Here’s a thought for the day: what kind of Christian am I, and what kind of Christian is Tommy Robinson? It needs addressing, and so it’s good, given the far-righter’s recent religiously contentious pronouncements – and ahead of his planned carol service this weekend – that my church is addressing it. That’s not to say the matter is simple.
Scroll back. When I told someone from the Pentecostal church, which I had attended in my 20s, that I was going to be ordained in the Church of England, she very graciously conceded that while, on the whole, it was a “dead church”, there might be one or two “real Christians” within it. More disturbingly, a senior Anglican cleric of the evangelical persuasion recently said something similar to me – and I was unclear whether he regarded me as being one of the chosen few.
But as a theological liberal, I’m always uncomfortable with the notion that any human being can decide who’s in and who’s out. Jesus was very clear that none of us is in a position to judge each other, so I’m generally loth to pronounce anyone “not a real Christian”. And then along comes Robinson …
I’d been aware of Robinson’s existence for several years. As someone who suffered at the hands – and the boots – of far-right thugs in the 80s, for the crime of being brown-skinned, I found it laughable when he first started claiming to be a Christian. Clearly, he could no more name his favourite Bible verse than could President Donald Trump – who, famously, attempted to wriggle out of answering that question by saying that he didn’t want to “get into specifics”. And it seemed obvious that all Robinson’s rhetoric about this being a Christian country was simply code for “white” and specifically “not Muslim”.
However, more recently, he is said to have had a conversion experience while in prison and has started to associate with people whom I would genuinely consider to be fellow Christians. That makes it somewhat harder for me to simply anathematise him. I felt a bit the same when Russell Brand was very publicly baptised by Bear Grylls shortly after being accused of some horrible crimes.
It is, of course, a key tenet of the Christian faith that no one is beyond redemption and, in Luke’s gospel, Jesus said: “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who don’t need to repent.” On that basis, I don’t want to cast anyone into outer darkness, especially as a reformed prodigal myself. But – and it’s a big but, as it were – Jesus also said that true repentance should bear fruit (“by their fruits you shall know them”) and, to me, the new Tommy doesn’t seem radically different from the old one.
My colleague (and Facebook friend), the right reverend Arun Arora was – as one might expect from a bishop – more gracious recently when explaining the church’s decision to challenge Robinson and his “put the Christ back in Christmas” carol service. He said that Robinson’s conversion (the veracity of which he did not dispute) was “welcome”, but it did not give him “the right to subvert the faith so that it serves his purposes rather than the other way round”.
He went on to stress that care for the most vulnerable in society has always been a core Judeo-Christian value, expressed by all the Hebrew prophets, including Jesus himself.
I would certainly be interested to hear how Robinson and his newfound mentors such as Pastor Rikki Doolan or Bishop Ceirion Dewar would interpret either Exodus 23:9 (“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt”), or Matthew 25, in which Jesus suggests that the basis on which people will be separated into sheep and goats at the last judgment will be whether or not they visited the sick, fed the hungry or – most significantly in this context – were hospitable to strangers.
Of course, they probably don’t care that they are flying in the face of the opinions of most Christians, whom they regard as weak and ineffectual. On the day that Dame Sarah Mullally was named as the next archbishop of Canterbury, Robinson retweeted a statement that she’d made in support of Black Lives Matter a few years previously with the gloss “Their churches will stay empty, a Christian revival will grow on the streets. Masculine christiany [sic] is coming not this weak drivel”.
Well, I’m a big fan of the bishop. I support the women’s ministry in general as well as other liberal causes such as equal marriage. So Saint Tommy would, no doubt, see me as a purveyor of “feminine Christianity” – which I would take as a badge of honour. The sermon on the mount declared the meek to be blessed, not the strong. Newsflash: Jesus died on a Roman cross. Hence, Saint Paul’s statement that God’s power is made perfect “in weakness”. So, for me, as for many in the church, Robinson’s “masculine” Christianity is pretty much the antithesis of everything Jesus stood for.
So does that mean that he’s not a real Christian? Well, I have no window into his soul. And I already share a national church with people who disagree with me strongly on all sorts of issues: that’s what happens in a family.
So ultimately, all I can do – as our bishops are doing with their “Christ has always been in Christmas” counter-campaign – is to live out my own brand of Christianity as faithfully as I can, and trust that people will decide which version is more attractive, which version bears the right fruit.
Love thy neighbour – that’s still a thing, isn’t it?
Ravi Holy is rector of The United Wye Benefice in Canterbury, Kent, and a standup comedian
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
