Saints: the world's oldest buddy system

Saints are there to inspire and teach us. St George's story stands as a rebuke to those that use him for ill

The question: What do we want from St George?

Specialisation and rule by "experts" is often seen as a scourge of modernity. But the system of patron saints has to be one of the oldest "expert" schemes in existence. There is St Dorothy for gardens, St Cecilia for music, St Roch for dogs, and St Jude for lost causes – a saint Lord Carey should be fervently seeking intervention from in his bid to have judges theologically vetted. Places and institutions have designated patron saints: churches, schools, colleges, hospitals, and nations. It is the ultimate "buddy system" which was changed but not destroyed by the Reformation in England. True, praying to saints was discouraged but their role as exemplars and their benign association with places and institutions was maintained and, indeed, has made a comeback in the spirituality of Anglicanism, several Free Churches, and the Church of Scotland since the 19th century.

So what of St George? Is he benign? Is he simply our national "buddy" there to accompany us at world cups and test matches? When sitting at a traffic light, I am sure I am not alone in finding stickers of the flag of St Andrew unthreatening but have the opposite reaction when staring at the flag of St George. To a degree St David and St Andrew do not, St George keeps some pretty bad company. At worst he is captured by white supremacists and at best promoted by purveyors of a nostalgia which feeds the corrosive myth that England once possessed a social cohesion which immigration (especially non-white immigration) is destroying.

But there are harmful myths and transforming myths and angst about George's historicity is best put aside because the legend is much more fun. The dominant tradition is that he was a soldier in what is now Turkey and martyred in the early fourth century. He may, or may not, have killed a dragon which may, or may not, as I recently learned during a visit to the Creation Museum, have been a dinosaur.

George, then, was not even a member of "Christian Europe" which some of my fellow Christians feel is so under threat. This icon of white England was a foreigner from Turkey. Would the British National Party let him in? Presumably not: and it is a good question for all our party leaders in a general election.

Two hundred years ago Britain was the most religiously diverse country in Europe. By 1800, England possessed almost every variant of Christianity produced by human ingenuity up to that point. Pluralism and diversity have been here for quite some time. It is in our bloodstream as a country. And before too many dissent by saying that this diversity was all "Christian", they need to reflect on the centuries of nasty, vicious and perfectly legal discrimination imposed by the Anglican establishment on Roman Catholics, non-conformists, and Jews. As a people, we had to work at justice and inclusion: it didn't just happen because power and privilege never just roll over. The Church of England had to work at letting go of its right to marginalise and exclude others. It remains an ongoing task.

In the Christian tradition, the credal doctrine of the communion of saints is rich and complex. At one level it speaks to a deep need for human sociability to be stronger than death: the living and the departed still matter to each other. If human society is seen not to be limited by the ultimate boundary of death, then perhaps this insight from the Christian tradition can help all of us to cross the harmful divisions we construct as a country and as communities.

I have been speaking about "us" but I was born in the United States, came to England 30 years ago and became a British citizen about 10 years ago: I am a foreigner and an immigrant. So I hope we can rescue St George from the bad company he is keeping because I have every confidence that this foreigner from Turkey doesn't mind being my buddy one bit.