Few issues divide Christians more sharply than the question of hate speech legislation. On one side stand those who see such laws as a natural extension of the command to love one’s neighbor—protecting the vulnerable from speech that wounds, excludes, and incites violence. On the other stand those who see a dangerous pattern: the state claiming authority to adjudicate acceptable belief, criminalizing sincere religious expression, and recreating the very coercive orthodoxies that Christians once fled.
Canada’s Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, has brought this tension into sharp focus. Introduced in September 2025 and currently moving through Parliament, the bill proposes significant amendments to the Criminal Code aimed at protecting religious and cultural communities from hate-motivated crimes. The stated goal is laudable. But the mechanisms by which the bill operates—the removal of prosecutorial safeguards, the expansion of “intimidation” definitions, and most controversially, the elimination of good-faith religious defenses—have united an unlikely coalition of civil liberties organizations, religious groups, and labor unions in opposition.
This is not a partisan issue. It is a question that cuts to the heart of what kind of society Canada wishes to be, and more fundamentally, how Christians should think about the relationship between truth, liberty, and state power.
The Stakes: More Than Politics
At its core, Bill C-9 forces us to grapple with a question that Christians have wrestled with for two millennia: What is the proper role of the state in regulating speech about sacred things?
This is not abstract. As of early 2026, the bill would:
- Create standalone hate crime offenses, moving hatred from a sentencing factor to a distinct criminal element
- Criminalize the public display of designated hate symbols, including Nazi iconography
- Introduce a new offense for conduct intended to “provoke a state of fear” to impede access to religious, cultural, or educational facilities
- Remove the long-standing requirement for Attorney General consent before prosecuting hate propaganda charges
- Repeal the good-faith religious defense that has historically protected those who express religious opinions or quote religious texts
The final two points have generated the most concern. When a democratic state can prosecute citizens for quoting Scripture without prosecutorial gatekeeping or religious liberty defenses, we have entered territory that Christians should recognize from history.
A Genealogy of Censorship: The Sacred Object Shifts
The research underlying this legislation reveals a pattern that should give Christians pause—not because hate speech is acceptable, but because the mechanisms of censorship follow a remarkably consistent trajectory across two thousand years.
From Heresy to Hate
The early church emerged as a persecuted minority. Tertullian, writing in the early third century, articulated what scholars recognize as the first explicit defense of religious freedom in Western history: “It is a privilege inherent in human nature, that every person should be able to worship according to his own convictions… one person’s religion neither harms nor hurts another.”
This was revolutionary. Tertullian derived religious freedom not from secular philosophy but from Christian anthropology—humans made in God’s image, endowed with free will, must be free to choose or reject God voluntarily. The state possessed no jurisdictional right to interfere in the relationship between believers and the Divine.
But this expansive liberty did not survive the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Once Christianity became the state religion, the paradigm shifted dramatically. Augustine, facing the violent Donatist schism, formulated a robust theological justification for state coercion. His famous reinterpretation of Luke 14:23—compelle intrare, “compel them to come in”—became the proof-text for the righteous use of force to save souls.
The logic was devastating in its internal consistency: if heresy leads to eternal damnation, and eternal damnation is infinitely worse than physical death, then the state’s use of coercive force to suppress heretical speech is not tyranny but supreme pastoral mercy.
The medieval Inquisition institutionalized this reasoning. Thomas Aquinas perfected it, arguing that if counterfeiters of money deserve death, how much more do counterfeiters of divine truth? The Reformers, for all their recovery of justification by faith alone, inherited this coercive apparatus and deployed it against Anabaptists, Antitrinitarians, and one another. Michael Servetus burned in Geneva for his anti-Trinitarian views—a sentence that received the unanimous approval of Protestant leaders across Europe.
The Secular Turn
Here is where history becomes directly relevant to Bill C-9. As Western societies secularized through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, blasphemy laws—designed to protect the majesty of God—gradually fell into disuse. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1952 decision in Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson effectively gutted American blasphemy statutes.
But the impulse to regulate offensive speech did not disappear. It mutated.
Legal scholars increasingly observe that as blasphemy regulations declined, they were “rapidly replaced by hate speech laws.” The structure remains identical—restricting undesirable speech to protect core societal values—but the sacred object has shifted from the Divine to marginalized identity groups.
This is not conspiracy theory. The Hoover Institution’s historical analysis of international hate speech legislation traces its aggressive promotion to the Soviet Union and its communist allies during the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Their primary motive was not protecting vulnerable minorities but creating legal mechanisms to legitimize internal repression of political and religious dissent—effectively inverting human rights protections into “coercive human rights obligations.”
Eleanor Roosevelt warned that such language was “extremely dangerous” and would be exploited by totalitarian states to punish criticism under the guise of protecting groups from hostility. The UK and Swedish representatives argued that the best protection against fanatical persecution was free discussion, information, and education.
