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by Jonathan Bartley
IF YOU were going to choose a logo for your new initiative, a symbol of bloodshed and excruciating death might not be the most diplomatic or indeed marketable. But as services of remembrance take place around the country, it brings to mind why both the British Legion and the Church have found such images so powerful.
The cross has a great deal in common with the poppy. Both are linked to sacrifice. Both take a location of bloodshed and violence and make a statement about it. And both attempt to give us hope in the face of death. They imply that those who died did not do so in vain.
Such commonality makes it all the stranger that a British Airways staff member was asked to conceal her crucifix. One symbol of hope is banned, at the same time as public figures are urged, indeed, in many cases, required, to wear the other — almost as an article of faith.
Both are, of course, capable of being abused and causing offence. The cross has represented crusades and oppression; the red poppy, Protestant Loyalism in Northern Ireland. There is a key difference, however, which is illustrated by another ongoing, but also historic, controversy.
In 1926 it was suggested that the British Legion imprint “No More War” in the centre of their poppies. The red poppy, it was said, wrongly encapsulated the idea that the war was regrettable, but necessary. But no change was forthcoming. So the Co-operative Women’s Guild produced the first white poppy. It was an important reminder of the lives that had been lost, but it also committed the wearer to finding alternative solutions to war in the future.
Many veterans felt that it undermined their contribution, not to mention devaluing the sacrifice of the dead. Such was the seriousness of the issue that some women lost their jobs for wearing them. Even last year, a Baptist minister, the Revd Andrew Kleissner, hit the headlines by suggesting that the two poppies be worn alongside each other at his church in Ipswich. The move was branded “disgraceful”, and provoked a public row.
White poppies are only occasionally seen in churches. But whether we are of a just-war or pacifist tradition, they relate more closely than the red variety to the story of redemption on which the Christian faith is based.
Christians believe that injustice and violence was exposed, challenged, rendered powerless, and defeated on the cross. The white poppy, too, suggests that redemption should come through non-violent sacrifice, not the military variety.
Such a difference can be deeply disturbing, not to mention unrealistic, to those seeking to attribute value to the deaths of millions. Indeed, it perhaps helps us to understand why the apostle Paul took the offensiveness of the cross as a matter of fact. Like the white poppy, its message is scandalous, because it questions many of the values and suppositions of history and our culture.
And in that respect the similarities between the cross and the white poppy are rapidly growing — if the stories of British Airways staff are to be believed, at least.
Jonathan Bartley is a director of Ecclesia.
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