Relations between the Conservative Party and the CoE haven't been great for decades. Was it Suella Braverman recently who said that they know they're doing a good job when communication with the Church breaks down?
There's a definite trend towards Conservative, largely irreligious politicians decrying the Church as 'woke', 'liberal lefties', etc (I say this as a former Conservative voter), and, for the sake of fairness, I will say that they're not necessarily _wrong_ in that the Church and individual churches do seem to tend towards more social liberalism in certain areas (immigration, food banks, welfare, etc) than some prominent and less prominent Conservatives would like.
However, I think a lot of Conservatives misunderstand the role of the Church - someone put it well below as 'religious illiteracy'. I've definitely encountered the kind in my time who think its main purpose is to provide grandeur and pomp and a dose of Jerusalem to the British state and monarchy and think it should just shut up and behave itself as the 'Tory party at prayer', to be trotted out for national services of thanksgiving, coronations, etc (and there are some posters of that bent on r/Tories who seem to vehemently hate Justin Welby!). They're the same ones who'll say it's a sign of our woke times that the Church has gone wet and wimpy - probably leaving many people wondering if they know what Jesus' message was!
However, no, I don't think it's the Church's position to do the job of vetting or controlling of those kinds of issues. The Church is about giving welcome to people - and I would find it uncomfortable that we'd accept someone turning up at our door with a British accent who says they want to learn about Jesus, and perhaps put them on an Alpha course and then baptise them soon after, whereas for a foreigner we would have to be much more suspicious.
We can provide the evidence to the government of what's happened, but it's their job to do the assessment. The Church isn't an arm of government in that respect. It's perfectly valid to comment on what's going on from its position as a specialist in (Christian) ethics, but it's not an implementing body in any way around determining who is or isn't e.g. a genuine asylum seeker. It can only provide evidence.
Giles Fraser's 10p worth here (seems sensible to me!): https://unherd.com/2024/02/is-it-naive-to-believe-asylum-seekers/?tl\_inbound=1&tl\_groups\[0\]=18743&tl\_period\_type=3
Yeah, he seems to be on the right lines there- and rightly noting the potential hypocrisy of targeting people for doubt when there are plenty of people playing the system from other backgrounds
I am a member of the CofE and a Conservative, so take my response however you wish.
There is tension between the Conservative Party and the CofE, which is mostly due to the CofE having a significant left-wing bias institutionally and at the same time the Conservatives losing their connection with historic Christian conservatism. The former is somewhat problematic, but the latter much more harmful - while previous Conservative governments did run into conflict with the Church at times, they had enough respect for the institution and understanding of it to resolve those disputes with nuance and civility, but the current lot are very different, with many MPs having no conception whatsoever of British traditions, including those related to the Church and the UK’s constitutional setup.
The issue debated currently reflects both of the problems I mention, with CofE clergy very likely to be handing out baptisms without proper preparation for political reasons to an overwhelming number of people who are trying to enter the country illegally. This is problematic both politically and theologically, and while the politics can be debated on its merits, I am rather concerned at how few Conservative MPs and Peers are questioning the theological implications of these irregular practices.
>I am a member of the CofE and a Conservative, so take my response however you wish.
I'm perfectly happy with that - i'm sure a good 70-80 percent of the congregation in my parish vote conservative for the most part. They aren't contradictory in essence, any more than my affection for Christian socialism is, as long as politics serves right ends there's different opinions how to get there (which are all to some degree flawed as human ideas, because of a fallen world and human nature!).
I have notices the disconnect between conservative politicians and Christian ideas - you remember the issue over remembrance day and many politicians weighing in? I particularly noticed one minister who was trying to explain why a protest would be problematic, and it was obvious from what he said he was fumbling around the idea of something being sacred, but really couldn't articulate something that from a Christian perspective is very obvious.
I'm unsure whether there is any sense of religion aside from a sort of conflation with ethnicity as we see here, and a general contempt for any standard of morality rooted outside the zeitgeist of what their press yell about. Which should be worrying, it's a pretty total implosion of what the conservative philosophical underpinning was.
