At the Munich Security Conference in 2024, Vice President JD Vance offered a blunt assessment on this very matter. Europe’s greatest security risk is not from external actors, he argued, but rather “the threat from within” — an internal retreat from fundamental democratic values that were once a shared characteristic across every nation in the West.

“In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” he said. He pointed to the prosecution of Adam Smith-Connor, a British Army veteran and physiotherapist who had simply stopped to pray silently across the road from an abortion clinic for a few minutes in Bournemouth, in memory of a child he had lost years prior. Vance described the offense sarcastically as a “heinous crime” and argued that the case illustrated a broader retreat from conscience rights in the West. If you can’t even think freely in Britain, what can you do?

European officials objected to the speech; yet the problem has not gone away. This month, a 78-year-old retired pastor, Clive Johnston, appealed his conviction under Northern Ireland’s abortion “buffer zone” legislation. He had preached an open-air sermon within 500 ft of Causeway Hospital in Coleraine in July 2024. His sermon was based on John 3:16, the biblical verse beginning “For God so loved the world…” Abortion was not mentioned at all. Yet Johnston was convicted and fined on the grounds that he may have “influenced” a passer-by’s decision about abortion anyway.

The Belfast Court of Appeal heard his challenge on Thursday. His lawyers argued that the conviction failed to recognize his rights to freedom of expression and religion. The court has yet to deliver its judgment.

The censorial “buffer zone” laws now stretching across Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales are among the most acute examples of censorial overreach in the West. In April, a State Department spokesperson described Johnston’s prosecution as an “egregious violation” of freedom of expression and religious liberty, and said Washington was monitoring the case. More tellingly, the State Department also referred to the prosecution as a “concerning departure” from the values which once united both countries across the Atlantic. How can a Western country — known for its values of democracy, liberty and civility — truly be prosecuting people for peacefully expressing the Christian faith?

In the same week that Clive Johnston’s appeal was heard for the “crime” of preaching a gospel message in a censored public area, across the world, a 23-year-old Iranian woman was handed a death sentence for a social media post “blaspheming” against Islam. The severity of these two experiences is worlds apart. Yet the common principle, criminalizing the expression of beliefs that run contrary to the orthodoxy upheld by the state, is chilling.

IN WAR ON BIBLE, PASTOR CONVICTED FOR PREACHING GOSPEL

A government that asks citizens to defend liberty abroad must be able to explain the limits it places on liberty at home. Smith-Connor, after all, had fought for freedom for the civilians in Afghanistan as part of the British Army before facing criminal charges for silent prayer at home in the UK. The irony speaks volumes. Undermining the values the West seeks to uphold tells the rest of the world that they don’t need to take freedom seriously either.

A Western alliance, even one with as much shared history as the United States and United Kingdom, will struggle to defend anything if it cannot agree on what it is defending. Mr. Streeting would do well to recognize this as he seeks to deepen further trans-Atlantic partnership.

Lois McLatchie Miller is a freelance writer focusing on faith and culture.