Video for October 2nd, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
Its an unfortunate feature of contemporary society that the way we share information doesn’t encourage reasoned argument. Social media is especially toxic in this regard. People post their emotional reactions to an event, and everyone pitches in, often without thinking that there are always two sides to every story. Clever people post a line or two which sounds natty as if that settles a complex argument with a cliché. Even worse is the dissemination of false information which is then acted upon uncritically.
We saw that writ large in responses to the recent ‘Unite the Kingdom March’ in London and in the subsequent widespread flying of union and St. George’s flags. Such responses have come from both left and right. It appears that people marched for a variety of motives. Some were an entirely innocent desire to affirm the values of British culture. As has been conclusively demonstrated by historians like Tom Holland, these are unequivocally rooted in the Christian story. Others marched with a racist or far right agenda; others because of reasonable anxieties about the pace of social change. It illustrated the power of symbols to capture something of the zeitgeist of the moment. We fly a St. Georges flag regularly from the Cathedral and have done for years. It has never been a cause of offence or anxiety. St. George of course, was a Roman soldier from Turkey, so probably with olive skin. But I have spoken to people of Asian heritage who now find the widespread flying of this flag to intimidating. People in our churches of global majority heritage has experienced a growing hostility as they go about their daily business. More troubling to me was the use on the march of crosses as part of the symbolic assertion of British identity. I get fed up with the tiresome requests made of Christian leaders that we should keep religion out of politics. A substantial amount of Jesus’ teaching in context was highly political. Christian faith affects the way approach life and that inevitably has a political dimension. Watching crosses used in the way they were I was inclined to say, “please keep your politics out of my religion”!
The cross is a symbol of sacrificial love, not a mark of national identity. Followers of Jesus and indeed our Jewish forbears are encouraged to be hospitable to the stranger. In the name of Jesus with an audit trail to the Gospel we unequivocally affirm the values of compassion, love and humility.
But even with these things being true we can’t simply dismiss the concerns of those who marched, even those who did so with values we find problematic and unchristian, cross bearing or not, as intrinsically racist. There are substantial numbers in our society who see growing wealth disparities, rapid social change and uncontrolled, illegal immigration as a genuine threat to social cohesion. These are entirely legitimate questions to explore. More than that, they see their cultural values: the papers they read, the TV they watch, and their lifestyle choices as mocked and despised by those they see as wielding power over their lives. There are large numbers who feel as if no-one is listening or taking these worries seriously. If history teaches us anything is that such widespread discontent can be exploited by politicians of left and right seeking to apportion blame and propose simplistic solutions. As Christians we continue to affirm that all, of whatever nationality, ethnic or cultural background are made in the image of God and therefore of infinite value. The vision of the new heaven and the new earth in Revelation is of people of every background, tribe and tongue worshipping together; their distinctives maintained but harmonised in a glorious music. In the meantime, as Churches, we need to be places of hospitality and welcome. There is a place for safe spaces where people can listen and understand the other. I believe, despite our small numbers, we can be agents to convene such spaces, often in collaboration with those of other faiths. St. Paul talks of the Church as an agent of reconciliation. Never has that been more important.
+Richard