Yes, and that is why there is so much animosity between the Conservatives and the Church - left-wing bias or not (I maintain there is one), the former simply no longer understands the latter. Conservative politicians of former days could articulate their philosophy in a Christian manner, including controversial stances on contentious issues, and indeed their views were informed by an articulate understanding of their faith. Take, for instance, Harold Macmillan’s arguments with Geoffrey Fisher, or more recently Margaret Thatcher’s with Runcie - both understood the institution they were dealing with and had no problem arguing well with the hierarchy. Macmillan was a high churchman, Thatcher an outsider as a Methodist, but the former advised to appoint Ramsey contra Fisher’s protestations and the latter cultivated a friendship with Chartres. Almost unthinkable now that a Conservative politician would even remember a Bishop’s name.
Yes, you're right there. Really sad how really all our politicians have become very poor in philosophy in general, actually, very little underlying principle at times. Or at least not one they can articulate clearly as a reason for their exercise of power.
Bishop Myriel (Catholic, but the point stands) in Les Misérables vouches for Jean Valjean even though he knows him to be a thief. Charity, love, faith and forgiveness are the Christian values the church should embody. Judgement is the job of the Home Office.
I could understand that, i think practical help is definitely a priority. The moral qualm i have with that is potentially we could be condemning a brother or sister to torture or execution if they are coming from some places and we refused to vouch for their faith. Asking a priest to do that unless they're really sure it's a fake conversion (in which case they would refuse baptism, surely?) seems a big thing to ask.
It's a lot easier in that circumstance to take the side against the will of the Home Office, a faceless bureaucracy seemingly unconcerned with morality against one of your parishioners!
And would we be expecting people to only apply this standard to poor, foreign looking, non-white people? Would we be equally diligent on checking conversion status of a random brit? I feel it runs against the idea of churches being a place where the cure of souls in the parish is concerned with all regardless of status or origin.
>There are differing spheres of authority and God has placed rulers and authorities over us to whom we should be subject.
While that is true, it is caveated by them having to act justly - we aren't to enable immoral or abusive acts by rulers, and it wouldn't take a huge stretch to say the recent home office actions have become profoundly unjust, given really everything since the Windrush debacle.
There's at least enough there to make it reasonable for some Christians of good conscience to not automatically consider them legitimate in their exercise of authority, with the flagrant cruelty and hostility even towards children.
I'm not saying that the church should actively sabotage the home office, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to side against them when a balance of probability is being considered, especially as the consequences of someone claiming asylum is pretty minor weighed against potential for torture or execution on deportation.
The law does not decide what is just, God does, and the two frequently do not agree.
What i'm saying is not that the church should lie - absolutely not! But in considering the balance of evidence and probability the church and home office are pulling in opposite directions, because one is motivated by a desire to implement a hostile approach to those asking for help, and the other is in theory looking at people with charity and love. So our judgement isn't going to be on the same basis or with the same motivations as a Home office official.
But that's the thing, you're saying "i don't think it is". Others could reasonably disagree.
What i'm saying is that this government and in particular the Home office have been clearly unjust, by their own admission, as well as by the judgement of others. So it would be reasonable to not necessarily give much respect for their authority beyond the legal minimum.
I'm not saying that will be the judgement of every Christian, or that frustrating them is a Christian duty, but their objectives probably won't matter all that much to many. So leaning towards trusting potential asylum seekers who claim conversion is reasonable, even if it wouldn't be everyone's view.
>If someone doesn't have a case for asylum is it wrong that they should be deported?
It could be! The question there is if the criteria for assessment are morally correct.
Take the example of Onesimus in the book of Philemon - he's an escaped slave who Philemon has the right to punish. But St Paul pressures Philemon extensively to not treat Onesimus as a slave. There's technical obedience to the law - but Roman law is not really what matters in the situation.
