Hands off our Christmas, Tommy Robinson

Nationalist slogans are a far cry from Christ's message of peace, writes Lucy Winkett

- Lucy Winkett

One of the ways that the Church of England expresses itself is through the titles it gives its priests.

I am currently Rector of St James's in central London. I have been in the past, among other things, Curate of Manor Park in East London. Everyone is located somewhere: the Archdeacon of Salford, the Bishop of Chelmsford, the Dean of Truro (not just of Truro Cathedral note, but Truro). Even fictional vicars are given a place, such as Bray or Dibley. In short, we are “somebody of somewhere”. The place we are put matters, because it’s only in a real place that real bodies are buried, that real couples are married, that real community is built and maintained.

And even in a world often online, the Brexit vote - and later the pandemic - revealed that many people have developed, in the last 50 years perhaps, a heightened appreciation of, and loyalty to, their place. Village, town, city, nation.

Society's debates are not only about identity class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, disability — but also on belonging, as proposed in David Goodhart’s 2017 book, The Road to Somewhere, a “somewhere” or an “anywhere”. I found this a very helpful way of describing the distinction between people feeling completely rooted in their physical place and those more able to move through the world, members of a so-called global elite. When I think about these opposites, my guess is that most of us fall somewhere in between.