letter

Dear Friends,

When we were driving home from the Greenbelt festival at the end of the August Bank Holiday weekend, we were surprised to see flags hanging from motorway bridges. We rather naively assumed that this might be connected with the Women’s Rugby World Cup. It was only when we got home, emerged from our festival bubble and reconnected with the outside world, that we discovered the close links between the “Operation Raise the Colours” movement, anti-migrant protests and the targeting of hotels housing asylum seekers. As much as I usually love to see flags flying, the sinister undercurrent to this recent display of so-called “patriotism” leaves an unhealthy taste in my mouth.

The Methodist Church is committed to being an inclusive, justice-seeking and evangelistic church. We have a story to tell – one that centres on the good news of God’s love for the world and its people – and we can only tell that story well if we live it out.

As a local church, this is what we strive for. We state on our own church website: ‘Believing all people to be made in the image of God – and therefore of equal value and worth – we take seriously our calling to be as welcoming, inclusive, and caring a church as possible.’ These words only mean anything if we live in the light of them.

Immigration is undoubtedly a complex issue. There is most certainly important and urgent work that needs to be done to ensure that that the system this country operates is safe, fair and takes seriously both our commitment to our own citizens but also our responsibilities in the world.

In an excellent article entitled, Show Me the Humanity, the Baptist Union’s Public Issues Enabler, Steve Tinning, writes: ‘The political winds seem determined to blow us further down the road of suspicion and hostility, as though people seeking asylum are not human beings with histories, losses, and hopes, but chess pieces to be sacrificed in a Westminster game.’

Whatever our political leanings or affiliations, we are duty bound to resist being blown by such winds if we take seriously our calling to follow the way of Jesus.

As Tinning goes on to say, ‘it is really difficult, if not impossible…to make a biblical case defending such hostility towards asylum seekers and refugees. One of the most consistent messages throughout scripture is to welcome the stranger, to give sanctuary to those in need, to hear the cries of the poor, the destitute and the oppressed. This is who we are.’

My hope is that, as a church community, we can do the work necessary to offer a more helpful and hopeful counter narrative to the one that seems to have gained traction in much of the media and in most current political discourse.

Believe all we read and hear and we’d think that those arriving in small boats have other, legal, alternative routes open to them (plot spoiler - most don’t). We might assume that they’re all immediately entitled to benefits (another plot spoiler - they aren’t allowed to claim and are only given an allowance of £7 per day plus accommodation). We might picture asylum seekers living in luxury in hotels – but read this article about the reality of life in such a place (a final plot spoiler – I wouldn’t want to stay in one).

‘Doing the work’ involves us digging deeper, not accepting news stories and political slogans at face value but rather interrogating what we’re being told. There are plenty of facts available to us, if only we’d take the time to look. The Joint Public Issues Team website would be a good place to start. The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford is another exceptional resource .

The article, ‘Challenging the Rise of the Far right’ by Jonathan Hustler, Secretary of the Methodist Conference, is an essential read and contains within it links to other resources.

If you don’t have access to the internet and would like to read/study any of the above, please let me know and I’ll source some printed copies for you.

The work of the Church is Christ’s work and that, in turn, is the work of transformation. That work requires effort and courage. My hope and prayer is that, together, we will do all that we can to resist voices of hatred and division and continue to pledge ourselves to working for a kinder, fairer, better, more compassionate and loving world.

I’ll end by quoting the Show Me the Humanity article again:

The real danger today is not immigration. The danger is forgetting. Forgetting that asylum seekers are not statistics but human beings, loved by God, often with heartbreaking experiences of fear and suffering. Our default posture should not be to treat new arrivals as threats but simply neighbours in waiting. Forgetting that inevitably leads to politics being driven by fear instead of facts, and cruelty instead of compassion.

With every blessing

Paul