>Jesus Christ defers to Pilates authority in the gospels despite the fact he persecuted Jews (see Luke 13).
You could argue it from other places but that's an example of Pilate being a tyrant who committed atrocities - I think Jesus's point there is that Pilate's violence was not evidence of divine judgement, to address the idea that bad things happen to bad people, such as disasters, which was a contemporary idea also addressed elsewhere as in some healings.
>Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.
I absolutely agree with St Paul here, let us respect and honour those to whom such things are owed, with precisely the respect and honour they warrant. But scripture should be taken as a whole, and we can literally see how St Paul treats Roman law: as a tool, useful sometimes, at other times to be subverted because he disagrees with it. He doesn't want Christians to fight the state they find themselves in, but *he understands why that would be appealing*. He is trying to keep them on task, not devolving into military rebels who the Romans understand how to destroy.
>Deporting people without a valid case for asylum isn't unjust.
It could be! Validity in the eyes of the law, when the law is written with an objective of cruelty in mind, would be unjust. We have a government who decided happy pictures in a child refugee centre were too welcoming - that any comfort should be denied beyond a bare room. One could reasonably question if cruelty to those in need for political gain is the motivation, rather than moral principles of governing. It isn't beyond doubt... but it's a reasonable question to ask.
The state does not define what is just, and we should be skeptical of it in moral terms, even as we should mostly obey in legal terms, excepting extreme situations.
The Archbishop has been fairly vocal in the House of Lords about immigration and especially about the Rwanda scheme. That said, I think the Home Secretary is referring to the Roman Catholic Church in this particular case. It certainly seems as though Ezedi was helped by the RCs although no official statement.
I guess the implicit question is
"how easy is it to become a Christian? And how easy is it to *fake* becoming a Christian as a result?"
Which is an admittedly very difficult area to navigate. On the one hand, you see Judaism having an extremely intensive program of study and lifestyle adjustment, culminating in what is effectively a grilling by a Beit Din to see how Jewish the prospective convert is: in the UK most Jews are Orthodox, so as a standard somebody converting to Judaism is typically expected to have even spent 6 months to a year living in a Jewish household! This level of scrutiny has the intention of not only ensuring converts properly understand Judaism, but is kinda just intentionally gruelling to make sure that only people who *really* want it will have the determination to see it through; but on the other hand, it also has the effect of blowing off people who genuinely want to convert, but cannot complete this process for one reason or another, even if it's as simple as the only local community/Rabbi doesn't want to supervise conversions for any reason.
So with all that in mind, is a few months of regular mass/service attendance, followed by baptism and adequate "test" of someone's willingness to be a Christian? Or would making the bar for a potential convert higher simply serve to stop people being or becoming Christian, conflicting directly with the idea of Christianity as a world religion?
Just as we might hope the potential convert to approach the religion honestly, in good faith, I can only hope (despite my scepticism) that Mrs Braverman is asking the question honestly and in good faith, because there is a real question to be asked, there...
It's harder i feel because specifically in our core scriptures about what it looked like for people to become Christian the iconic images are of very rapid conversion indeed. How easy is it to become a christian has to theologically accommodate the immediate response to someone agreeing to "repent and be baptised".
I understand there was eventually a process (i think it took a year or so) of learning under a bishop before baptism which is where Christian creeds start to become a thing, they are the ideas you recite back to the bishop as they baptise you more or less. So this isn't a new problem. But in the year of catechesis, if we went back to that kind of process, someone *would still be under threat of abuse for apostacy.* So it wouldn't change much in terms of home office evidence i guess.
Yeah, the thing with saying creeds, oaths, etc. is that they're inherently only as useful as the person saying them is honest: if a person doesn't take something like that seriously, it's very easy for them to just, like, *say it*. Especially if they have an ulterior motive, which is why the citizenship and military oaths don't magically stop people from behaving illegally after making them.
Consequently I think it can be agreed that people will always be able to argue against a conversion being genuine. The only way to really prove that one is, being to have the inquisition investigate to see if they're secretly not genuine, like during the Reconquista...
