The Bishop of Shrewsbury, Mark Davies, will reject the secularisation of Christmas in a homily for Midnight Mass that describes John Lennon’s song Imagine as a “heart-chilling” vision of a world with no religion.
In his homily for Midnight Mass the bishop is due to reflect on the power of Christmas, which he will say is transformative and greater than just “a Bank Holiday” or “winter celebration”.
So powerful is the Christmas message, the Bishop will add, that it disproves “the lazily repeated assertion” that religion is the cause of all wars.
Turning to John Lennon’s iconic anti-war song Imagine, in which the former Beatle imagines a world with no religion, Bishop Davies criticised as “ill-founded” the idea that peace will be achieved through the abolition of religion.
“This becomes a heart-chilling vision in which Lennon imagines a world with no hope of heaven and no fear of hell. And he adds, ‘no religion too.’ Only then, he suggests will ‘all the people’ be ‘living life in peace.’ Yet the fact is, the wars of the century past, bringing with them atrocities and destruction on a scale never seen before, were largely inspired by secularist and, indeed, openly anti-Christian ideologies,” he will say.
He will go on to say that the meaning of Christmas must be reclaimed, and will criticises schools that substitute a winter celebration for a Nativity play.
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