A CAROL service on Whitehall organised by the anti-Islam campaigner Tommy Robinson passed without major incident on Saturday, with turnout much lower than at a previous Unite the Kingdom (UTK) event.
Mr Robinson had promised that Saturday’s event could be non-political, and this injunction was repeated multiple times from the bauble-bedecked stage, flanked by illuminated crosses, which had been arrange on Whitehall.
In the build-up, Church of England bishops had criticised the event for claiming to place “Christ back into Christmas” (News, 10 December). Church House released a video saying that a “story of hope, joy, and love” was being told this Christmas in churches across the country (News, 12 December).
On Saturday morning, the previous Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams added his voice. Christ, he said, was a baby “who grows up to supply his life in order that dividing partitions of hostility between different communities — and between humanity itself and the love of God — might be broken down in a latest togetherness”. He asked: “Are we able to put this Christ back into Christmas today?”
C of E opposition was referred to several times at Saturday’s event by speakers including by Mr Robinson, when he addressed the group at the top of the gathering. “The way they’ve acted this week is the explanation that churches are empty,” he told supporters.
About 1500 people attended the gathering. At a UTK march in September, police estimated that the group reached between 110,000 and 150,000 (News, 19 September).
Mr Robinson said that he had been driven away from Christianity by church opposition to his early activism with the English Defence League. “I hated the Church for betraying us,” he said.
But, while serving a jail sentence for contempt of court for repeating false claims against a Syrian refugee, he got here to Christ, he said. “As I understand the Bible, when the pastor done lessons with me for the lifetime of Jesus, I understood that Jesus would have stood against the establishment, he would have stood with the sinners.”
He found it “hard” to call himself a Christian, he said, “because I do know I live a lifetime of sin, after which I realise that Jesus stood with the sinners.”
A previous speaker, whose “masculine Christianity” was praised by Mr Robinson, encouraged those gathered to attend a non-C of E church. “Sadly, the Church of England have said they don’t appear to want us,” he said. “Join a church that loves you.”
Richard, a automotive mechanic from Dagenham, attends a C of E church, but said that he was the “black sheep” there; although, on the entire, he was made to feel welcome, he said that there have been some there that “look down on me”.
He rejected each assertions that some think that those in UTK are “racists” and “using Christ as a tool, just to raised our means. We’re not as bad as what you think that we’re.”
Danny and Jamie have been attending Tower Hamlets Community Church, an independent Evangelical church in north London, for 5 – 6 months. “Any event regarding Christ I’m going to attend,” Jamie said.
They had each attended the UTK march in September. While they didn’t agree with Mr Robinson “on every point”, they were ardent that national identity needed to be protected. “We must be proud to be Christians, proud to rejoice today, proud to fly the England flag,” Danny said.
TOWARDS the back of the group on Whitehall was one one that made it clear that she was not there in support of Mr Robinson. “I went with my placards which made very clear that I used to be not a part of the UTK gathering,” the Minister of Bonny Downs Baptist Church, in east London, the Revd Dr Sally Mann, said.
FRANCIS MARTIN/CHURCH TIMESFRANCIS MARTIN/CHURCH TIMES
She sat down with two chairs, and had a gentle flow of interlocutors. People were “indignant on the surface, after which in a short time hurt and lonely”, she said on Sunday.
“It was actually like pastoring a youth group, and I don’t mean that in a patronising way. I meant that we’d like to recognise that there’s a lack of a way of identity for loads of people,” she said.
Dr Mann had also been a part of a gathering on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields earlier that morning, before Mr Robinson’s supporters began to arrive in neighbouring Trafalgar Square.
About 120 people sang carols outside St Martin-in-the-Fields, displaying banners saying that Jesus was a refugee. A live nativity, with donkeys and sheep, stood on the centre of the group.
Afterwards, the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Revd Dr Sam Wells, explained that “a bunch of us got together after we heard that there was going to be the Stephen Yaxley-Lennon [Mr Robinson’s real name] down Whitehall today, and it was claiming a Christian message.
“We felt that wasn’t the Christian message that we should always be sending to the country,” he said. He described it because the “manipulation of people who find themselves fearful and anxious”, referring particularly to the state of the economy.
Another of the organisers, Dr Krish Kandiah, who founded the refugee charity Sanctuary Foundation, hoped that the words of the carols being sung might “boomerang back” and alter the hearts of Mr Robinson’s supporters.
He said that Mr Robinson was spreading “fear and division, but on the core of the Christmas story and Christmas carols . . . is justice, kindness, redemption.”
Later that morning, one other demonstration, organised by the charities Better Story and Christians for a Welcoming Britain, took place outside St Paul’s Cathedral. Alongside a live tableau depicting Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus in a rubber dinghy, activists stood in silence holding posters saying that Jesus was a refugee.
One of the Better Story organisers, Tommy Sharpe, said: “One of the messages we’re trying to provide through this stunt is that stunning story of God incarnate, which shows that each human has value.”
There were many questions on asylum policy, he said, and the message was not that small-boat crossings must be welcomed. “But we’re pro the people on small boats, and we expect they’re precious and helpful in God’s eyes.”
The refugee charity Care4Calais joined Stand Up To Racism to organise an illustration on Whitehall. Starting concurrently the UTK event, the 2 groups were kept far apart by police.
The musician and campaigner Billy Bragg, who sang on the demonstration, told the Church Times that there was a trend, coming from the United States, of “looking for to portray the thought of empathy as toxic. But was there ever a more empathic geezer than Jesus Christ?” he asked, describing Mr Robinson’s supporters as “hypocrites”.
Churches were “running the foodbank, attempting to fill the gaps where the state is failing”, he said. He was blissful to be in solidarity with those Christians offering a special message to Mr Robinson.
THE music on the UTK event was to not everyone’s taste. Three women from Preston, who declined to provide their names, were upset at the dearth of congregational singing.
There was no big screen to display lyrics, and it seemed that not enough hymn sheets had been printed. The music was led by a pastor, Rikki Doolan, who’s near Mr Robinson, and by musicians from the Pentecostal Spirit Embassy church, founded by Uebert Angel, a self-styled prophet.
The women from Preston had been expecting a more traditional carol service, and seemed unmoved by the mixture of evangelism and patriotism that was expressed within the speeches that interspersed the songs.
The Minister of Clarendon Park Congregational Church in Leicester, the Revd Gwyn Davies, attended the UTK gathering out of “inquisitiveness”, he said. He described his politics as “broadly” aligned with those of the organisers.
He said that it was “hypocritical” for those on the “liberal Left to say theirs is true Christianity, and any individual who believes in a more traditional Christian value has got it flawed.”
It was “good for the country” to have large public celebrations of Christmas “without bringing a political angle into it”, he said.
One of the speakers, a social-media influencer often called Based and Bougie, referred to “Marxist lies that this country is a secular country, a liberal country”. But, for probably the most part, Mr Robinson’s insistence that the event must be non-political was upheld.
In a blog post on Sunday, the founding father of the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence, Dr Helen Paynter, reflected on how this defied her expectations. She wrote: “Tommy Robinson can have said some racist things prior to now. He didn’t today. We can say the one thing without unsaying the opposite. None of us is entirely monochrome, and growth (and repentance) is feasible.”
She reflected: “Rather than blanket-condemning them for the things they’ve said and done, perhaps we should always comment on particular moments, particular actions.”
