The UK just gave a 78-year-old grandfather a criminal record for quoting the Bible.
JD Vance warned UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer this was coming.
Starmer laughed – and now that pastor is fighting back with everything he has.
Pastor Clive Johnston Convicted Under UK Abortion Buffer Zone Law
On a Sunday morning last July, retired pastor Clive Johnston set up an outdoor service near Coleraine's Causeway Hospital in Northern Ireland.
Body camera footage shows him playing the ukulele, preaching about his faith journey, and reading John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son."
Abortion never came up.
The abortion clinic wasn't even open.
A police officer interrupted the service anyway, told Johnston he was in a safe access zone, and warned him to stop or face prosecution.
On May 7, 2026, District Judge Peter King convicted Johnston on two counts under Northern Ireland's Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act – the first time anyone in the UK had been prosecuted under buffer zone law for a sermon with no reference to abortion whatsoever.
Johnston, a grandfather of seven and former president of the Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland, now has a criminal record and £450 in fines – the first in his 78 years.
He filed his appeal last week.
How Safe Access Zone Laws Criminalized Gospel Preaching
UK’s buffer zone law covers any act of "influencing" someone within roughly 330 feet of a facility providing abortion services.
A judge convicted Johnston not for anything he said, but for what someone might infer he believed.
The court found him guilty because he was "doing an act, in this case preaching the gospel, intending that any person hearing it would be influenced whether directly or indirectly."
His legal team at The Christian Institute is arguing the conviction violates his rights to free speech, freedom of religion, and peaceful assembly under the European Convention on Human Rights.
"If this conviction is allowed to stand," Johnston said, "it will signal that basic Christian witness and public expressions of faith can be criminalized simply because they take place in the wrong location."
The Christian Institute's Simon Calvert was blunt: "This case was never about harassment or intimidation – nobody has alleged Clive Johnston engaged in anything close to this form of behaviour. It is about whether the state can criminalize the peaceful expression of Christian faith in a public place."
Silent Prayer and Religious Liberty on Trial Across the UK
Johnston's case is one point in a pattern the UK government refuses to acknowledge.
In October 2024, Adam Smith-Connor – a British Army veteran with 20 years of service including a tour in Afghanistan – was convicted by a Bournemouth court for praying silently outside an abortion clinic.
He bowed his head and clasped his hands briefly.
Officers demanded to know the "nature of his prayers."
He was convicted and ordered to pay £9,000 in prosecution costs.
"Today, the court has decided that certain thoughts – silent thoughts – can be illegal in the United Kingdom," Smith-Connor said after the verdict.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested twice for standing in silent prayer outside a Birmingham abortion facility – without speaking a word – before West Midlands Police apologized and paid her £13,000 in compensation for the wrongful arrests.
The UK government has moved from prosecuting speech, to prosecuting silence, to prosecuting the act of standing near a hospital while holding Christian beliefs.
JD Vance Called It. Keir Starmer Laughed
In February 2025, Vice President JD Vance stood before the Munich Security Conference and said plainly what was happening in Britain.
"Perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in the crosshairs," Vance said.
He cited Smith-Connor's case by name.
Starmer met with Vance at the White House shortly after and told him he was "very proud" of the UK's free speech record.
The U.S. State Department had already issued a formal condemnation of the UK's buffer zone prosecutions, calling them an "egregious violation of the fundamental right to free speech and religious liberty" and a "concerning departure from the shared values that ought to underpin US-UK relations."
Vance was right.
Starmer was defending a government that would criminalize a 78-year-old grandfather for playing the ukulele and reading Scripture on a Sunday morning outside a hospital where no abortions were being performed that day.
Socialist Democrats in America love to cite European democracies as the model for this country's future.
This is what that future looks like.
Sources:
- Kristine Parks, "Pastor convicted for preaching John 3:16 near hospital files appeal, warns of free speech precedent," Fox News, May 31, 2026.
- "Retired Pastor CONVICTED after first-of-its-kind abortion buffer zone prosecution for open air church service," The Christian Institute, May 7, 2026.
- "Pastor convicted for preaching the Bible in abortion 'buffer zone' to appeal 'dangerous' free speech ruling," The Christian Institute, May 27, 2026.
- "British Army Veteran Convicted of Praying Silently Near Abortion Facility," National Catholic Register, October 16, 2024.
- "Christian Woman Arrested for Silent Prayer Receives Compensation from Police," ADF International, August 19, 2024.
- "U.S. Slams UK over Free Speech amid 'Buffer Zones' Enforcement," The European Conservative, August 19, 2025.
