The story of Christmas is a tale of poverty and flight from persecution. According to Christian tradition, humanity’s saviour is born in a stable, since Mary and Joseph are unable to find a room in Bethlehem. The holy family subsequently flee to Egypt to escape the murderous intentions of King Herod. This drama grounds the New Testament message of compassion for the stranger, the fugitive and all those who find themselves far from home. “I was hungry and you gave me food to eat,” says Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
The spirit of a far-right show of force planned on Saturday by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, AKA Tommy Robinson, will be somewhat different. Since reportedly converting fully to Christianity while serving a prison sentence for contempt of court, Mr Yaxley-Lennon has energetically deployed his faith to promote his own gospel of ethnic discord and political polarisation. The Unite the Kingdom rally he organised in July featured hymns, a plethora of wooden crosses and a Christian preacher who spoke of a war against “the Muslim”. His latest provocation is a “carol service” in central London, ostensibly to “put Christ back in Christmas”.
It would be easy to mock the absurdity of a seasonal event implicitly dedicated to the cause of undermining peace and goodwill. But the apparent rise of Christian nationalism in Britain needs to be taken seriously. Crusader-style rhetoric has long been a feature of fringe extremist organisations. But Mr Yaxley-Lennon’s malign influence is popularising it to an extent hitherto unseen. In Reform UK, there are also signs that national populism in Britain is learning from the successful weaponisation of cultural Christianity elsewhere. Nigel Farage, though not a regular church attender, has begun to talk up his affinity with conservative Anglicanism. The theologian James Orr, an influential figure in Maga circles and a friend of JD Vance, has been recruited as a senior Reform UK adviser.
An ethnocentric politics legitimising xenophobia, cultural exclusivism and indiscriminate deportations is fundamentally unchristian, as the late Pope Francis repeatedly underlined. The Church of England has now launched its own campaign against the far-right misappropriation of Christian imagery and the gospel message. The Rev Arun Arora, the bishop of Kirkstall and the co-lead bishop on racial justice for the church, pithily observed that Mr Yaxley-Lennon’s conversion does not accord him “the right to subvert the faith so that it serves his purpose rather than the other way around”.
In its various guises, the contemporary far right is seeking to transform Christianity into a vehicle for cultural and ethnic supremacism, exploiting and corrupting desires for meaning and belonging. In Donald Trump’s America and Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, this project has furnished a spurious religious underpinning to a politics of authoritarian power and exclusion.
Nothing could be further from the spirit of St Paul when he asserts: “There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The modern notion of universal human rights owes a debt to this revolutionary assertion made 2,000 years ago. Mr Yaxley-Lennon maintains that his confrontational carol service can be a moment to “reclaim and celebrate our heritage, culture and Christian identity”. There is a crucial opposition, though, between glorifying nativism and reflecting on the meaning of the nativity.
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