The Bible and Common LawFor more than a thousand years Christianity has shaped our laws. The earliest document written in the English language is the law code of the Anglo-Saxon king, Ethelbert. He was converted to Christianity soon after 597 and he extended his kingdom from Kent possibly reaching as far as the River Humber. Many of his laws protecting people, property and even Sunday as a work-free day, were clearly influenced by the Bible.
While not every law has been right or just, our common law system, which developed during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was shaped by Christian values. It was claimed that ‘any law is, or ought to be, according to the law of God’.
The basic principles of our law – truth, justice, the value of life and individual responsibility – come directly from the influence of Christianity. British justice, when correctly applied, has been a model for the world. It has also been the foundation for the freedom that we enjoy today.
Lord Denning, the leading civil lawyer in England and Wales during the 1960s and 1970s, claimed that your common law has been moulded by judges brought up in the Christian faith. He concluded, ‘If religion perishes in the land, truth and justice will also’. Click Here to find out more
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