Celia Walden.
Woke carols are the latest sign of a church that’s lost
faith in its convictions!
Church of England clergy have been urged to avoid ‘problematic’ hymns – it’s no wonder the pews are empty.
Celia Walden
24 December 2024 7:00am GMT
If you’re planning to attend a carol service tomorrow night, you might want to check out the hymn sheet first – make sure you don’t end up bellowing out: O Come, All Ye Wokeful.
You see, priests have been told to edit popular carols this Christmas in order to avoid (I really need to create a custom keyboard shortcut for this phrase) “causing unnecessary offence”. Quite why you would be in a church to begin with if you found Christianity so offensive has not been made clear.
Do you see many vegans in butchers demanding to talk to the managers? Last time you were down the pub, did you notice any teetotallers raging at the landlord about his “disgusting wall of booze”?
Yet according to a whistleblower vicar, Church of England clergy across the country have been contacted and urged to alter various Advent hymns “to avoid upset”. Those singled out as particularly concerning are O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (for depicting other faiths as being “outside of God’s grace”) and Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending (the clergy have been sent a link to research suggesting the second verse contains “problematic words” by stating Jesus is the “true Messiah”).
In a further email sent to the Birmingham diocese, clergy were advised to: “Try to use language that won’t add further confusion or tension or take away anything from the good news of the Nativity.” And they wonder why the pews are empty?
If the Church of England were a business – and learning to operate like one is probably the only thing that could save it now – it would have gone into receivership years ago. Why? Because you cannot sell people a product while simultaneously apologising for the abject awfulness of that product.
Imagine if every time you bought a finger lickin’ good tub of Kentucky Fried Chicken, you were made to spend 10 minutes in the KFC confessional, admitting to the catalogue of mental and physical failures caused by your junk food addiction. Pretty quickly, you might be inclined to get your fix somewhere else.
Given the collapse in both belief and attendance, most Brits have given up on their supposedly national Church, only they’re not getting their fix elsewhere.
They’re giving up on faith entirely. And all because the Church doesn’t have the courage of its own convictions. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Because if a religious institution doesn’t have convictions, what hope is there for the rest of us? DT.
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