Cry: St George for England, God and Harry — even!

Civitas, 7 July 2006

It has been widely reported in the media this week that an Anglican vicar is in the process of garnering enough support from his fellow clergymen and women to be able to table at the General Synod of the Church of England a private member’s motion calling for St George to be replaced by St Alban as patron saint of England.
His ostensible reason for seeking the change is his claim that, of the two purported Christian martyrs to receive canonisation, it is the fourth century British-born Alban who is far more likely to have actually existed and lived in England than George, supposedly a third century Christian Roman soldier born in Cappadocia, now in Turkey, and who, according to legend, was beheaded in Lydda, Palestine, on orders of the Christian-persecuting Emperor Diocletian, after refusing to renounce his faith.
I cannot for the life of me see what entitles the Revd to his apparent confidence that St Alban more probably existed than did George. Granted as pure legend the latter’s victorious tussle with a dragon, that no more shows George never to have existed than does Jesus not accompanying Joseph of Arithemea to England show Jesus never existed.
Given the Reverend’s purported grounds for wishing to retire George as England’s patron saint, are we to assume that, should he have his way, we would next read about him calling for the removal from his church’s hymnal and its wider place in English national life of William Blake’s wonderfully evocative and inspirational poem ‘Jerusalem’?

There is, really, no reason to think the existence of the two early Christian martyrs is other than equiprobable. This being so, does St Alban’s having been born in the south of Britain better qualify him for being patron saint of England than George, who, if he did exist at all, is no more likely to have visited ancient Britain than did Jesus?
I cannot see it. In the first place, to think so would disqualify St Patrick from eligibility for being Ireland’s patron saint, as he is in virtue of his successful missionary work there, since he reputedly was born in Scotland. Second, England has produced plenty of worthy Christians with no title to be considered patron saint.
Perhaps what guides those currently calling for St George’s replacement by St Alban as England’s patron saint are considerations of their respective relative contribution to the Christian character of the country. Such a consideration certainly seems to lie behind Rowan Williams’ reported response to the suggestion. He reportedly responded to the idea that St Alban should replace St George as patron saint by saying: ‘Perhaps we ought to raise his [St Alban’s] profile because it’s the beginning of the church in this country with martyrdom, wisdom and courage.’
However, if eligibility for patron sainthood of a country is to rest on the scale of some historically real individual’s contribution to its Christian character, there appears to be a far more suitable replacement for St George than St Alban, given all the doubts that may legitimately be raised about whether any such person as he ever existed.
If are to employ the Archbishop’s implied criterion of suitability for being patron saint of England, then, unlikely as it may at first sight appear, my nomination would be for the prophet Mohammed! There’s a suggestion for our multicultural times.
How did I arrive at that? Well, had Mohammed not existed or bequeathed to the world his idea of jihad, then the Ottoman Turk Mehmed ll would never have besieged and taken Constantinople in the name Islam as he did in 1453. Had he not done that, the church in Rome would never have been spurred to embark on the ambitious programme of its refurbishment that led Pope Leo X, in quest of desperately needed cash for the rebuilding programme, to grant the sale of indulgences on such a scale as so offended Martin Luther as led to his break from Rome which ultimately made it possible for Henry Vlll to break successfully from the Roman church and go on to create the Church of England as the one and only true catholic church, something which, in its own eyes at least, it remains to this day.
Of course, my suggestion is made only tongue in cheek. But its serious point is to show that it cannot be some historically real person’s contribution to the Christian character of a country that qualifies that individual for becoming its patron saint.
What then does?
Having disposed of the red herrings, we may at last recognise that what qualifies an individual, historically real or only imaginary, for that status is the salience which some Christain saint has for the Christian inhabitants of some country, be the saint real or only fictitious, as their imagined protector.
Given this is so, we can now finally begin to see what might be the real motivation behind the apparent keenness of some today to replace St George as patron saint of England by someone else. Whether he did or didn’t exist or ever visit England, surely the real reason prompting some to call for George to be retired as its patron saint is his close association with the crusades and hence with anti-Muslim animus.
St George became adopted in England’s as patron saint only in the fourteenth century. The ostensible reason for his becoming so adopted adoption was his supposed appearance in a vision several centuries before to Norman crusaders on the eve of battle against ‘the infidel’ from which those visited with his vision emerged victorious. He was adopted in the hope he would confer similar protection upon England’s armies.
The symbolism of St George’s legendary defeat of the dragon, a story that had long antedated the crusades, is probably what inspired the Norman soldiers to have that vision, or at least to be reported to have had. For what the legend clearly symbolises is the victory of good over evil, a motif the relevance of which to their own believed circumstances could hardly have been lost upon Christian soldiers off to fight in the crusades, or indeed upon any other Christian soldiers about to do battle on behalf of their country in what they believed a just cause.
Given all this historical background surrounding St George’s adoption as England’s patron saint, might not the real reason behind current opposition towards his remaining such be a feeling that his continued enjoyment of such a status is but a further instance of the newly discovered sin of ‘institutional religious intolerance’ about which we have heard so much of late?
That such a concern lies behind current calls for his replacement is borne out by the stern condemnation delivered last November by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, as potentially offensive to Muslim prisoners of the practice she had observed on a visit to a prison in Yorkshire of the prison officers while on duty wearing tie-pins bearing the St George’s Cross which they had apparently purchased from a cancer-charity campaigning to raise money by their sale.
The countless St George’s Cross flags we have lately witnessed on our television screens and streets, being proudly brandished by innumerable young British Muslim England football team supporters during the World Cup, give the lie to that suggestion, as they do to the idea it would be appropriate to jettison this much loved and newly rediscovered national symbol that is proving so effective and unexpected a focal-point for national unity and thereby of social cohesion.
In any case, if any denizens of the land are to be made to suffer the loss of a religious icon important to them on grounds of its potential offensiveness to compatriots of some other faith, then, before Englishmen and women Should have to suffer the loss of St George as their country’s patron saint, there is a second religious minority in that country who, on the very same grounds, will have to relinquish attachment to the figure absolutely pivotal to their creed. Until such time as the latter are willing to do I shall long continue to cry: St George for England, God and Harry — even!