Censorship is a Bad Idea...Everywhere

Yesterday, I linked to an article detailing Chinese government efforts to suppress freedom of speech on the web.

Here, Rambling Hal, a blogger in Jordan, details overt official acts of censorship in Egypt and in Jordan.

In Egypt, release of the movie, The DaVinci Code, is being blocked. I told Hal, "As a Christian, I take exception to the untrue 'facts,' things which in an introduction to The DaVinci Code and on his web site which Dan Brown based his novel. I also have said that it would be good for people to go to other movies when the film based on the novel is released." But censorship of this kind is always wrong! (If you want to call it censorship, I do believe in protecting minors or other vulnerable folks from titillating materials.)

In Jordan, a women's magazine planned on publishing an article on gay rights. It has been ordered pulled by the government. Whatever one's beliefs about the morality of homosexual behavior, such government censorship of discussions of it is wrong.

Censorship is a bad idea. As a Christian and as a student of history, I believe that the the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ is most likely to be received when the marketplace of ideas totally open and fair. The freer people are to consider alternative ways of thinking, living, and believing, the more compelling Christian faith becomes. I believe in freedom of speech then, because the more unfettered speech and thought become, the more likely people will be to follow Christ.

Only authoritarian regimes afraid of having the weaknesses of their ideologies exposed, whether those ideologies are secular or religious, bother to engage in censorship.

I'm praying for ever more freedom for people in oppressed nations.