A Christian teacher has been fired from his post after claiming that “homosexuality is invading the church” on social media.
Father of five Dr Aaron Edwards was reportedly fired from his teaching position at a Methodist college in England after alleging that “homosexuality is invading the church” in a post he uploaded to social media.
Edwards is reportedly appealing the decision, arguing that the college’s position that he may have broken its social media policy does not take into account his right to freely express his religious beliefs.
According to a report by The Telegraph, the theology lecturer was eventually removed from his position at Cliff College in Derbyshire after a post criticising the increasing prominence of homosexuality within the faith went viral online.
This prompted the teaching institution to suspend the lecturer, with officials from the college even allegedly threatening to report him to UK counter-terror police over his views.
Edwards has since come out to insist that his views were not “homophobic” in nature, but instead merely an expression of a theological matter that he claims is fundamentally uncontroversial to conservatives within the church.
“Anyone concerned about academic freedom, Christian freedoms and free speech should be deeply concerned by what has happened to me,” the lecturer reportedly told The Telegraph.
The former lecturer is now one of the latest of many Christians persecuted in the UK as a result of them expressing their beliefs, with police in the country now regularly arresting and charging those deemed to be practising the religion in a way contrary to modern progressive ideologies.
For instance, one man was convicted of “harassment” for preaching against transgenderism on a street in England, with a court handing him a 12-month community order with 80 hours unpaid work for his proselytising.
What’s more, his claim that a so-called “transwoman” was really a “man in woman’s clothing” even prompted authorities to refer him to the UK’s counter-terrorism police for fear he was an extremist.
Meanwhile, another Christian woman has now been arrested by police multiple times for standing silently in the vicinity of an abortion clinic in the country, with law enforcement officials arguing that she seemed to be praying silently in her head.
The UK’s Conservative Party has largely aided and abetted attempts to prevent even silent prayer outside such facilities, with the British parliament currently pushing through a bill that would outright ban such practices within a 150-meter radius.