Before the Covid pandemic forced us to start paying with our cards or phones, we had to fill our pockets with shiny little bits of metal called coins. If you still possess any coins, you will find that most have the late Queen Elizabeth II embossed on one side and beside her name you might see the letters FD or FID. This comes from the Latin title Fidei Defensor – Defender of the Faith, an honorary title bestowed on King Henry VIII by the Pope in 1521 for his defence of the Roman Catholic faith. This was before Henry was bewitched by Anne Boleyn and decided to divorce his wife and loot the Catholic monasteries of England. (Fidei Defensatrix for females).
But what has this got to do with N. Ireland politics?
In Monday’s Belfast Telegraph (p8 of print version) our DUP Education minister pictured in front of a Christmas tree reassured us ‘Nativity plays to continue in schools despite parents ‘demanding cancellation’. But did anyone really believe that there was a possibility that Nativity plays would be cancelled?
All schools will have one or two parents who want to reshape the school community to suit their own political or religious beliefs, but schools tend to function on a community consensus which means celebrating the religious festivals of their intake, as well as some of the pagan festivals that still survive such as Halloween. (Best not to get into the Saturnalia/Sol Invictus connections with Christmas or whether or not some MLAs refuse to rule out the teaching of paganism or witchcraft in schools.)
Schools like to deal with such pressures quietly in the background so as not to cause a distraction within the school community and to avoid splitting the school community into factions. Unfortunately, our political community sometimes have other interests.
Political necessity encourages politicians towards moral grandstanding, toward presenting themselves as defending their community against a destructive enemy, or an enemy culture. Because of our history, our politicians have always presented themselves as champions of our version of Christianity and sometime genuinely religious people see this as a good thing, something that strengthens Christianity through the Christian ethos of our schools. Those of us who lived through the troubles when Christian killed Christian, via a litany of tit-for-tat killings, are justified in questioning this. (Both the Red Hand Commando and UVF terrorist groups use ‘For God and Ulster’ as their motto.)
Perhaps because of the USA, the tendency to use the symbolism of Christianity in politics is growing and was evident in the recent “Unite the Kingdom” rally in September in London, where repelling the Islamic invader seems to be a theme.
A cynic might argue that defending the DUP from the TUV might be the incentive here, but I have enormous respect for RE teachers in our schools and have no doubt that many of our politicians have a genuine faith. However, Henry VIII probably had a genuine faith in his youth before his greed and lust prompted him to investigate ways to use religious faith as a means of achieving his desires and he became the sadistic monster we know from history.
More recently, Donald Trump has been boasting about ‘Christianity is making a SURGE in America’, he claims ‘Religion is coming back to America!’. But is this a type of Christianity most of us would recognize?
Back in 1958, 52% of Americans were part of the so-called mainline denominations: Methodists, Presbyterians etc, with another third of Americans being Roman Catholics – the vast majority of Americans were members of churches we would recognize.
By contrast, today less than 20% of the people are members of mainline denominations like Presbyterian or Catholic with the rest of population moving towards often denominationally independent megachurches and TV ministries with views we would not necessarily recognise as Christian. Doug Wilson, the self-taught pastor who co-founded Pete Hegseth’s denomination has insisted that it was a mistake to let women vote. (See Guardian of 23rd Nov where Bill McKibbin Maga complains about the evangelical perversion of Jesus’s message of radical love to one of hate and aggression.)
Trump and the USA are perhaps an extreme example but I suggest all of us need to be wary of politicians who cast themselves in the role of Defenders of the Faith.
Arnold is a retired teacher from Lisburn, now living in Belfast.
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