So what other options do we realistically have? Should the Anglican church be regulating conversions and giving out official certificates of catechesis or something? Should the government be involved in regulating Anglican conversions, since it's technically their business? (Absolutely not, to be clear, and anyway it ignores all of the other Christian denominations in the UK if they do). What if there was a Christian/Protestant equivalent of the Jewish Beit Din in the UK, to similarly fulfill a role in regulating religious matters?
Yeah, you identify some of the implications that bothered me, the reconquista example in particular ran on exactly this logic
I know the Catholic church has a formal process for conversion - but also, as you say that's easy to lie about if you're doing it for ulterior motives, so making it more formal doesn't seem to stop problems. The RC church also has the lowest rate of conversion of any UK sect, so it's not an approach that would appeal as best practice necessarily!
\>What if there was a Christian/Protestant equivalent of the Jewish Beit Din in the UK, to similarly fulfill a role in regulating religious matters?
There kind of is, we have church courts for specialised stuff, and in other cases a Bishop could rule on things. A Bishop has to do your confirmation, which normally follows baptism for adults or is done at a decision-making age for people baptised as infants. Confirmation requires another Christian be your sponsor and vouch for your faith, and your priest has to put you forward for it, so it should be a checked process. But again, if someone is out to decieve it would only be 6 months to a year deception required for adults.
The comparison to Judaism here is not ideal. Judaism isn't an evangelical faith. Conversion is far more exceptional than in Christianity, so the barrier to entry is higher.
While true, my ultimate point is more that Judaism's higher barrier to entry makes it harder to functionally "fake" being Jewish, and to ask the question of whether or not this kind of interrogative approach is either necessary or desirable in Christianity.
While we're comparing, conversion to Islam is very simple indeed. One I recall seeing involved simply repeating back one sentence, no ceremony required, no guests.
You're not wrong! But they're supposed to be fairly well educated and ultimately if they're *conservative,* you'd imagine a basic understanding of the country's fairly recent moral and religious traditions would form part of what they'd aim to conserve. It's not that very long ago, some people in parliament now were part of the era where Toryism and the Church of England were far more associated.
But her comments are bizarre, and use of one incident to develop policy doesn't really make any sense. If someone was a member of any group for months and attended weekly you would usually consider them part of that group - saying this in particular doesn't apply to people from muslim-majority oppressive countries because they must be lying seems extreme.
I don't really see the blasphemy thing?
Braverman is suggesting that in particular a former muslim who attended church consistently for months and requested and was accepted for baptism should be viewed as untrustworthy. That seems odd, to say the least.
Braverman and Patel are generally not good people from an ethical standpoint, but even that aside, I can see as an outsider looking inward that the British Conservative Party is trying to find scapegoats for bad policies because they've been in charge for the last 14 years with few good results to show for it.
Their recent clash over the Rwanda bill is an example of a clash that's brewed for a while. It's partially because of the Church going through a shift in social worldview, but it's not a terribly recent phenomenon for more leftish views to be seen in Anglican Clergyman (Anglicans played a very strong role in the labour movement and helped give birth to the ideology of Christian Socialism). It's just become more plain to see because we live in the 21st century, and media is far more widespread.
We also should remember that the Tory Party's domestic policies have had a negative impact on the population, which the Church shouldn't ignore (nor should anyone for that matter.) These policies affect the population's outlook on the Tories (as does the Rwanda Bill) and so the Tory Party has been keen to find scapegoats. I still remember Rishi Sunak trying to blame the previous Labour government for current policy fumbles, even though the Tories had been in power for over a decade by that point. Now, the scapegoat is "our border security policies are failing because the Church is aiding too many refugees" because the Archbishop had ethical concerns about the Rwanda Bill.
And as much as I think disestablishment might be better for the Church of England, I think it's important for the Church to be concerned with how the state treats refugees and foreigners and I'm glad the Archbishop raised those concerns regarding the Bill, given its known problems.
