Nigel Farage has faced criticism for giving his full support to a Christian church leader who preached that homosexuality was an “abomination” and would lead to eternity in hell. The Reform UK leader recorded a video with Stephen Clayden after Colchester council applied for a banning order to limit his street preaching.
In the clip posted on his YouTube channel, Farage assured Clayden that he was “fully on your side” in the dispute and offered to enlist the help of contacts at the Free Speech Union campaign group. Clayden told Farage the council was objecting to the volume and some of the content of his preaching, including his references to hell and judgment. However, he has since acknowledged that the council raised concerns not just about the volume of his preaching but also his church’s warnings against homosexuality.
Footage of Clayden preaching last month shows him saying: “All adulterers, all fornicators, all sodomites, all drunkards, all thieves, all blasphemers, all liars, all mockers. Their home shall be in the lake of fire … we are here telling you what the word of God says.” In the same session, he told passersby: “They hear about words in the Bible like judgment and sin and repentance. They don’t like hearing the holy words of God … they are offended by what the Bible says when the Bible says homosexuality is an abomination.” His Bread of Life church also preached at Pride Week events in Essex last year, describing homosexuality as “vile, disgusting and wicked”, “a sin so wicked and detestable it was worthy of death”, and the “filthy conduct of the wicked”.
A Labour party spokesperson criticised Farage for promoting Clayden’s cause, saying: “Time and time again, Nigel Farage finds himself in the company of extreme voices. Farage should have called out these grim homophobic remarks and condemned them. Instead, he is throwing his support behind the individual peddling them, so that he has a bigger platform to spew them some more. This is just the latest in a string of examples that show Farage and Reform stand for division and are not on the side of working people.”
Farage did not respond to a request for comment, and the video – Farage talks Christianity in Clacton – remains on his YouTube channel. Clayden defended his remarks, saying all his quotes came from the Bible and he had mentioned “several types of sin which are all portrayed with the utmost seriousness in scripture”. He added that Farage’s support was for freedom of speech, not personal religious beliefs. A spokesperson for Christian Concern, a religious freedom campaign group supporting Clayden, said the church was grateful for support and suggested the national interest would help show the council it was “wrong to try” to restrict their preaching.
