Holy Smoke

The invasion of the sanctuary of a Polish church in Balham on Good Friday by the Metropolitan police was not only a shocking event but also a sinister piece of history. It can't be interpreted as a premeditated attack on Christianity – but it's evidence of the utter irrelevance of Britain's Christian heritage to the culture of liberal bureaucracy that is fast replacing it.In this week’s Holy Smoke episode, Dr Gavin Ashenden and I talk about the blundering insensitivity of the police officer who marched into the sanctuary of Christ the King Church during the veneration of the Cross without apparently understanding anything of what the ceremony signified. But equally unsettling, in its way, has been the relative silence of Christian leaders when confronted by this outrageous disruption of a service on the grounds that the congregation were not observing social distancing procedures – something that isn't immediately clear from the video footage. In my opinion, Anglican and Catholic bishops are just as passive