Our church was banned from freshers’ fairs

COMMENT

Andrew Sach is co-pastor of Grace Church Greenwich and the co-author of Pierced for Our Transgressions, Are You 100% Sure You Want To Be an Agnostic? and the Dig Deeper series. Here he writes about his church’s experience of being banned from operating at many freshers’ fairs for being a “religious group” and how The Christian Institute was able to help.

Stalls like ours are the only gospel witness to the thousands of students who attend.

For several years, Grace Church Greenwich has paid for a stall at local freshers’ fairs, in the hope of making connections with both Christians and interested unbelievers as they arrive at university. We set up an espresso machine and offer free coffee. Then, while grinding beans and attempting to pour latte art tulips (only ministry trainee Laura, an actual barista, succeeds), we get into conversations about Jesus. A few stalls down, our friends at Good News For Everyone — formerly the Gideons — hand out free copies of the New Testament. Some of these campuses have no Christian Union, so stalls like ours are the only gospel witness to the thousands of students who attend.

This year, while attempting to reserve our usual spot with Native.fm, the organisation to which Goldsmiths University had outsourced the process, we were informed that “due to a recent update in our company policy, we are no longer able to facilitate bookings for religious groups at these events”. We wrote back, suggesting that this might amount to unlawful discrimination under section 29 of the Equality Act 2010 – in the same way that they couldn’t say ‘we don’t facilitate bookings from LGBT groups’ or ‘from Asian groups’ etc. They didn’t accept this, and made the rather strange (it seems to me) argument that they were open to working with “religiously affiliated groups on secular initiatives” but they couldn’t support “campaigns that explicitly promote specific religious teachings.” So it’s ok to be there as a Christian organisation as long as we don’t do or say Christian things?! Good News For Everyone ran into similar issues trying to book at multiple locations across the UK.

So it’s ok to be there as a Christian organisation as long as we don’t do or say Christian things?!

We got in touch with The Christian Institute, who offered to take up the matter on our behalf, at no cost to us! In-house solicitor Sam Webster wrote a formal letter to Native.fm, arguing that its actions did indeed constitute “direct (and indeed somewhat blatant) discrimination on grounds of religion or belief contrary to sections 13 and 29 of the Equality Act 2010”. He suggested further that “GNFE and Grace Church therefore have grounds for a claim under the Act”. But he also explained that Native.fm could avoid us escalating the matter, by simply agreeing to allow all future bookings from us and other religious groups.

We eventually received a reply from Native’s lawyer, saying that “without admission of liability, Native.fm has decided to suspend our policy on engagement with religious organisations and the related restrictions on booking through Native.fm with immediate effect”.

Praise God. Both Grace Church and Good News for Everyone are now in the process of booking freshers’ fair stalls for 2026!

I wanted to write about it… to draw attention to the excellent work of The Christian Institute, to whom we are full of gratitude.

I wanted to write about it for three reasons. First, to encourage other churches to stand up for the religious freedoms that we currently enjoy under UK law if you find yourselves denied a platform on similar grounds. Secondly, to draw attention to the excellent work of The Christian Institute, to whom we are full of gratitude. Thirdly, to give praise to God for keeping the door open for the message of the Gospel. We pray that next autumn many freshers would hear of Jesus and be welcomed into gospel churches.