There are signs that interest in faith and spirituality is growing and people want to know how to respond—but they might not know what they’re allowed to say. Or they might know that there are some rules when you share your faith in the street or online, without knowing what they are. Evangelism can involve some tricky conversations about sensitive subjects, and people are sometimes worried about being challenged.
Against this background, we’ve been asked questions about the law which might apply to sharing about faith in public places or online and how to handle situations where someone may feel offended or raise legal concerns.
To help evangelists navigate the law and give them confidence, we’ve created Evangelism: Legal Guidelines, covering key legal issues including human rights, law and order, local authority powers, social justice topics like abortion and conversion practices, online evangelism, and privacy.
The Guidelines are practical too, giving examples and scenarios that show how the law works in practice, and illustrating how evangelists can comply with the law. The examples involve a range of activities like public preaching, holding worship events, door to door evangelism and making online content.
We’ve drawn on our own legal training and the questions that people bring to us at Ethos, as well as conversations with lawyers and with active evangelists.
You can download the Guidelines at no cost at the bottom of this page. Here’s an overview of what’s inside.
To make the material in the Guidelines as accessible as possible, we’ve also developed additional resources to help readers quickly find relevant information and answers to their questions.
There are “information sheets” which provide summaries of main topics in downloadable and printable form. They cover:
- How to use the guidelines (link)
- Human rights (link)
- Law and order in public places (link)
- Powers of local authorities (link)
- Social justice: Abortion (link)
- Social justice: Conversion practices (link)
- Online evangelism (link)
- Privacy (link)
- Safety for evangelists (link)
There’s also a list of FAQs, which you can find here.
The Guidelines don’t cover institutional settings like prisons, schools, universities or workplaces, that can have their own site-specific policies and may be governed by specialist legislation and professional codes. Instead, they focus on evangelism work in public places and online.
If you’re involved in evangelism and have a question that our guidelines don’t answer or you just need some help, feel free to get in touch by emailing contact@ethosalliance.nz.
Disclaimer: The guidelines are produced for general purposes only. They do not constitute legal advice or advice of any other kind and should not be relied on as such.
