John Sherwood, 71, was preaching -- outside Uxbridge Station in west London -- about Biblical teachings against homosexuality when he was arrested and led away in handcuffs by policemen. He was questioned in a police station and held overnight over accusation of making homophobic comments.
Police said they had received complaints Sherwood had been making "allegedly homophobic comments" and arrested him under the Public Order Act, which can be used under the vague proviso that someone is using 'abusive or insulting words' that cause 'harm' to someone else. He was later released without charge.
Sherwood said he was left bruised after police pulled him from a mini-stepladder he was using and cuffed his hands behind his back.
"I wasn't making any homophobic comments, I was just defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman," Sherwood, a pastor for 35 years, said. "I was only saying what the Bible says – I wasn't wanting to hurt anyone or cause offence. I was doing what my job description says, which is to preach the gospel in open air as well as in a church building. When the police approached me, I explained that I was exercising my religious liberty and my conscience. I was forcibly pulled down from the steps and suffered some injury to my wrist and to my elbow. I do believe I was treated shamefully. It should never have happened."
According to the Metropolitan Police, at 1.35pm on Friday, April 23, a member of the public flagged down patrol officers and alleged Sherwood had made homophobic comments. The pastor repeatedly refuses, prompting both officers to take him by the hands and guide him down from the steps.
Video of the arrest circulating online show several onlookers, including an older woman on the scene jump into the fray as the two police officers struggled to cuff Sherwood. "For a man preaching about Christianity, look at how he's ripping him," a woman can be heard saying behind the camera.
Pastor Peter Simpson, Minister of Penn Free Methodist Church in Buckinghamshire, who was preaching with Pastor Sherwood before the arrest, said: "Everything he said was bible based. He was not saying anything abusive; he is a Christian minister. There did not seem to be any recognition from the police that Christian ministers and such views exist. If there was a Pride parade in Uxbridge, the police would support it even if Christians were offended. You don't have to be an evangelical Christian to be shocked by this. Anyone who cares about liberty should be concerned about what happened in Uxbridge."
Pastor Simpson continued, "this is about defending our Christian civilisation, or what is left of it. The belief in Genesis 1:27 is fundamental to Christian belief. This arrest of a faithful minister for doing nothing other than declaring what the Bible teaches about one of the important moral issues of our time reveals a dangerous assault upon freedom of speech and, not least, upon the freedom of Christian pastors to declare in public all that the Bible teaches. The State has no right to designate that some parts of God's word are no-go areas. Whatever one's personal views on homosexuality might be, it is surely pertinent to ask what kind of nation have we become that the minister of a Christian church is arrested for upholding in the public square the very truths which Her Majesty the Queen promised to uphold in her Coronation Oath in 1953, with a Bible in her hand?"
Outraged critics online denounced the arrest, calling it a woke fascist war on religion.
ToTheMax wrote on Gab: "Makes me sick, these politicians on the left preach equality but really have no idea what it means, instead they attack the foundation that represents equality, the church, no matter skin color, nationality or if you are rich or poor, we are all equals in a house of God!"
Some pointed out that woke marxists and the police don't seem to care when Muslim preachers scream anti-homosexuality tirade in the streets.
BigbKlyn wrote: "And of course they have no problem with Muslim leaders preaching. And don’t BS us , of course they are having prayer groups ( and rightfully so) but the Marxist are attacking Christianity with mostly white Christians in law enforcement doing the dirty work."