The lunatics have taken over the asylum.

all religion should stand for - at it's basest level - is kindness. right on brother.

Typical loonie lefties it isn't enough to be multi cultural, it has to be forced on people - by lies if necessary. St George was Turkish (Although at the time it was Byzantium), although there are possibilities he was from Cappadocia, Georgia, or Armenia. There can be no doubt that a man from the Caucasus was a Caucasian, and by definition white!

He did not free the dragon he killed it, but then in the topsy turvy world of the loonie left anything is possible, even the truth can be changed if it doesn't agree with the lunatics left wing beliefs!

So go and spread a lie around the streets and devalue the message of Christ, lets face it the agenda of some church ministers has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with social engineering and madcap socialist stunts.

Totally beyond belief!

WHERE DOES IT END,,,,,A WHITE HAILE SELLASSIE ????????????

Fine, as long as we can have a white Martin Luthor King in return !!!

What a load of old tosh

So they plan to battle idiots with, erm, more idiocy? Not heard the one about being dragged down to their level and being beaten by experience then?

You tackle the likes of the BNP via education, listening to genuine concerns people and fostering a sense of community across cultural divides.

You don't tackle them by having some hare-brained scheme that will come across as a potty piece of political correctness.

You cannot change history, St George was white, thats a fact. What next make Jesus Chinese and Mary Asian so no one is left out, how about Joseph being a black lorry driver from Birmingham, is that all the bases ticked?

Given the place of dragons in Christian symbolism as emblems of destructive evil, I'd have thought the depiction of a black man setting one free somewhat counterproductive as an essay in anti-racism.

Another example of the Church of England's penchant for walking in ever-decreasing circles whilst contemplating its own navel!

Certainly seems to have agitated the far right :-)

What colour dragon are we having?

St. "Chicken" George.

What ridiculous comments, he was born in Anatolia, but as the article states he is believed to be of Middle Eastern descent, which means that his parents were possibly Arab or Nubian. In the Roman empire race was no barrier to citizenship or social progression. All you have to do is read about him, and read from the perspective of the other villages, towns, cities and countries that venerate him. There were Romans born in Britain who were of Middle Eastern origin, such is the nature of Empire, just as there were British citizens of British origin born in India during the British Empire's rule.
He was not a white man, get over it!

This article was designed to rouse the ire of idiots...

It looks like a bogus asylum seeker

So the church wants to change the message to make it more PC for the modern era??
Well as a 40 something, white, heterosexual male City fan, both the Church and the BNP/ English Defence League have little or no influence on my life.
They both have agenda’s which I don’t subscribe to, and hence are different sides of the same coin.

If the Church of England chose to "move" St George's Day to 8th May will they be consulting Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Head of the Church of England, the Monarch of England and the Defender of the Faith who has traditionally welcomed the patriotic support shown on St George's Day, particularly during her father's reign?

Whilst I have no wish for the Flag to be the "Emblem" of the BNP nor any other intollerant group, no-body and certainly not the Church of England has the right to "move" or reclassify St George's Day from 23rd April.

And to suggest St George was anything other than he actually was is pure hipocrisy.

Do this and the Churches will be emptier than they are already. Do this and watch racial intollerance rise. Start a war, or even fight a war and you will start a war of race hate and intollerance and you will have blood on your hands.

Stop it now!

So why don't the other nations that comprise the UK ensure that their saints days are "inclusive" and multicultural as well? I don't see much of that on St. Patrick's Day. Why not have some African drumming for St. Andrew's Day to show how inclusive Scotland is? The thing is that these other countries don't feel compelled to be politically correct because they haven't been engulfed by immigrants in the same way that England has. Name me one city or town in Scotland or Wales that been changed demographically in the same way that many English towns have. There isn't one. If there was, you would see the same kinds of tensions and "racism" in Scotland as well.
Nobody cares whether St. George was English or not. He is a mythical figure and could well have been black. But to actually make a point of representing him as black is a way of having a dig at the English community, to try and dilute any concept of "Englishness" to the point where it means almost nothing. St. Andrew was Jewish by the way, from the Middle East. He wasn't a Scot. Maybe he should be shown as an Asian man?

If there is racism in England, and if there are so many negative connotations with the English flag etc, doesn't some of the blame lie at the feet of those who have deliberately denied the English a healthy sense of identity and culture by such politically correct schemes and psychological brainwashing in schools. Push people down far enough, mock and despise their culture and distort their culture and mythology-then what can you expect when the dog comes back to bite you. I have only been to Machester once and when I was there the Scottish flag was flying over the Town Hall. I can't imagine the English flag being flown on the civic buildings in Aberdeen. Who are the real bigots?

