UK Church Leaders Speak Out Against Anti-Christmas Trend

London (CNSNews.com) - As Christmas nears, religious leaders here have launched an unprecedented attack on "political correctness" and what they call the increasing secularization of the holiday.

Dr. George Carey, a former head of the Church of England, told British television it was time that Christianity reclaimed its place at the heart of Christmas.

As more and more workplaces ban Christmas decorations, and with many town councils prohibiting any reference to it as a religious holiday, Carey said the nation's Christian heritage was in danger of being lost.

"That would not be the Britain I know," he said. "We can't keep faith out of politics or out of public life. It's part of our own identity."

Carey's successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, also weighed in, taking to the columns of a mass circulation tabloid to scold "silly bureaucrats" for trying to turn Christmas into just another day off work.

Government officials were banning Christian symbols because of fear they would offend Jews and Muslims, he said.

"It's not the Christmas pudding that the authorities will be coming for but the Christmas crib, if some people have their way," he wrote. "And it'' all because of a quite wrong-headed idea that our neighbors from other religious traditions will be offended by Christian symbols."

Earlier this month, 18 lawmakers signed a resolution stating that "the banning of Christian symbols is a thoroughly unwelcome sign of political correctness which undermines age-old British traditions and values."

Philip Davies, one of the signatories, said Monday that in his experience, people from non-Christian faiths weren't the ones who were against Christmas.

On the contrary, he said, Jews and Muslims were annoyed by those efforts because they gave them a bad name.

"The thing with political correctness is that it doesn't come from ethnic minorities," Davies said. "It usually comes from white, middle class, Christian do-gooders who, to be frank, have too much time on their hands."

Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, a town in the north of England, said he was also annoyed that some town councils have insisted on renaming Christmas lights "winter lights."

"Whether people like it or not, we're a Christian country," he said. "That's part of our heritage."

Last week Peninsula, one of the largest employment law firms in the country, released the results of a survey of 2,138 employers nationwide indicating that 71 percent of them had banned Christmas decorations from their offices.

The firm's managing director, Peter Done, said workplaces were now imitating a trend seen in town centers and shopping malls, where Christmas trees, tinsel, and images of Santa Claus had been banned.

John Midgley of the grassroots citizens group Campaign Against Political Correctness, attributed the trend in part to bureaucrats having an unreasonable fear of lawsuits.

With town councils not really sure of what might possibly offend non-Christian faiths, he said Monday, they reflexively banned all religious symbols.

Midgley added that he applauded the stands taken by Carey and Williams and said the political correctness was ruining Christmas.

"It's not just wacky," he said. "It's plain and simply wrong."

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