HOTS Hits The Headlines! - Advertising Standards Complains
HOTS Bath is a registered Christian Trust which has been working on the streets of Bath for more than three years offering to pray for people who require physical healing. The team has been told by the UK Advertising Standards Authority to remove its claim that 'God can heal the sick'. This follows a complaint that this claim is hard to prove.
Paul Skelton who heads up the team offering prayer regularly outside Bath Abbey, writes:
(PICTURE: PAUL SKELTON)
As a registered Christian Trust, Hots Bath has been working on the streets of our city for over 3 years now, and has seen scores of people physically healed and come into a personal relationship with Jesus.
However, it has taken just one letter of complaint for the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to make the ruling that we should no longer claim that 'God can heal the sick' and are trying to silence us by ruling that our website is breaking their marketing and advertising code. It would also appear that other teams around the country have been targeted in similar ways.
Despite the Queen's Speech on Christmas Day in which Her Majesty announced her alliance with the Christian faith saying "It is my prayer that on this Christmas Day we might all find room in our lives for the message of the angels and for the love of God through Christ our Lord."
Despite David Cameron's Prime Ministerial speech to church leadership, which included such statements as: "The Bible is a book that has not just shaped our country, but shaped the world.....a book that is not just important in understanding our past, but which will continue to have a profound impact in shaping our collective future".
It would appear that the ASA have taken a different view on Christianity in the UK and would now like us to recant our Christian faith in the Bible and go as far as to sign a letter which includes the following line " ....We will not make claims which state or imply that, by receiving prayer from our volunteers, people could be healed of medical conditions."
Although from the ASA's angle, this may look like a simple case of encouraging Christians to play down their claims in the beliefs that the Bible hold so clearly, it would appear now that the ASA regulate websites - they have decided that even though we don’t have a product to ‘sell’, we are still breaking "marketing" regulations.
Hots Bath tried to reach a compromise (without changing our message), recognising some of the ASA’s concerns, but there are certain things that we cannot agree to – including a ban on expressing our beliefs.
We are now in the process of appealing against the ruling. It appears that the complaint to the ASA was made by a group generally opposed to Christianity and was regarding our website where we state " God can heal...".
It therefore seems strange to us that on the basis of a purely ideological objection to what we say on our website, the ASA has decided it is appropriate to insist that we cannot talk about a common and widely held belief that is an important aspect of conventional Christian faith.
We have a Trustees meeting scheduled in a couple of weeks where we will be praying and discussing where we believe Father is leading us in our next step of our walk, and how you can help us in our visions as a Trust to promote Christian healing as a daily life style for every believer.
In the meantime however, we would like to reassure all of our team and supporters that the HOTS Bath team will be back on the streets of Bath as usual, for the start of the season, on Thursday, 1st of March , outside Bath Abbey from 11 am to 1 pm, as the ruling will not affect us offering to pray for people.
We would ask you to pray that this ruling is overturned through the appeal that we are lodging, to bless those who have lodged the complaint against us, and ask Father for an increase in the demonstration of signs and wonders on our streets.
On a separate note, I have just returned from two weeks in Uganda where I am happy to report that even though this issue may be a ‘Hot Potato’ in the UK, it was a delight to see 60 people or more receive healing from physical problems over that time. So it would appear that no one has informed Jesus yet of the ASA ruling !
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