Despite this principled resistance, Western democracies gradually adopted these frameworks. Today, concepts originally deemed arbitrary and dangerous by free-speech advocates are embedded in the legal codes of most democratic nations.
Why This Bill Persuades—And Why Christians Should Still Oppose It
The Genuine Appeal
We must acknowledge what Bill C-9 gets right. Hate-motivated violence is real. Anti-Semitic incidents in Canada have risen sharply. Muslim communities have faced bomb threats and vandalism. Indigenous peoples, Black Canadians, and LGBTQ+ individuals experience harassment and violence at disproportionate rates. The desire to protect vulnerable communities from targeted malice is not a manufactured concern.
Moreover, Christians should be the first to recognize that words wound. Scripture repeatedly condemns slander, lying, and malicious speech. The Apostle James warns that the tongue is a fire—“the very world of iniquity” set among our members, defiling the entire body (James 3:6). The early church fathers classified slander as literally diabolical—the Greek root diabolos means “accuser” or “slanderer.” Spreading malicious reports does the devil’s work.
If any religious tradition should understand the power of words to harm, it is Christianity.
The Fatal Mechanisms
Yet the mechanisms of Bill C-9 should alarm precisely those who take speech seriously.
The removal of Attorney General consent. Since the 1970 hate propaganda amendments, prosecuting hate speech has required explicit approval from the Attorney General or a delegate. This was not bureaucratic red tape. It was a deliberate gatekeeping mechanism to ensure that the criminal law was not weaponized to suppress legitimate political or religious expression.
Without this safeguard, the power to determine what constitutes criminal speech shifts to frontline police officers and individual prosecutors. The Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council—itself a potential beneficiary of hate-crime protections—has warned that this “eliminates a key institutional check” and creates conditions for “selective, arbitrary, or politically motivated enforcement.”
History suggests this is not hypothetical. In the United Kingdom, which has already traveled this path, Christian street preachers have been arrested for publicly quoting the Bible or expressing traditional views on sexual ethics. Michael Overd was convicted for quoting Leviticus during a street sermon. Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen faced years of criminal prosecution for posting a picture of Romans 1:24-27 on social media.
The subjective “state of fear” standard. The new intimidation offense relies on an intent to “provoke a state of fear” in another person. Unlike objective criminal standards, this depends on the internal perception of the person who feels targeted.
The Canadian Labour Congress has noted that peaceful demonstrations—often loud and disruptive by design—could be characterized as “intimidation” if a bystander claims to feel afraid. The bill designates a sweeping list of protected locations: not just places of worship but also schools, community centers, arenas, and sports facilities. Critics contend this transforms civic institutions into “protest-restricted zones.”
The repeal of religious defenses. Most explosive has been the amendment, passed at committee stage, to remove the good-faith religious defense for hate propaganda offenses. This eliminated protection for individuals who express religious opinions or quote religious texts in sincere belief.
The implications are staggering. Under this framework, a pastor preaching from Romans 1, a Muslim imam reading from the Quran, or a Jewish rabbi teaching from Leviticus could face criminal prosecution if someone characterizes their religious speech as promoting hatred—with no defense that they were expressing sincere religious conviction from their sacred texts.
Opponents have rightly asked: if modern secular standards of “hate” are applied retroactively, could the writings of Martin Luther, Thomas Aquinas, or even the Apostle Paul be classified as illegal hate speech?
The Internal Critique: Can Secular Hate Speech Laws Ground Themselves?
Christians opposing Bill C-9 are not simply defending their right to be offensive. A deeper question lurks beneath the surface: On what basis can a secular state define “hatred” at all?
The bill attempts to codify hatred as emotion involving “detestation or vilification” that is “stronger than disdain or dislike.” But this raises more questions than it answers. Who determines where “dislike” ends and “detestation” begins? How does one measure internal emotional states? And more fundamentally: on what philosophical grounds can a secular state adjudicate which moral convictions constitute acceptable belief?
Here the presuppositional challenge becomes inescapable. Secular hate speech regimes necessarily import moral frameworks they cannot justify on their own terms. They assume that human dignity is inviolable—but cannot explain why atoms arranged in certain patterns possess inherent worth. They assume that “hatred” is objectively wrong—but have no grounding for objective moral claims. They assume that protecting certain groups is good—but cannot coherently explain what “good” means in a universe of blind physical forces.
Christianity can ground these convictions. Human dignity derives from the imago Dei—all persons bear God’s image and possess inherent worth because their Creator declares it so. Hatred is objectively wrong because it violates God’s command to love our neighbor. Protecting the vulnerable is good because God himself defends the fatherless and widow.
But once the Christian foundation is removed, secular hate speech regimes float untethered. They become exercises in raw political power: whoever controls the definition controls the discourse. And the definition always shifts.
