Don’t allow religious illiteracy to destroy our history

The brutal and unjust killing of George Floyd was a wicked and abhorrent act which has been rightly condemned, but we should not allow our horror to lead to knee-jerk reactions, such as the tearing down of statues and monuments, which for better or worse, form part of our country’s history.

It now seems like every aspect of our country’s history is up for grabs and activists are taking advantage of the desire for racial equality and using it as a weapon to destroy any views or beliefs that they do not like. 

The latest piece of nonsense has been a petition set up by a social justice warrior demanding   that the St Michael and St George decoration which is awarded to diplomats and   ambassadors who have provided outstanding service to the UK, is redesigned, because the image depicted on the medal is supposedly racist because it depicts the victory of St Michael the archangel standing on top of a defeated Satan and casting him back down into hell. 

The image, say the protestors, is racist because St Michael is depicted in white clothing and the devil appears to have a darker skin tone and because Satan’s defeat evokes the way in which George Floyd was killed. This is patently absurd.

This image of St Michael standing on top of the devil is centuries old and clearly has nothing to do with George Floyd. This interpretation is clearly a case of agenda-driven activists attempting to put a negative spin on Christianity and the country’s cultural heritage and take offence where none was intended. 

It is abundantly obvious that the image was not inspired by racism - there are many different versions of it in which the devil is always portrayed in various dark shades and angels are always displayed or described as wearing shining light garments. It is an artistic convention dating back millennia that the duality of good versus evil is portrayed as light versus darkness. 

What next - are activists going to demand that Star Wars is re-edited because Darth Vader wears a black helmet and Princess Leia, a white robe?!

It may sound daft but once we start allowing our history, cultural and religious heritage to be obliterated, then there will be no end to the madness. Left-wing local authorities and institutes   are already beginning to exercise a knee-jerk reaction by removing historic monuments. Many activists have already demanded the removal and destruction of religious icons, statues and stained glass windows because they have taken gratuitous offence if Jesus or His Mother are depicted with a white skin. 

Christianity  is not racist   - it   celebrates and uplifts people of all race   and upholds the innate human dignity of everyone, regardless of their colour of skin, their faith, their sex, their sexuality and their background. 

If we look at the bible, then the first non-Jew   to be baptised was in fact an Ethiopian. St Paul makes it very clear that in Jesus Christ people are not categorised or labelled into competing groups of differing superiority - we are all one.

In case you were in any doubt - the image of St Michael standing on the devil, does not depict human beings. The devil is even sprouting a giant pair of green wings! These are not physical but spiritual creatures and therefore they do not have human bodies or skin colour. 

The cause of racial and cultural equality is not advanced by wiping out our cultural and religious heritage. At a time when the economy is floundering thanks to the devastation brought by the coronavirus lockdown measures, there are much better uses for taxpayers’ money, than a redesign of a medal which is hundreds of years old, depicting an image which has never had anything to do with either the slave trade or ideas about racism. 

Redesigning the medal would be nothing but virtue-signalling, doing nothing to address the inequalities which still exist such as modern slavery which still exists in many parts of the world, or the disproportionate numbers of black children who are lost to abortion every single year.