Christianity is a bulwark against the liberal elite who believe only in the modish creed of the day

Apr 13, 2023 by Jill

by A N Wilson, Daily Mail:

There have been plenty of processions in the streets of London and other British cities lately, mainly of noisy protesters supporting the strikes. But the most exciting processions, surely, are those that are led by palms and donkeys in the week before Easter.

These are the really subversive demos — against the false values that dominate our age. Not only of materialism but also the values of the smug liberal elite who govern the way we are supposed to think about the world.

The more embattled Christianity is, the more it seems threatened by our obsession with material goods and the atheist mindset, the more I enjoy following these processions.

Last Sunday was Palm Sunday, when Christians remember Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey and being greeted by loud cries of Hosanna! from the enthusiastic crowds who threw down palms in front of him. It is always a high point in the year for me.

I’ve been lucky enough to see Palm Sunday processions in Jerusalem, when they try to follow the exact route Jesus must have taken in the last week of his life. I’ve been to Palm Sunday in Soviet Russia, where, in defiance of the atheist regime of the communists, brave old ladies turned out to follow their bearded priests through the snow, to sing of a king who rode on a donkey.

Near where I live in North London there are two such processions. One of them, which attracts a big crowd, starts at the top of Primrose Hill and wanders through that rather genteel neighbourhood following a real donkey.

In another London church, nearer to where I live, there is a very different sort of congregation — less rich — which travels through the streets of Kentish Town, crunching its way over the used syringes and the discarded packets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, singing of the Man on a Donkey, the Redeemer King.

There is something very moving about these processions, wherever they occur. They remind us of an actual person in history — Jesus — who fell foul of the authorities in an eastern province of the Roman Empire after proclaiming a new sort of Kingdom, one based not on power and status and worldly goods but on the Kingdom of God, which, He said, was within us and ruling in our hearts.

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