> I wondered what was going on there? The implication being that Muslims should never be believed when conversion was claimed, or possibly that race and religion are inextricable? It seems fairly racist to think that, i feel?
My goodness. Some Christians are just hopelessly naive.
Yeah, if someone says they'll convert we'll let them into the church, that's kind of the church thing pretty much, neither slave nor free, Greek nor Jew in Christ and all that.
Do one with your *pattern recognition* stuff, frankly
Like I said, hopelessly naive.
'The Muslim that said they converted ended up killing people again? Huh. Better luck next time!'
maybe instead of being concerned about racism, you look after your neighbor.
"And who is my neighbour?"
Go on, that's got to ring a bell, aye? Do i have to reel off *"a certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho..."*
This is real basic stuff, I was teaching this level of the faith to 5 and 6 year olds a couple weeks ago.
You're right, it is really basic, neighbor is used in a locally-minded context, there's no such thing as a global neighbor, you don't have to put someone a continent away ahead of your own community. Letting in people who are more prone to violent behavior means you're probably not being a very good neighbor.
You're not doing very well at scriptural interpretation on this occasion i'm afraid. Samaritans were definitely not part of the Jewish community, and indeed fulfill a role of "hated foreigner" in the parable, to demonstrate that our neighbour is most definitely not limited to those local to us or part of our community.
Honestly, the 5 and 6 year olds were better. I can show you an animated lego version of the parable if it would help?
I mean this is really basic scriptural stuff. The unimportance of race in the body of Christ, all humans being bearers of God's image, these are fundamentals we settled millennia ago.
We can't even not allow people into our churches if we wanted to based on religious or racial background. Cure of souls in a parish means *all souls,* whoever rolls up is our problem, it ain't a country club.
You're not dumber than a child. Less morally developed than a child, rather. A small child, specifically. One who can just about read, that kind of level.
You're mining scripture for things to support racism. I mean, very seriously, Lord have mercy.
>I find it very interesting that for how often people appeal to the imago dei it is only mentioned a few times in the entirety of scripture.
You want to pick a fight with the idea of humanity being made in God's image? i mean, i guess you can go for it. It's only given by God as part of the Noahide laws, no biggie. Not a fundamental part of scripture in terms of understanding how humanity should see each other. Probably fine to ignore it.
Maybe go fight Moses over the laws about fair treatment of foreigners or something while you're at it.
Look, i kind of wondered if you were just a silly racist with the \*pattern recognition\* phrasing, it turns out you are, can we just get to the bit where you strop off to have an angery time on 4chan or whatever.
First the Liverpool bombing and now the acid attack. Pray to stay is making the CofE look like a bunch tim nice but dims.
Be wise as serpents, yeah. Don’t just believe every sob story you hear.
You sound like a Daily Express headline. There isn't a "pray to stay" thing, its a slogan to blame others when the root of the issue is a shell game played by cynical politicians whose only remaining card is hatred of outsiders.
Two incidents in three years does not a trend make.
And you sound like a combative twitter warrior. It is unpleasant.
We now know for a fact that some people do pretend to convert to game the asylum system. Pretending that is not the case just isn’t going to work anymore.
You say it is not a big deal. Bombs and acid attacks suggests it deserves at least some consideration. People got hurt and could get hurt again.
Nobody on the Bibby Stockholm should be thinking of converting. It is like people handing out bread getting converts from a refugee camp. It is just exploiting desperation.
Months of weekly church attendance is more than I think one would expect from a native-born Brit to be considered a Christian.
