Banned church wins battle to be at new students’ fair

A Greenwich church, with help from The Christian Institute, has successfully defended its right to book a stall at a university freshers’ fair in response to a ban on religious groups.

While attempting to reserve a spot at Goldsmiths University freshers’ fair, Grace Church Greenwich was told by Native.fm – the organisation to which the university had outsourced the booking process – that “due to a recent update in our company policy, we are no longer able to facilitate bookings for religious groups at these events.”

Andrew Sach, Minister at Grace Church, told en that they wrote back, suggesting that this might amount to unlawful discrimination under section 29 of the Equality Act 2010. The response from Native.fm was that they were open to working with “religiously affiliated groups on secular initiatives” but couldn’t support “campaigns that explicitly promote specific religious teachings.” Sach told en of the frustration he felt: “So it’s okay to be there as a Christian organisation as long as we don’t do or say Christian things?” According to Sach, GOOD NEWS for Everyone! (GNFE) [formerly GideonsUK] ran into similar issues trying to book at multiple locations across the UK.