Evangelicals in the U.K. have rebuked comments made by the Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission in Britain for accusing evangelical Christians of wanting to “have a fight,” and that they “choose sexual orientation as the ground to fight” out of political motivation.

In an interview published Sunday, Trevor Phillips angered Christians by saying many groups that argue against homosexuality were only doing so to gain political advantage.

According to the Sunday Telegraph Phillips said, “There are some Christian organisations who basically want to have a fight and therefore they’re constantly defining the ground in such a way that anyone who doesn’t agree wholly agree with them about everything is essentially a messenger from Satan.”

He continued: “I think for a lot of Christian activists, they want to have a fight and they choose sexual orientation as the ground to fight it on. I think that whole argument isn’t about the rights of Christians. It’s about politics. It’s about a group of people who really want to have weight and influence and they’ve chosen that particular ground.

“Personally I don’t know why they don’t choose ground that really is defending Christian values. I wish they’d choose gambling or human trafficking or something,” he said.
Phillips stoked controversy further referring to growing African and Caribbean congregations as having “old time” views that put them at odds with mainstream Britain.

He said, “If you come from an Afro-Caribbean Christian background the attitudes to homosexuality are unambiguous, they are undiluted, they are nasty and in some cases homicidal.”

He accused the Church of making “an awful lot of noise” about being persecuted, but Phillips said that many of those driving a revival believed in “old time religion” which in Phillip’s view was “incompatible with a modern, multi-ethnic, multicultural society.”

The U.K. Evangelical Alliance led the way in criticizing Phillip’s comments, saying in a statement released on its website that “Phillips’ analysis is in some areas defective.”

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