A WARNING this week from the Bishop of Kirkstall, the Rt Revd Arun Arora, that “populist forces” are “in search of to use the religion for his or her 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 prematurely of an event organised for this Saturday by Tommy Robinson. A previous “Unite the Kingdom” event organised by Mr Robinson prompted expressions of concern in regards to the rise of Christian nationalism (News, 28 November).
Bishop Arora has been involved within 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 at all times been in Christmas”, “outsiders welcome”, and “Whatever your story, Christmas starts with Christ”, will go on display on bus-stop billboards.
Bishop Arora, who’s 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 in search of to use the religion for their very 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 could also be equally lost. Nor does he have the best to subvert the religion in order that it serves his purposes somewhat than the opposite way round.”
In a speech posted on X, Bishop Ceirion Dewar, who’s listed as a “missionary bishop” on the web site of the breakaway Confessing Anglican Church, said that the response from Bishop Arora and the Church of England more widely was “nothing lower than institutional apostasy dressed up as moral virtue, and sold to the British public as courage”.
Bishop Dewar, who led a gap prayer on 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 evangelise”.
A press release 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 assist them to reply 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 face alongside others in working for an asylum system that’s fair, compassionate, and rooted within the dignity of being human . . . which is at the guts of the Christmas message”.
The venue for Saturday’s event has yet to be announced, but it surely is predicted to happen in an outside space in central London, and to start out at 2 p.m. An internet page promoting the gathering says that it “not about politics, it just isn’t about immigration, it just isn’t about Islam or another group”.
