Last month, a pastor was arrested in London after he delivered a public sermon on the biblical definition of marriage out of Genesis 1.
John Sherwood, who is 71 and the pastor of a north London church, was arrested April 23 in the center of Uxbridge, London, under the Public Order Act for making “allegedly homophobic comments.”
A video shows him standing on top of a step stool before being handcuffed and led away by police as a crowd watched. One person can be heard gasping in shock — “For a man preaching about Christianity!”
He was later released.
Sherwood told the daily mail – “I wasn’t making any homophobic comments. I was just defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. I was only saying what the Bible says – I wasn’t wanting to hurt anyone or cause offense. I was doing what my job description says, which is to preach the gospel in open air as well as in a church building.”
Christian Concern, a UK-based organization that defends people of faith, criticized the arrest. The organization called it a “brutal arrest.”
Andrea Williams of Christian Concern told The Daily Mail –-“There is an idea that if people are offended, you should arrest someone, but in this country, we also have freedom of speech.”
Sherwood was arrested after preaching on the final verses in Genesis 1, where it says that God created mankind in his own image.