{"id":88259,"date":"2025-12-07T15:53:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T15:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=88259"},"modified":"2025-12-07T15:53:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T15:53:00","slug":"hate-or-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/12\/07\/hate-or-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"Hate, or peace?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/dec\/07\/church-of-england-campaign-challenging-tommy-robinson-put-christ-back-into-christmas-message\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Guardian reported<\/a> this morning that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Church of England is to launch a poster campaign aimed at challenging the anti-migrant message of\u00a0Tommy Robinson, whose \u201cUnite the Kingdom\u201d movement has urged its supporters to join a carols event next weekend to \u201cput the Christ back into Christmas\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yaxley-Lennon (Robinson's real name) is apparently planning to promote \u201cGod, faith, family, homeland\u201d through Christmas carol services.<\/p>\n<p>I am most definitely not here to preach, and won't, but this is deeply depressing. If Jesus is Christ, then nothing about the story he told is about hate, and yet everything Yaxley-Lennon does is all about just that.<\/p>\n<p>Jaqueline and I discussed this during a walk this morning, and talked about Christmas music, agreeing that as we are in Advent right now, this piece by John Rutter is the most sublime Advent carol:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xXAAGDWpglg?si=SrqhiWIv4mTdT6QH\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We then began discussing Rutter, and his massively distinctive writing, and ended singing this to no one but ourselves by the River Ouse:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZLkcakqqOEY?si=JpppV-vZfVSFH39h\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The lyrics are:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>Deep peace of the running wave to you<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Deep peace of the flowing air to you<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Deep peace of the quiet earth to you<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Deep peace of the shining stars to you<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Deep peace of the gentle night to you<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Moon and stars pour their healing light on you<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Deep peace of Christ the light of the world to you<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Deep peace of Christ to you<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The style does reflect Gaelic Christianity, its thinking and its liturgy.<\/p>\n<p>It is as far removed from the politics of hate as you can get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Guardian reported this morning that: The Church of England is to launch a poster campaign aimed at challenging the anti-migrant message of\u00a0Tommy Robinson, whose<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/12\/07\/hate-or-peace\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88259"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88261,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88259\/revisions\/88261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}