The Double Standard: Hatred on Religious Grounds
The World Evangelical Alliance, in its formal submission to the United Nations, has highlighted what it terms the “paradox of hate speech legislative restrictions.” While hate speech is undeniably used to incite violence against religious minorities in authoritarian regimes, the laws designed to prevent it are simultaneously used by Western states to prohibit legitimate religious expression.
This creates a two-tiered system of citizenship. Speech deemed offensive to certain protected identity groups is heavily penalized, while speech offensive to traditional religious believers is aggressively defended under the banner of free expression. A comedian may mock the crucifixion of Christ with legal protection; a Christian may not articulate orthodox sexual ethics without risking prosecution.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s ongoing efforts to criminalize “defamation of religions” at the UN reveal this dynamic from another angle. Human rights advocates warn this is a backdoor method to enact global blasphemy laws that would crush free inquiry and shield religious ideologies from critique. Yet the same advocates often support domestic hate speech laws that accomplish similar restrictions—just with different protected objects.
The inconsistency is telling. The question is never whether speech should be regulated but which speech and whose values determine the line.
The Gospel Alternative: Truth, Liberty, and the Limits of the Sword
How should Christians navigate this terrain? Several principles emerge from Scripture and the Christian tradition.
First, we must distinguish between the state’s role and the church’s role. The state bears the sword to punish evildoers and commend those who do good (Romans 13:4). It has legitimate authority to prosecute violence, incitement to imminent lawless action, and true threats. But the state is not competent to adjudicate theological truth or the sincerity of religious conviction. When it attempts to do so, it inevitably becomes either a tool of religious oppression or an instrument of secular orthodoxy.
Second, we must reject both malice and cowardice. Christians are commanded to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). This rules out both hateful speech designed to wound and cowardly silence that refuses to proclaim what God has revealed. The answer to bad speech is better speech—not state censorship.
Third, we must recognize that the gospel itself is inherently offensive. The cross is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23). The claim that Jesus is the only way to the Father (John 14:6), that all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23), that sexual ethics are not matters of personal autonomy but divine command—these truths will never be comfortable in a pluralistic society. If the state claims authority to punish “offense,” the gospel itself becomes criminal.
Fourth, we must support genuine protections for genuine victims. The answer to bad laws is not no laws but good laws. Incitement to violence, true threats, and criminal harassment already fall outside First Amendment protection in the United States and can be prosecuted under existing Canadian statutes. The question is whether we need new, broader tools that inevitably sweep up sincere religious expression—or whether the existing framework, properly enforced, suffices.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Barreau du Québec, and the LGBT Alliance Canada have all raised serious concerns about Bill C-9—not because they support hatred but because they recognize that vague, subjective standards enforced without prosecutorial gatekeeping will inevitably be weaponized against legitimate dissent.
Where We Stand
Bill C-9 is symptomatic of a broader shift in Western societies. As traditional religious foundations erode, new orthodoxies emerge—and with them, new mechanisms of enforcement. The sacred object has shifted from God to marginalized identity. But the impulse remains the same: to use state power to suppress speech deemed intolerable by those who hold cultural authority.
Christians should not be surprised by this. We know that apart from Christ, humans inevitably construct idols—and idols always demand conformity. What we must resist is the temptation to respond in kind: either by embracing hateful speech that wounds our neighbors, or by capitulating to regimes that would silence the gospel.
The path forward requires wisdom, courage, and humility. Wisdom to distinguish between genuine malice and sincere religious conviction. Courage to speak truth even when the state designates that truth as criminal. And humility to recognize that we too have been on both sides of censorship’s sword throughout history.
Tertullian was right all those centuries ago: it is a privilege inherent in human nature that every person should be able to worship according to their convictions. One person’s religion neither harms nor helps another—not in the sense that words have no impact, but in the deeper sense that the state lacks competence to adjudicate the soul’s allegiance.
When hate speech laws become the new blasphemy laws—when the state claims authority to punish quoting Scripture as criminal—we have arrived at a moment that demands clarity. Not the clarity of hatred, but the clarity of truth spoken in love.
The church has survived Roman persecution, medieval inquisition, and communist suppression. It will survive this too. But how we navigate this moment will shape whether the next generation knows the freedom to proclaim Christ—or must do so as criminals.
An Invitation to Engagement
This issue demands thoughtful engagement rather than tribal reaction. Where do you see the balance between protecting vulnerable communities and preserving religious liberty? What mechanisms can distinguish genuine hatred from sincere religious conviction? And how should Christians relate to a state that increasingly claims authority over belief itself?
We do not pretend these questions have easy answers. But we believe the conversation must happen—with honesty, charity, and a commitment to truth that transcends political convenience.
For further reading, consider the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s formal analysis of Bill C-9, the World Evangelical Alliance’s UN submission on hate speech and religion, and the historical scholarship on censorship from Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church and the Hoover Institution’s research on the origins of hate speech legislation.