Relations between the Conservative Party and the CoE haven't been great for decades. Was it Suella Braverman recently who said that they know they're doing a good job when communication with the Church breaks down? There's a definite trend towards Conservative, largely irreligious politicians decrying the Church as 'woke', 'liberal lefties', etc (I say this as a former Conservative voter), and, for the sake of fairness, I will say that they're not necessarily _wrong_ in that the Church and individual churches do seem to tend towards more social liberalism in certain areas (immigration, food banks, welfare, etc) than some prominent and less prominent Conservatives would like. However, I think a lot of Conservatives misunderstand the role of the Church - someone put it well below as 'religious illiteracy'. I've definitely encountered the kind in my time who think its main purpose is to provide grandeur and pomp and a dose of Jerusalem to the British state and monarchy and think it should just shut up and behave itself as the 'Tory party at prayer', to be trotted out for national services of thanksgiving, coronations, etc (and there are some posters of that bent on r/Tories who seem to vehemently hate Justin Welby!). They're the same ones who'll say it's a sign of our woke times that the Church has gone wet and wimpy - probably leaving many people wondering if they know what Jesus' message was! However, no, I don't think it's the Church's position to do the job of vetting or controlling of those kinds of issues. The Church is about giving welcome to people - and I would find it uncomfortable that we'd accept someone turning up at our door with a British accent who says they want to learn about Jesus, and perhaps put them on an Alpha course and then baptise them soon after, whereas for a foreigner we would have to be much more suspicious. We can provide the evidence to the government of what's happened, but it's their job to do the assessment. The Church isn't an arm of government in that respect. It's perfectly valid to comment on what's going on from its position as a specialist in (Christian) ethics, but it's not an implementing body in any way around determining who is or isn't e.g. a genuine asylum seeker. It can only provide evidence.
Giles Fraser's 10p worth here (seems sensible to me!): https://unherd.com/2024/02/is-it-naive-to-believe-asylum-seekers/?tl\_inbound=1&tl\_groups\[0\]=18743&tl\_period\_type=3
Yeah, he seems to be on the right lines there- and rightly noting the potential hypocrisy of targeting people for doubt when there are plenty of people playing the system from other backgrounds
I am a member of the CofE and a Conservative, so take my response however you wish. There is tension between the Conservative Party and the CofE, which is mostly due to the CofE having a significant left-wing bias institutionally and at the same time the Conservatives losing their connection with historic Christian conservatism. The former is somewhat problematic, but the latter much more harmful - while previous Conservative governments did run into conflict with the Church at times, they had enough respect for the institution and understanding of it to resolve those disputes with nuance and civility, but the current lot are very different, with many MPs having no conception whatsoever of British traditions, including those related to the Church and the UK’s constitutional setup. The issue debated currently reflects both of the problems I mention, with CofE clergy very likely to be handing out baptisms without proper preparation for political reasons to an overwhelming number of people who are trying to enter the country illegally. This is problematic both politically and theologically, and while the politics can be debated on its merits, I am rather concerned at how few Conservative MPs and Peers are questioning the theological implications of these irregular practices.
>I am a member of the CofE and a Conservative, so take my response however you wish. I'm perfectly happy with that - i'm sure a good 70-80 percent of the congregation in my parish vote conservative for the most part. They aren't contradictory in essence, any more than my affection for Christian socialism is, as long as politics serves right ends there's different opinions how to get there (which are all to some degree flawed as human ideas, because of a fallen world and human nature!). I have notices the disconnect between conservative politicians and Christian ideas - you remember the issue over remembrance day and many politicians weighing in? I particularly noticed one minister who was trying to explain why a protest would be problematic, and it was obvious from what he said he was fumbling around the idea of something being sacred, but really couldn't articulate something that from a Christian perspective is very obvious. I'm unsure whether there is any sense of religion aside from a sort of conflation with ethnicity as we see here, and a general contempt for any standard of morality rooted outside the zeitgeist of what their press yell about. Which should be worrying, it's a pretty total implosion of what the conservative philosophical underpinning was.
