|PIC1|The Bishop of Lichfield has spoken out in defiance of dress codes and workplace uniform policies with a call to Christians to wear their cross necklaces and fish badges in December.

In a pastoral letter published in parish magazines across the Diocese of Lichfield, the Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill said Christians should not be intimidated into putting their Christian jewellery away.

“The Christian roots to our governance should not be nibbled away without discussion," he said. "Sometimes I think it wouldn’t be a bad thing if in December we all wore a fish badge or cross necklace and sent out a loud message that Christians aren’t going to disappear quietly from the market place or put away our crib figures in a hurry.”

He went on to challenge Christians to demonstrate a more costly sign of their faith than lapel pins and necklaces by serving their communities.

“The mark of a real Christian community is not so much the lapel badges and crosses we wear as the spontaneous, generous and practical love we show to the world," he said.

"Christians should not be intimidated into putting away their neck crosses or lapel badges, but in the end these are not the badges that matter. The mark that matters is far more challenging.”

His letter comes just one month after Christian nurse Shirley Chaplin filed for discrimination after she was told by bosses at the Royal Devon and Exeter Trust Hospital to either accept redeployment to a non-nursing role or face the sack for refusing to remove her cross necklace.

Bishop Gledhill condemned companies that threaten to sack their Christian employees for wearing cross necklaces and local councils that want to rebrand Christmas for fear of offending ethnic minorities as acting in "sheer ignorance".

He said: “Ethnic minorities are far more anxious about the rampant secularism and commercialism that erodes all Christian standards than they are about their host country properly celebrating its Christian foundations.”