My mother, whose been gone since 2012, loved to bring up something I said when I was just ten years old. She said it always tickled her. We were at church, milling about and talking with the pastor and some friends. The subject of age came up, and I apparently blurted out, “I never knew my mother when she was young!”

At the time, my mom was fifty, which is actually my age now. You can do the math. That means she had me when she was forty. Back in 1982, a half-century ago seemed ancient to me. It was the Great Depression – and nine years before the start of World War II. Thinking of my mother’s childhood and era, I may have even thought of those days in black-and-white. I wasn’t trying to be witty or sarcastic. It was just a matter of fact. From the lips of a child, so to speak.

This caricature of Christianity as a sort-of tribal faith of Westerners is flawed at the core. As Philip Jenkins argued in his book The Next Christendom, it took nearly a millennium and a half before the majority of Christians were Europeans. Even today, that is no longer the case. If we were true to the actual demographic realities, the “stereotypical” Christian would not be a white male but an African woman. In fact, from its inception, Christianity has always been a multiethnic, multilingual, and multicontinental faith.

Vaughan-Spruce is the leader of the pro-life group 40 Days for Life Birmingham, an international organization dedicated to ending abortion. She was standing and silently praying outside an abortion clinic — while the clinic was closed.

A police officer came and questioned her, and she was charged with violating the city’s Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) and the nationwide Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act of 2014.

The first regulation creates a buffer zone that Christian Concern, a legal aid group, says “censors free speech and makes it illegal to peacefully pray outside of an abortion clinic in the city.”

The second law was designed to tackle “irresponsible dog ownership and the use of illegal firearms by gangs and organised criminal groups” and to strengthen “the protection afforded to the victims of forced marriage and those at risk of sexual harm.”

That’s a far cry from praying outside an abortion clinic.