This proves to me that the church will do almost anything to get people into churches.
People don't go to church because THEY DON'T WANT TO.
The number of problems religion is frightening.

Have a happy " Winter Holiday".

No weirder than Christendom nicking pagan festivals and passing them off as their own.
Isn't it strange that the Welsh Irish and Scots saints days are joyous occasions whereas you're guaranteed violence and racism on St George's Day, seems some people hate other nationalities more than they love their own country.

This sounds a good idea to me. I am black british and both the st george and union jack flags r ones that i will not have in my house nor purchase any products bearing the flag as unfortunatley the flags/emblems have been hijacked by BNP and other facist groups.
Whilst i supported England in the world cup this year i refused to buy my daughter any england merchandise.

This is exactly one of the reasons i am glad to be an Atheist... The church expects you to believe in God, but this shows they don't even know what they believe themselves.

And once again we see religion stirring a them and us mentality.

Pathetic.

Manchester Evening News: proving in print why their journalists are mediocre provincialists.

>>>DESPITE being England’s patron saint, St George was actually born in Turkey and lived in Palestine.<<<

>>>Although far-right English groups have attempted to adopt him as a symbol, it is thought he was black and of Middle Eastern descent.<<<


Words absolutely fail me. How stupid are your journalists? How ignorant are they? So, in this vulgar left-wing infested world we have a Sub-Saharan [black] St. George, oh, and by the way, he was a Turk born in Turkey. (Amazing stuff considering his existence precedes the arrival of the Turks and Turkey itself; oh, and Sub-Saharan to boot! wow, little did we all know that Asia Minor was populated by individuals from the deepest recesses of the sub-African continent). This sort of vapid inclusiveness is worse than the idiotic Afrocentrics who believe all the great civilisations were instigated by wondering black Africans. Regardless of the historicity of the man, St. George, for England, has an established aesthetic because he was a manifestation of the people that adopted him as their saint: he's depicted as white because the English people are white (duh, is that not obvious? Can you not quite compute that?); it's akin to asking the Zulu's to change Shaka to a blue-eyed north European just so the Boers can feel 'included' - of course any such suggestion would be condemned: Shaka as he exists is ethnocentric just as much as St. George is to England.

Try and think critically journalists. This sort of news infuriates people because the deepest and most intimate national truths and mythologies are being perverted for the sake of some multicultural ideal; and worse, the impetus isn't even from ethnic minority groups: it's from the panjandrums of a purblind trendy elite.

This is shoddy journalism with a hint a revisionism; and for what avail? To refashion an ethnocentric mythology to make it inclusive of everyone. You even completely pervert the symbolism of the parable (the vanquishing of evil represented by the dragon) to encapsulate some sort of mawkish succouring (perhaps your 'trendy modern artist' could shed some light on why he felt the need to bastardise the Saint and his story? although I'm under the impression that he's so cerebrally impaired that a) he has no reason other than to be, how do they put it? 'trendy' and b) he's too moronic to realise that his depiction is no longer of the Saint and his parable: that it no longer represents Christianity.

Finally, the Anglican clergy in endorsing this inane gesture are doing themselves an enormous disservice: at a time of increasing uncertainty at the longevity of the denomination, this sort of PC inspired left-wingery will only further alienate traditionalists - there is nothing worse than vulgarising a definitive Christian parable just so you can score a few browny points against those nasty right wingers (boo! hiss!). Pathetic.

Dear Mr Thoughtful from East Manchester: The Turks were not in Asia Minor at the time of St.George.

Seeing we want to start kicking Tin cans around. The George cross was imposed on the Englisc speaking people after the Norman conquest. Because the crown and the church wanted England to represent the pope for the crusades. History maybe a bit tatty here? But Englisc speaking people true saint was St Edmunds (Bury) on 20th November after Good King Edmund Anglo-Saxon Christian martyr by Vikings. Our original flag or banner was a red flag with a White Dragon emblazon used during Battle of Hasting by King Harold. The Normans wanted to subjugate the Anglo-Saxons (Englisc) to third class hence French and Latin as dominance in written laws. So if we want to reignite a subject how about a new English flag and our original Saint imposed. Instead of the usurper.
Wassail Your Health.