Media · Nationwide · August 12, 2026
UK church trustee calls Judaism 'demonic,' Islam 'demonic false religion' in sermons
What Alinsky tactic is being used
3 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
The National Secular Society did not argue theology with Murphy — it filed with the regulator and made the charity answer to its own registered book of rules: objects entered under 'advancement of religion,' which for this charity include joining local ecumenical 'Churches Together' services, and the trustee duties that come with charitable status. A Commission spokesperson confirmed to Civil Society that it is 'assessing concerns' about Emmanuel Free Church, Morecambe. The leverage is entirely in the gap between what the charity told the register it exists to do and what a trustee said from its pulpit.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
This month, pull your own congregation's governing document, bylaws or trust deed and its stated purposes, and read them beside what has actually been said from your pulpit and your church's social accounts in the last year. Where your denomination has a written standard for officers' public conduct, get the policy number and date and put it in front of your board before anyone outside does. Closing a real gap yourself costs a difficult meeting; having it closed for you costs the charity or the pastor.
Rule 11
“If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.”
The negative is pushed hard from both directions here. Murphy pushes doctrinal disagreement past its edge — Epstein, Soros, 'servants of Satan,' a slur for converts — until an arguable theological claim becomes conspiracy talk that discredits itself. And a four-trustee congregation with £36,800 of income for the year ending 31 December 2024 is made to carry the general case that religious charities are, in the NSS spokesman's words, 'subsidised at taxpayer expense.'
Counter-Rule 11 · Proportional Truth
Refuse to overclaim, even where it would help. One exaggeration hands the other side the only weapon that works permanently.
When you repeat this story, quote Murphy's actual recorded words and say plainly that the Commission has issued no findings and opened no inquiry as of this report. Refuse both overclaims: do not call a regulator's assessment persecution of the church, and do not defend or soften the slur because the man saying it calls himself orthodox. If someone in your circle says 'they are coming for every church,' ask them for the list of churches — and check it.
Rule 12
“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”
The attack is not only on one trustee; the NSS has long urged government to remove 'advancement of religion' as a charitable purpose altogether, and this case is being used to make that argument concrete. What is not offered is a replacement for what those charities actually deliver locally. The registered objects of this very church — local community services, ecumenical work, support for local charities — are what would go with the category.
Counter-Rule 12 · Universal Construction
The book agrees with this one rather than inverting it: if you would tear something down, you are obliged to build the thing that replaces it.
Build the answer rather than assert it: ask your treasurer or clerk for one page listing what your congregation actually provided in the last reporting year — meals served, hours of counselling, users of the building, money passed to other local causes, with dates and counts — and ask that it be entered in the annual report and the minutes. That page is worth more in a public argument than any assurance about motives. If nobody has ever compiled it, that is itself the finding.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
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