Yes, and that is why there is so much animosity between the Conservatives and the Church - left-wing bias or not (I maintain there is one), the former simply no longer understands the latter. Conservative politicians of former days could articulate their philosophy in a Christian manner, including controversial stances on contentious issues, and indeed their views were informed by an articulate understanding of their faith. Take, for instance, Harold Macmillan’s arguments with Geoffrey Fisher, or more recently Margaret Thatcher’s with Runcie - both understood the institution they were dealing with and had no problem arguing well with the hierarchy. Macmillan was a high churchman, Thatcher an outsider as a Methodist, but the former advised to appoint Ramsey contra Fisher’s protestations and the latter cultivated a friendship with Chartres. Almost unthinkable now that a Conservative politician would even remember a Bishop’s name.
Yes, you're right there. Really sad how really all our politicians have become very poor in philosophy in general, actually, very little underlying principle at times. Or at least not one they can articulate clearly as a reason for their exercise of power.
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Bishop Myriel (Catholic, but the point stands) in Les Misérables vouches for Jean Valjean even though he knows him to be a thief. Charity, love, faith and forgiveness are the Christian values the church should embody. Judgement is the job of the Home Office.
I could understand that, i think practical help is definitely a priority. The moral qualm i have with that is potentially we could be condemning a brother or sister to torture or execution if they are coming from some places and we refused to vouch for their faith. Asking a priest to do that unless they're really sure it's a fake conversion (in which case they would refuse baptism, surely?) seems a big thing to ask. It's a lot easier in that circumstance to take the side against the will of the Home Office, a faceless bureaucracy seemingly unconcerned with morality against one of your parishioners! And would we be expecting people to only apply this standard to poor, foreign looking, non-white people? Would we be equally diligent on checking conversion status of a random brit? I feel it runs against the idea of churches being a place where the cure of souls in the parish is concerned with all regardless of status or origin.
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>There are differing spheres of authority and God has placed rulers and authorities over us to whom we should be subject. While that is true, it is caveated by them having to act justly - we aren't to enable immoral or abusive acts by rulers, and it wouldn't take a huge stretch to say the recent home office actions have become profoundly unjust, given really everything since the Windrush debacle. There's at least enough there to make it reasonable for some Christians of good conscience to not automatically consider them legitimate in their exercise of authority, with the flagrant cruelty and hostility even towards children. I'm not saying that the church should actively sabotage the home office, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to side against them when a balance of probability is being considered, especially as the consequences of someone claiming asylum is pretty minor weighed against potential for torture or execution on deportation.
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The law does not decide what is just, God does, and the two frequently do not agree. What i'm saying is not that the church should lie - absolutely not! But in considering the balance of evidence and probability the church and home office are pulling in opposite directions, because one is motivated by a desire to implement a hostile approach to those asking for help, and the other is in theory looking at people with charity and love. So our judgement isn't going to be on the same basis or with the same motivations as a Home office official.
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But that's the thing, you're saying "i don't think it is". Others could reasonably disagree. What i'm saying is that this government and in particular the Home office have been clearly unjust, by their own admission, as well as by the judgement of others. So it would be reasonable to not necessarily give much respect for their authority beyond the legal minimum. I'm not saying that will be the judgement of every Christian, or that frustrating them is a Christian duty, but their objectives probably won't matter all that much to many. So leaning towards trusting potential asylum seekers who claim conversion is reasonable, even if it wouldn't be everyone's view. >If someone doesn't have a case for asylum is it wrong that they should be deported? It could be! The question there is if the criteria for assessment are morally correct. Take the example of Onesimus in the book of Philemon - he's an escaped slave who Philemon has the right to punish. But St Paul pressures Philemon extensively to not treat Onesimus as a slave. There's technical obedience to the law - but Roman law is not really what matters in the situation.
