What will Unite the Kingdom’s rally really put into Christmas?
Every year, there are calls to ‘put Christ back into Christmas’. The gospel good news message of love, peace, goodwill and hope embodied in Christ’s coming is desperately needed in our society. However, this year that call is coming from a rather unexpected place. Following their ‘Free Speech’ rally in London in September, far right activist Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) and his Unite the Kingdom movement are organising an event in Whitehall next weekend which says it is about ‘putting the Christ back into Christmas’.
Given the history of Tommy Robinson and his supporters, there are grounds for caution and careful discernment around this event. Robinson came to fame after founding the English Defence League and has served five terms in prison for a variety of offences, including violent assault and fraud. Last year he was given an 18 month jail sentence after pleading guilty to repeatedly breaching a court order by sharing untrue, Islamophobic and defamatory videos about a young Syrian refugee. The child had been a victim of violence, and Robinson’s videos led to a year-long campaign of hate and death threats that required the boy and his family to relocate.
Christ is love
Christ is self-sacrificial love. Christmas is a celebration of the moment that love entered into the world as a vulnerable human child. Many Christians will welcome any initiative that seeks to centre Christ at Christmas. But focusing on Christ compels us to ask, in relation to anything being done or said in Christ’s name, ‘Is this about love?’ If so, is it an easy love that includes only the likeminded, and those who belong to certain groups – or is it the challenging and all-encompassing love that came in Christ at Christmas, which extends to all?
‘The angel said to [the shepherds], “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.”’ (Luke 2:10)
Is this love?
In May of this year, while in prison, Tommy Robinson made a commitment to follow Christ. We dearly hope that is a sign of God at work in his life, but as Matthew 7:15-20 reminds us, that will only be known by its fruits.
‘The fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’ (Galatians 5:22-23).
Upon his release from prison, Yaxley-Lennon was a key organiser of Unite the Kingdom’s ‘Free Speech’ rally in September. Speeches expressed hostility to refugees and immigrants, featured Islamophobic rhetoric, and saw the promulgation of the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory, which stokes fear that ‘other’ religions and races are seeking to overwhelm ethnic white cultures, and that ‘we’ must therefore – in the words of Elon Musk speaking at the rally – “either fight back or die”. Unsurprisingly, given such rhetoric, there was violent disorder towards police and bystanders, with punches, bottles and flares thrown. Perhaps more surprisingly, the event also featured Christian prayer and the use of Christian symbols.
In September Christian leaders shared concerns about the co-option of Christianity during the Unite the Kingdom event, writing: “The cross is the ultimate sign of sacrifice for the other. Jesus calls us to love both our neighbours and our enemies and to welcome the stranger. Any co-opting or corrupting of the Christian faith to exclude others is unacceptable.”
While the organisers claim that this month’s event is not about politics, immigration or ‘Islam or any other group’, the initial announcement about it included more ‘Great Replacement’ rhetoric and followed Yaxley-Lennon’s familiar pattern of making false and defamatory statements about non-white people in general and Muslims in particular. While there are many legitimate criticisms that could be levelled at London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the announcement labelled him “an unwelcome foreign invader” imposing “Sharia Law”. This is not about honest engagement with the Mayor’s record, policies or intentions, but a clear attempt to generate hostility towards him because of his background. Is this love?
Love casts out fear
There is a lot of fear around at the moment. Fear of declining living standards and rising costs, fear of violence and crime and, yes, fear of the other. Those fears are real and deep and legitimate, and political answers are needed to address many of them – answers that enable the needs of the poorest and most marginalised to be put at the centre. One of those answers came last week, with the long-awaited end of the two-child benefit limit.
There is a posture of competitiveness at the root of the Unite the Kingdom movement. There is talk about making Britain great again, and about the superiority of the UK compared to other countries, of those born in the UK being more somehow deserving than those born elsewhere, and of Christianity compared to other religions. People fear loss, and one way to avoid loss is to beat down the other. But is this love?
‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.’ (1 John 4:18a)
Why does perfect love cast out fear? Not because those fears are irrelevant or unjustified, but because fear is about blame and punishment, and God is about grace. Perfect love casts out fear by removing the divisions between us, by making it impossible to point the finger, by untangling the painful realities of life from the ways in which we treat each other.
Love does not stoke fear of other human beings. We are called to love our neighbour as we love ourselves, not to hate ourselves, nor to hate our neighbour. Loving your community and country is an expression of this. But when love of nation manifests itself in the rejection of people from other nations, or other faiths, or other races, is this love?
Loving the stranger
Unite the Kingdom’s rally in September was infused with “them and us” language. ‘We’ – white people born in the United Kingdom – were portrayed as people who have suffered and must avoid suffering again by any means possible. ‘They’ – implying refugees, Muslims, people of Global Majority heritage, and anyone who was not born in the United Kingdom – were portrayed as the enemy who caused that suffering and must be defeated. It validates people’s fears, offers them a focus for that anger, and joins them together against a common but ill-defined enemy. But is this love?
“When a foreigner resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the foreigner. The foreigner who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the foreigner as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:33-34)
Throughout the Bible, God’s love is expressed through the welcome of the stranger, the alien, and the refugee. This is love born of lived experience. Throughout history, people have experienced the need to seek refuge in light of danger, persecution, drought or war. The Judeo-Christian story is a migrant story. Our stories are woven together. Being faithful to the Judeo-Christian tradition means loving the stranger – this is a biblical truth that is impossible to ignore. Love welcomes the stranger, as the stranger once welcomed us. If strangers are not welcomed, is this love?
Love came down at Christmas
Love came down at Christmas, in the form of Christ – in vulnerable defiance to the divisions of a world ruled by oppression, violence and fear. Scripture repeatedly tells us that love seeks the other’s good, and shows us what that should look like.
This Christmas, thousands of Christians will be showing that Christ is at the heart of Christmas by living out his command to love our neighbours, as we provide meals to the hungry and homeless, share carols and hope with our communities, help people seeking asylum to learn English and access public services, give generously to charities and foodbanks, and share a message that is about peace and goodwill to all. And thousands of people will be experiencing Christ at the heart of Christmas as we receive hospitality and shelter, as we are welcomed, as we learn things from people with differing life experiences to our own, as we receive the help we need to experience life in all its fullness, and as we are moved to joy and wonder.
There is no ‘them and us’, only ‘all of us’. This is love.
We pray that Christ will be at the centre this Christmas, but let us together ensure that the Christ we proclaim is seen in love not hate, light not darkness, hope not fear.
The Joint Public Issues Team
Click here for a new resource put together to support churches to respond to the co-option of Christmas by the Far Right.