Monday, December 14, 2009

Christians shouldn't be blaming others


By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
The Independent

"Like Christmas decorations, as we get into December, down from the attic come the grunters and moaners, hypocrites, dogmatists and self-righteous sinners. It's the season of ill will and miserableness. The usual suspects – schools, local authorities, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs – are rounded up, charged with plotting to kill Christmas, or lethally wounding the celebrations with something called PC. PC GONE MAD!!!, to be exact.....

Many humble Christian leaders do understand their role and the crisis. They live by the eternal tenets of their faith, applying them to modern life and its myriad challenges. Take one example. Doctors from several of the Royal Colleges have called for incarcerated asylum children to be released this Christmas, as have dozens of children's authors. And so Rev. Canon James Rosenthal and Rev. Professor Nicholas Sagovsky took presents to the asylum children held in Yarl's Wood detention centre. The guards wouldn't let the kind men through.

Many of the young there are severely traumatised; some self-harm and may never recover. Mary had to seek refuge. Here, today, she would have had to nurse her infant behind razor wire and kept in her place by hardened guards. How heartening it would be if Rowan Williams, instead of moaning about the status of Christianity, had chosen instead to seriously take on the government at this time, animating the central motif of his great religion.

I have often said that some Muslims and our leaders are betraying the Islam I grew up with – their brutal Islamism steps on the faith in our hearts. Christianity too is being failed by its own and needs to rediscover its beatific roots. Love Divine is what makes this religion great and good. I don't see a vast amount of that as Christmas approaches."

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