK had earlier won a major freedom of expression lawsuit in 2016 which allows them to display images of babies unhindered.
During the display, several pro-abortion women held up a bedsheet in front of Brephos’s banner to try to block the image. The protestors penned the words “Trigger Warning: Pro-Life Content” on the sheet, CBRUK Teams’ Strategist Kathryn Attwood told The Stream.
“One man launched himself into the banner, hurting volunteer educators in the process, and then tore the banner down and ran off with it into traffic, causing his young son to cry,” Atwood said. “We managed to get the banner back. The police commended us for protecting our property.
“One woman came right up into the face of one of our educators and literally barked in her face. Our educator feared she was about to be head-butted,” she added. “On the other hand, our team was able to pray with a bystander who had been affected personally by abortion.
“There was really positive engagement from lots of folk attending the convention, but organizers and volunteers wearing Keswick Convention lanyards walked past without engaging. Perhaps they had been told to blank us,” she said. “A pastor watched the whole display and said he wanted to join our team.”
Pastors blast Keswick leadership
Leading evangelical pastors took to social media to blast Keswick Convention for snubbing Brephos’s pro-life display.
“It’s a disgrace to see the Keswick Convention, supposedly an historically conservative Christian conference, publicly opposing pro-life messaging and work in Keswick and condemning pro-life Christian leaders in secular papers.” Christian thinker and cultural apologist Dr. Joseph Boot tweeted.
“The offending image is a living nine-week old baby!” Boot, founder-president of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity, exclaimed.
“What a sad indictment that the Keswick Convention in the UK has disregarded biblical truth and the sanctity of life. Abortion is murder. Keep up the good work,” Pastor Paul Barton posted on X.
Tweet This: “The offending image is a living nine-week old baby!” - response to Keswick Convention's effort to quash a pro-life display
In an article titled “Reputation, Reputation, Reputation” published on his Substack, theologian Aaron Edwards wrote, “Like many professing ‘evangelical’ institutions in our time, if Keswick continues to be blinded by the need to protect its reputation above the missional needs of the hour, it will no longer be fruitful in advancing the kingdom in the next generation.”
Edwards noted that Keswick remains an “evangelical bastion … promoting sound doctrine” and “holding the line on key issues” but “like many evangelical institutions today, it now appears to be ‘saddened’ not by the heinous evil in its midst but by the potential loss of its own reputation before the world.
“It is easy, like Peter, to warm our hands around the fire and dissociate ourselves from those ‘less respectable’ Christian beliefs when we feel we might be doing more good by keeping quiet,” Edwards warned. “Reputational safeguarding can be a subtle and effective means of diverting us from our true mission longer term.”
Nondirective abortion counselling
Last July, Keswick Convention hosted a talk on The Unborn Human by Celia Wyatt, a professional counsellor with wide experience in supporting women through pregnancy and child loss.
“The bitter culture wars in the US on this topic trickle over here, but it’s important to recognize that the medical, social, and political context is very different in the UK,” Wyatt insisted in her lecture
Psalm 139 “teaches the full humanity of the unborn child; David describes continuity between his embryonic self right through to his adult self,” Wyatt acknowledged. “Abortion is, therefore, tantamount to taking the life of the child.”
However, Wyatt then went on to recommend Christian and secular pregnancy centers that provide “nondirective counseling,” or person-centered therapy — a humanistic technique pioneered by atheist psychologist Carl Rogers in the early 1940s.
In the 1960s, person-centered therapy became linked to the Human Potential Movement, which held that all individuals have a drive toward self-actualization, a state in which humans are able to manifest their full potential — a concept diametrically opposed to the traditional biblical understanding of the fallenness of human nature and individuals’ inability to reach their full potential.
“The rationale and theology behind a nondirective approach is that women in crisis need time and space to consider all their options,” Wyatt explained. “Client feedback consistently demonstrates appreciation for not being judged, not being told what to do, and being given time.
“But, being nondirective does not mean we run away from the hard questions or difficult feelings. This is a big decision and needs to be taken with all avenues explored,” she added.
Dr. Billy Graham, the world’s best-known evangelist, preached at the Keswick Convention in 1975. Annual conventions that have been inspired by it have spread around the world, including Japan, Australia, Jamaica, North America, India, parts of Africa, and New Zealand.
“Keswick Ministries has always believed in the sanctity of human life, believing life begins at conception. We will never abandon this historical position. We rejoice to share this biblical conviction with many ministries,” Emma Cortes, head of communications and engagement at Keswick Ministries, told The Stream.
“However, as per our original statement (issued to the The Keswick Reminder), we are saddened by an approach which we believe is likely to disengage more people than it wins to this beautiful truth,” she maintained.
Editor's note: Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral. This article was published by The Stream and is reprinted with permission.
