Well, Christmas Day has been and gone, and Archdeacon Cardy's sign has been and gone with it. Just as well, too. The latter was of course tasteless, ridiculous, objectionable, unbecoming, lewd, suggestive, indecent, and likely to cause offence. It was also not unexpected. We all love Christmas - most of us anyway. We like carols, and fake snow and Santa and jinglebells and all the other seasonal manifestations of Christianity which have endeared themselves to us from our playpens until now.
But we are not too sure about the real thing. You know what I mean, incarnations, resurrections, ascensions - stuff like that. In fact, we have grown beyond such charmingly mythological stuff. And it's not always that charming either, is it? Think of the wars, the inquisition, the intolerance, the oppression of women. Religion clearly turns good people bad - especially when they actually believe in it.
But fortunately we don't. And now we don't have to. We can have our christmas cake and eat it. And we have Sir Lloyd, Bishops Spong and Randerson, Ian Harris (he of the ODT column Honest to God - if you please) and the good archdeacon to give us permission to bypass the real thing in favour of Christianity-Lite, dogma-free and non-saving. It's just the thing for a guilt-free sacred snack. But shame on the clerical cooks for promoting spiritual anorexia.
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