The Bishop of Carlisle’s Christmas Message 2016

Post-truth was designated as the Oxford Dictionaries International Word of the Year for 2016, with its usage having increased by 2,000% since 2015. It is defined as an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals.

Its selection follows the Brexit vote this summer and the American presidential election, to which the Rt Rev’d James Newcome refers in his Christmas message.

Bishop James also asks: “So how does Christmas fare in a post-truth culture? Not too well, I guess. A story about angels, shepherds, animals and a baby sounds very sweet, but it also sounds like something that children love and adults soon grow out of. What do you want it to mean? Well, most people want Christmas to mean nativity plays, presents under the tree, family gatherings and plenty of food.

“They also want Christmas to be about an undemanding message of being generally nice to other people.”

Bishop James delivers his annual message – the third year in succession that it has been filmed – from Rose Castle, the former home of the Bishops of Carlisle for more than 800 years.

He was at the castle to attend two special carol services organised by the Rose Castle Foundation – a charitable organisation which is setting up an International Christian Centre for Peace and Reconciliation at the historic building and of which he is a co-chair.

Bishop James continues: “And yet everybody needs some sort of truth by which to live and that manger on that first Christmas contained the absolute truth; the explosive truth about our creator and about us, his creatures.

“As St John said, the word became flesh full of grace and truth. That extraordinary truth has transformed the world and can change each of us. As Jesus, himself, said many years later ‘Follow me. I am the way, the truth and the life.”

“And as St Thomas à Kempis put it many centuries later ‘Without the way there is no going, without the truth there is no knowing and without the life there is no living.’

“So my prayer is that every one of us, this Christmas, may know more of that extraordinary truth and through it discover more of the joy and the peace that only he can bring.”

You can view Bishop James’ Christmas message for 2016 below.