So Tommy Robinson is inviting us all to have Christmas with him. The far-right activist has announced that there will be a huge open air carol concert in central London on 13 December, a seasonal Unite the Kingdom rally. The aim, he says, ‘is to put Christ back into Christmas.’ Hmm, isn’t that what thousands of church services already do?
Robinson is saying: we should be proud of our national religion. Is he wrong? Yes and no
So what is Robinson’s motivation for wanting to stage a very large and very public Christmas event? Well, he makes it pretty clear. ‘We shouldn’t have to put this on’, he says. ‘There should be a massive Christmas event put on by our government – did you see Poland’s this year? Did you see the Christmas market switch-on? All the lights, lit in the colours of their country.’
Is that clear enough? He wants a large-scale Christmas event that is also a show of national pride. He adds: ‘It’s not a protest, it’s not against anything, it’s literally a celebration of Christ, of Christmas.’ But there is a note of complaint in his claim that the government is failing to provide such events. This is repeated: ‘We as a country, and as a community, need to focus on our important days – Christmas, Easter this year we need a parade – our government have stopped it, they’ve stopped everything, so we need to fill that space, then they’ll want to take it back from us.’
Yes, Robinson says ‘this event is not about politics…it is about Jesus Christ – fully and completely.’ But in reality, this supposed celebration of Christ looks like it is motivated by a desire to have large-scale national cultural events, and to expose the government as hostile to the national religion. As his reference to Poland suggests, this agenda overlaps with conservative Christianity. But a brief glance at Robinson’s CV tells us that his motivation is probably not really conservative Christianity, but nationalism.
Robinson is saying: we should be proud of our national religion. Is he wrong? Yes and no. But mainly yes. It is true that Christianity is our main national religion, and that it is linked to the state. It is true, obviously, that Christians should be proud of their faith, and should sometimes display this in public, with due care for the feelings of others. And it is true that Britons should be proud of their nation, and should sometimes display this in public. But here’s the crucial thing: a Christian should separate his affirmation of Christianity from his affirmation of pride in his nation. Why? Because a modern Briton ought to be proud of his nation for its ability to unite people of different religions and ethnicities. He should be proud of his nation’s liberalism. Robinson joins together what should be kept asunder.
What does the Church of England think about this impulse to re-integrate religion and politics? You might think that, as an established church, it fundamentally believes in the unity of religion and politics. No. It has come to see itself as the established Church of a liberal state. It sees political and cultural liberalism as God’s will.
This is almost axiomatic to nearly all Anglican thinkers, except a few attention-seeking reactionaries. It is time for greater clarity, so that this minority view is firmly excluded. It used to be a sort of academic experiment or game. Now it is politically dangerous. The Church of England should explicitly state why Tommy Robinson is wrong: our national Christian tradition affirms the liberal state. It’s really as simple as that.
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