‘The closing ceremony was explicitly anti-religious. It gave a central place to the anti-religious song ‘Imagine’, getting children to sing it (doesn’t that rather fly in the face of the Dawkinsite rage against children being brought up with religious belief? Wouldn’t the same difficulty apply to bringing them up with an active unbelief?).
And it gave an even more central place to the singing of ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’, which was an important part of the puerile anti-Christian film ‘Life of Brian’. (Even more childishly, some people continue to deny that it was anti-Christian. Don’t bother.).
In case anyone didn’t get the message, this was accompanied by a chorus of Roman soldiers (fresh from Golgotha?) and by a squadron of women dressed as nuns, speeding about the stage on roller blades. Well, I never, what a wheeze (I don’t think, actually, that many orders of nuns in this once-Protestant country were to be found wearing the elaborate winged coifs sported by these fake sisters, but what the heck, making a joke out of nuns has always been a key part of anti-religious agitprop, from the French Revolution onwards).’
