Christian campaigners who went to Keswick to draw public attention to the value of human life in the womb have shared their account of what happened during the Convention.
The Liverpool team of CBR (the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform UK) went to the town on 24th July. Subsequently, the Keswick Convention organisers issued a statement saying they were 'saddened' by what it described as 'targeting Keswick Convention visitors' and the impact on others.
Writing on the website of CBR, Ruth Rawlins, Head of Communications and Marketing, says some of what took place was 'misreported back to Keswick organisers and on social media platforms,' 'completely misrepresenting' what happened.
CBR says its aim is to 'educate society on the humanity and value of unborn children and the reality of "abortion". We use images, science and statistics rather than opinions. This allows individuals to come to their own conclusions after considering all of the relevant information.'
The well-known organisation Brephos is a CBR project 'equipping churches to speak out for the unborn child.' Brephos is led by former church community minister Dave Brennan.
Mass killing of babies
Rawlins said: 'We went to Keswick because it hosts the 3 week Keswick Convention where Christians from all over the UK and from around the world gather in Keswick to hear the Word of God and to sing God’s praises, to be encouraged, inspired and equipped to love and live for Christ in His world.
'Christians, above all people, need to be awakened to the greatest injustice of our day, the mass-killing of 250,000 babies a year in the UK, in what should be the safest place in the world - their mother’s womb. The plight of unborn children and their mothers, in our nation, has been largely neglected by the church. So we came to the centre of Keswick with a team of seven Educators, holding up a single banner showing a beautiful image of a living 9 week fetus in the womb. We gave out postcards of a similar image, had conversations with passersby and surveyed Christians on their experience of the teaching on abortion within the church.'
She added: 'There were no graphic abortion images, [as] on this occasion we wanted to focus on showing the humanity of babies in the womb.'
Rawlins said her organisation had previously wanted to put up a stand within Convention itself. She said: 'This was not our first time in Keswick. Last year, we emailed organisers to request hiring an exhibition stand inside the Convention to reach Christians, as many other organisations do. However, we were told that it wouldn’t work to have a CBR UK stand at their Base Camp. Dave Brennan, who heads up our Brephos project to help churches respond to abortion, continued to engage with leaders of the Keswick Convention, informing them of our plans to hold a display in the city centre of Keswick. This way we could still reach the many Christians, gathering in Keswick, to highlight the plight of the unborn. So we held a public education display last year, then repeated it again this year.'
Attempted criminal damage misrepresented as 'street fight'
Rawlins continued: 'On both occasions, a few pro-abortion individuals held up a sheet to block the image on our banner. Last year a video of this shared on Instagram reached tens of thousands of people, who couldn’t believe that individuals would be so offended by a picture of a living baby in the womb - to the point they didn’t want anyone else to see it.
'This year, as well as a repeat of the coverup, we had a man launch at our banner ripping the fabric off the frame and stealing it. Thankfully our Support Leader was able to retrieve it, but in the process the offender fell to the ground. This incident was witnessed and misreported back to Keswick organisers and on social media platforms as a “street fight”, completely misrepresenting the conduct of our highly trained and peaceful Educators.'
She stated: 'We filed a police report of this incident, and after reviewing our security camera footage (which we wear for exactly incidents like this), the police described the man’s conduct as "attempted criminal damage to property." The police affirmed that we had a common law right to defend our property, commended our conduct, and more generally at the end of our display, thanked us for our cooperation.'
Conversations and rumours
She added: 'As well as the opposition from abortion supporters, we also had lots of good conversations, particularly with Christians from the Convention who were encouraged by our work. Again, this led to rumours of people claiming that we were wearing Keswick Convention t-shirts to appear to be linked to the Convention - which was completely false, as all of our Educators wear low-vis maroon vests to identify them apart from passersby.'
Subsequent to its first statement, the Keswick Convention issued a further statement on August 5th stressing its commitment to the sanctity of human life, but again voicing concern about the approach adopted by pro-life campaigners. It is not clear whether that statement was made before or after becoming aware of the sequence of events as set out by CBR in their latest news release, which came out on August 7th.
