MetaCatholic

A Tory MP has called for a debate on “Christianophobia” because of what he (mis)read in the press. According to the BBC:

Mr Pritchard said the debate was particularly topical, as recent findings suggested four fifths of schools were not staging Nativity plays this year.

He’s basing his remarks on this report from the Sunday Telegraph, which is a classic example of how to write a scare story.

• Give it a good headline: “School nativity plays under threat”
• Get your slant and bias in at the beginning: “But a survey has revealed that headteachers are watering down or ditching the centuries-old Christmas story in favour of secular tales to avoid upsetting pupils of other faiths.”
• Find an arresting statistic: “Only one in five schools are planning to perform a traditional nativity play this year.”
• Find an expert (who may not know anything about your survey except what you, the journalist choose to reveal) “Terence Copley, Professor of Educational Studies at Oxford University, said the idea that the nativity could offend other faiths was ‘crazy’.” (Note that this is not a response to a fact, but to an opinion fed by the journalist).
• Find an idiot (there are plenty of them out there) who will fit the role of villain: “A teacher from Albion Primary School in Southwark, south London, where 50 per cent of children are from ethnic minorities, said the school had not performed a nativity play for at least five years and that it had to take account of all faiths.”

Now note a few of the subtle details which suggest a somewhat different picture:

• “Almost half the schools said they planned to put on modern reinterpretations of the Christmas story” They are having nativity plays - just not traditional nativity plays.
• “The Sunday Telegraph survey of 100 schools” – well that’s going to be a statistically useless sample then. Are these all primary schools - which have traditionally had nativity plays, or do they include secondary schools, which in my lifetime never have? How meaningful is any of the information in the story?
• “One school in Birmingham, where 96 per cent of children are Muslim, said: “We’re reluctant to have a lot of music and acting because it goes against the religion of a lot of our pupils. We will stick to discussing the things we can take out of the festivals. So instead of the three men bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh, they will bring, for example, peace and co-operation.” So they are doing the nativity, but with a twist. But in this school with 96% Muslim intake, they will still have three kings coming to the manger.

Things are not quite what they seem. Note also some slightly odd language in the description of these two schools. On the one hand “a school in Barking, east London, where half of the intake is white British” and on the other “Albion Primary School in Southwark, south London, where 50 per cent of children are from ethnic minorities” The underlying assumption, which is theologically and factually wrong, is that “white British” = Christian and “ethnic minority” = other faith. Tell that to the many black-led churches in our cities, never mind the many non-Caucasian members of other churches. This story has both a racist and an heretical tinge.

This MP who wants the debate clearly is a babe-in-the-wood when it comes to reading the press, because he thinks this story says “four fifths of schools were not staging Nativity plays this year”. In fact, it actually says that around two-thirds are staging them. Oops.

Now I don’t want to pretend that there aren’t serious issues about the place of Christianity in education and the public sphere, nor that there are an extraordinary number of seriously stupid educationalists whose anti-religious bias, matched only by their religious ignorance, is disguised by a pseudo-political-correctness. But Christians are all too prone to believe conspiracy stories about them, along with scare stories that reduce Christianity to a persecuted minority, and get trapped in seeing Christianity as part of a noble British white past. None of those attitudes does justice to the gospel for all cultures and ethnic groups, nor accurately reads the culture in which a folk-Christianity (not necessarily a friend of the gospel) is still more pervasive than headlines make it appear.

In short, when it comes to scare-stories like this, Christians need to restrain their gullibility. Caveat lector.