Onward Christian Soldiers! Etc, Etc, Ad Nauseam.

The Baby-Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells Lichfield has a plan:

A bishop is calling on Christians to wear crosses in public to demonstrate they "aren't going to disappear quietly from the market place".

That is a curiously ambigious statement. Is the Bish worried that Christians or their fashion accessories are going to vanish from the market place? Or both? Anyhoo, I think he should unfurrow his troubled brow. I don't think that either are going to disappear from the marketplace anytime soon.

The Bishop of Lichfield, the Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill said Christians should wear them at work and not be intimidated into putting them away.

Hmm. This is more problematic. If Christians want to wear a cross at work, then - even as an atheist - I don't have a problem with it. As long as their employers don't either. However, if work restrictions don't allow them to wear a cross (which is not an obligation laid down by the Christian faith) then they shouldn't wear said crosses. Because they could end up not being intimidated all the way to the dole queue. And at that point, their posturing over Christian fashion statements is going to appear slightly less important than paying the bills somehow.

He also criticised councils which tried to "rebrand Christmas" for fear of offending other religions.

Such decisions were made out of "sheer ignorance," he said.

"Ethnic minorities are far more anxious about the rampant secularism and commercialism that erodes all Christian standards than they are about their host country properly celebrating its Christian foundations," he said.

I don't have much time for councils trying to rebrand Christmas - not least because Christmas has, in this country, largely been divested of any of its original Christian trappings. But I am staggered that this Bishop is able to set himself up as a spokesperson for ethnic minorities, and am even more surprised at what he claims are the causes for their anxiety. How does he know this? Is he unusually connected to ethnic minorities of Lichfield? Has he had some sort of divine intervention? Or is he just making shit up to prove himself right? You can probably guess which option I'd go for.

The Bish's comments are part of an ongoing campaign to create an image that Christanity is under attack in this country, and that Christians have to fight back by advertising what they believe in. The truth is this country remains very open to Christianity. The fact that less people are going to Church and defining themselves as Christians is down to the fact that Christianity has ceased to offer anything worth having to many people in modern Britain. And it is going to take more than wearing crosses and shrill whining about Christmas to change that fact.