“YOU put your Jesus in, you put your Jesus out.” That’s the summary of Christian discourse this Advent: a painfully perennial argument about the true meaning of the season, given extra bite this year by the efforts of populist influencers to invoke the name of Jesus to bolster their anti-immigration rhetoric.
The promotion for the Unite the Kingdom “put Christ back into Christmas” carol service was so ultra-zealous that it sounded alarming (News, 12 December). Rather like the attempt to button one’s jeans on Boxing Day — by God, Jesus was being put into a good old-fashioned far-Right Christmas, whether he fitted into it or not.
There is an obvious mission opportunity amid all the performative, incarnational hokey-cokeyism. As Evelyn Underhill wrote, “God is the interesting thing about religion. And people are hungry for God.”
SO, HOW is the Church responding to this hunger? Church House has published a booklet by the Dean of Salisbury, the Very Revd Nicholas Papadopulos, Twelve Joys of Christmas (News, 5 December). He had this to say about Christmas jumpers: “They’re all a part of how we celebrate Christmas, and I believe that they’re more than that. Even the most tasteless Christmas knitwear points us to the best news we’ll ever hear. That God is with us. For ever.”
This is well-intentioned, but it’s not the kind of sentiment that will have far-Right nationalists quaking in their boots. Also, endorsing the wearing of polyester tat bound for landfill isn’t a great strategy if the Church wants to be an attractive alternative to soul-sapping commercialism and the secularisation of Christmas, which arguably are a bigger threat than anything else.
Mounting a far more robust challenge, Leeds diocese launched an ecumenical poster campaign, with arresting artwork by Andrew Gadd, depicting the nativity in a bus shelter (News, 12 December). The posters send a powerful and emphatic message that Christ is already in Christmas, always has been, and there are no outsiders with God.
There should be a welcome for everyone at church, and this includes those who are socially disillusioned, politically disenfranchised, and angry about the effects of mass immigration on their communities. The Church has little to offer these people while it continues to fail to resist the left-wing urge to frame everything as a goodies-versus- baddies morality tale, with those who hold unfashionably conservative views always on the wrong side of the divide.
Too often, I hear church leaders speaking of patriotism and nation as if these were dirty words; but, to many people, they are synonyms for home. Every time a Christian responds with a haughty, morally superior comment about another person’s conception of what belonging means to them, the Church surrenders some of its spiritual authority. Or, to misquote It’s a Wonderful Life, a Tommy Robinson gets his wings.
THERE is a Great Emboldening currently taking place, whereby some commentators now feel empowered to spout loudly a sub-Christian message of intolerance. In an outburst prompted by the poster campaign, Bishop Ceirion Dewar, of the breakaway Confessing Anglican Church, has issued what he called a rebuke to the leadership of the Church of England, calling them to return to the gospel and for the Church to “repent of its cowardice”.
I am the last person to bat for the bishops, but, on this issue, there has been steadfast gospel truth. The Bishop of Kirkstall, the Rt Revd Arun Arora, has 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”.
It’s easy to serve up a message by sweetening it first, sprinkling it with pre-existing prejudices and fears, neither challenging nor convicting hearts to change. It takes guts to say the things that people don’t want to hear, but this kind of calmly composed courage is what is desperately needed. It’s a sonorous counter-sound to the ringing gongs and clanging cymbals of self-proclaimed orthodoxy and arrogant certitude.
The challenge has always been to make an unpalatable gospel taste good, but it contains bitter morsels, which demand, outrageously, that we examine our own selfish pride and love the unlovable. These are hard truths to swallow, but caring for the stranger and loving our neighbour — no matter how different, or difficult, or controversial that neighbour may be — are not optional values, to be discarded because they are inconvenient or unpopular
In his farewell sermon when he retired from active ministry, a former Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Revd Paul Bayes, had this to say: “The poor carpenter’s threshold is not there to exclude any element. It is there to help you welcome and bless.” To paraphrase the Jesuit priest Fr Daniel Berrigan, followers of Jesus need to consider how good they’ll look on wood, not in a Christmas jumper.
Jayne Manfredi is an Anglican deacon, writer, and radio broadcaster.
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