The Bishop of Lichfield has hit out at the growing tendency of local authorities and businesses to downplay Christmas for fear of offending people of other faiths.

|PIC1|Recently the industrial reconciliation service Acas advised employers to use Christmas decorations which "are secular and not inherently religious" to avoid causing offence to non-Christians.

Reports claim that 74 per cent of businesses are worried that Christmas celebrations could make them fall foul of anti-discrimination laws.

Amidst all of these reports, the Bishop of Lichfield has used his annual Christmas message to call for "the very best of our spiritual values in the centre of public life".

He said: "Only a tiny minority among us wants either a mish-mash of beliefs or an empty manger. Most of our Muslim, Sikh or Jewish neighbours are glad to be in a Christian country where they respect our faith and we respect theirs, and they seem to wish we Christians were a bit more up-front about our beliefs."

He congratulated Stafford Borough Council who "bravely" purchased new crib figures this year for their town-centre Christmas display, saying this "rather goes against the trend of multi-faith everything".

The Bishop said when he attended the town's Christmas lights switch-on last month he was reminded about the marketplace St Paul visited in Athens.

He explained: "When St Paul visited Athens he was able, as a foreigner, to bring his ideas freely to the Athenian Market place and to argue with the locals, both sceptics and followers of various faiths. The whole point of Christmas is that Love is offered by God in the form of a gift than can be accepted or ignored. It is the amazing mystery of Christmas that we are free to respond as we will.

"It is because of this that freedom of speech and allowing people to present the truth as they see it is such an important feature of modern Christian democracy. It is part of the role of government to provide open spaces - a kind of secular market place if you like - for people to test out the rival truth claims and ideologies of our time.

"In that sense a Christian country is also a secular one. But that does not mean that a free country must be one where religion is only a private matter and the public square remains empty of the baby Jesus. An empty square is impossible anyway. All governance rests on values and values are in the end a matter of faith. Different religions have different values and teachings and these need evaluating, not mixing up."

In conclusion, he added: "So it is good to have a debate and a market place of ideas but the market place cannot be left empty for the whole year. If we don't put the very best of our spiritual values in the centre of public life, less good values will find their way in. Nature abhors a vacuum.

"My prayer is that, just as Stafford Council has decided to invest in a new crib-set in its market place at the centre of things, so the people of this country will make room in their hearts for the gift of Love come down at Christmas."