A WARNING this week from the Bishop of Kirkstall, the Rt Revd Arun Arora, that “populist forces” are “seeking to exploit the faith for their political ends” has provoked a furious response from organisers of a carol service promising to “put Christ back into Christmas”.
Bishop Arora’s comments were made in advance of an event organised for this Saturday by Tommy Robinson. A previous “Unite the Kingdom” event organised by Mr Robinson prompted expressions of concern about the rise of Christian nationalism (News, 28 November).
Bishop Arora has been involved in the launch of a poster campaign, which uses artwork by Andrew Gadd which depicts the nativity in a bus shelter. Posters with slogans including “Christ has always been in Christmas”, “outsiders welcome”, and “Whatever your story, Christmas starts with Christ”, will go on display on bus-stop billboards.
Bishop Arora, who is the C of E’s co-lead bishop for racial justice, said: “We must confront and resist the capture of Christian language and symbols by populist forces seeking to exploit the faith for their own political ends.”
Referring to Mr Robinson by his real name, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Bishop Arora said that he was “delighted” that he had “recently come to faith in prison”, but suggested that “having embraced and accepted God’s welcome he can’t now restrict it from others who may be equally lost. Nor does he have the right to subvert the faith so that it serves his purposes rather than the other way round.”
In a speech posted on X, Bishop Ceirion Dewar, who is listed as a “missionary bishop” on the website of the breakaway Confessing Anglican Church, said that the response from Bishop Arora and the Church of England more widely was “nothing less than institutional apostasy dressed up as moral virtue, and sold to the British public as courage”.
Bishop Dewar, who led an opening prayer at the Unite the Kingdom march in London in September (News, 15 September), said that the “Church of England, especially its leadership, must repent of its cowardice and return to the very truth of the Gospel it merely claims to preach”.
A statement from the Joint Public Issues Team (JIPT), which is a partnership between the Baptist Union, the Methodist Church, and the United Reformed Church, said last week that there was “grounds for caution and careful discernment” in relation to the event.
The JPIT is distributing a booklet for churches to help them to respond to divisive rhetoric. Compiled by the Team Rector of Hodge Hill, Birmingham, the Revd Dr Al Barrett, the booklet warns of “the co-option of Christian language and symbols — including Christmas — for a nationalist agenda, overtly hostile to asylum-seekers and Muslims, and more covertly threatening to many more of us in our churches and neighbourhoods”,
Bishop Arora invoked “the Holy Family’s own flight as refugees”, and said that he called on Christians to “reaffirm our commitment to stand alongside others in working for an asylum system that is fair, compassionate, and rooted in the dignity of being human . . . which is at the heart of the Christmas message”.
The venue for Saturday’s event has yet to be announced, but it is expected to take place in an outdoor space in central London, and to start at 2 p.m. A web page advertising the gathering says that it “not about politics, it is not about immigration, it is not about Islam or any other group”.