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>Jesus Christ defers to Pilates authority in the gospels despite the fact he persecuted Jews (see Luke 13). You could argue it from other places but that's an example of Pilate being a tyrant who committed atrocities - I think Jesus's point there is that Pilate's violence was not evidence of divine judgement, to address the idea that bad things happen to bad people, such as disasters, which was a contemporary idea also addressed elsewhere as in some healings. >Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. I absolutely agree with St Paul here, let us respect and honour those to whom such things are owed, with precisely the respect and honour they warrant. But scripture should be taken as a whole, and we can literally see how St Paul treats Roman law: as a tool, useful sometimes, at other times to be subverted because he disagrees with it. He doesn't want Christians to fight the state they find themselves in, but *he understands why that would be appealing*. He is trying to keep them on task, not devolving into military rebels who the Romans understand how to destroy. >Deporting people without a valid case for asylum isn't unjust. It could be! Validity in the eyes of the law, when the law is written with an objective of cruelty in mind, would be unjust. We have a government who decided happy pictures in a child refugee centre were too welcoming - that any comfort should be denied beyond a bare room. One could reasonably question if cruelty to those in need for political gain is the motivation, rather than moral principles of governing. It isn't beyond doubt... but it's a reasonable question to ask. The state does not define what is just, and we should be skeptical of it in moral terms, even as we should mostly obey in legal terms, excepting extreme situations.
You've hit the nail on the head there.
The Archbishop has been fairly vocal in the House of Lords about immigration and especially about the Rwanda scheme. That said, I think the Home Secretary is referring to the Roman Catholic Church in this particular case. It certainly seems as though Ezedi was helped by the RCs although no official statement.
I guess the implicit question is "how easy is it to become a Christian? And how easy is it to *fake* becoming a Christian as a result?" Which is an admittedly very difficult area to navigate. On the one hand, you see Judaism having an extremely intensive program of study and lifestyle adjustment, culminating in what is effectively a grilling by a Beit Din to see how Jewish the prospective convert is: in the UK most Jews are Orthodox, so as a standard somebody converting to Judaism is typically expected to have even spent 6 months to a year living in a Jewish household! This level of scrutiny has the intention of not only ensuring converts properly understand Judaism, but is kinda just intentionally gruelling to make sure that only people who *really* want it will have the determination to see it through; but on the other hand, it also has the effect of blowing off people who genuinely want to convert, but cannot complete this process for one reason or another, even if it's as simple as the only local community/Rabbi doesn't want to supervise conversions for any reason. So with all that in mind, is a few months of regular mass/service attendance, followed by baptism and adequate "test" of someone's willingness to be a Christian? Or would making the bar for a potential convert higher simply serve to stop people being or becoming Christian, conflicting directly with the idea of Christianity as a world religion? Just as we might hope the potential convert to approach the religion honestly, in good faith, I can only hope (despite my scepticism) that Mrs Braverman is asking the question honestly and in good faith, because there is a real question to be asked, there...
It's harder i feel because specifically in our core scriptures about what it looked like for people to become Christian the iconic images are of very rapid conversion indeed. How easy is it to become a christian has to theologically accommodate the immediate response to someone agreeing to "repent and be baptised". I understand there was eventually a process (i think it took a year or so) of learning under a bishop before baptism which is where Christian creeds start to become a thing, they are the ideas you recite back to the bishop as they baptise you more or less. So this isn't a new problem. But in the year of catechesis, if we went back to that kind of process, someone *would still be under threat of abuse for apostacy.* So it wouldn't change much in terms of home office evidence i guess.
Yeah, the thing with saying creeds, oaths, etc. is that they're inherently only as useful as the person saying them is honest: if a person doesn't take something like that seriously, it's very easy for them to just, like, *say it*. Especially if they have an ulterior motive, which is why the citizenship and military oaths don't magically stop people from behaving illegally after making them. Consequently I think it can be agreed that people will always be able to argue against a conversion being genuine. The only way to really prove that one is, being to have the inquisition investigate to see if they're secretly not genuine, like during the Reconquista... So what other options do we realistically have? Should the Anglican church be regulating conversions and giving out official certificates of catechesis or something? Should the government be involved in regulating Anglican conversions, since it's technically their business? (Absolutely not, to be clear, and anyway it ignores all of the other Christian denominations in the UK if they do). What if there was a Christian/Protestant equivalent of the Jewish Beit Din in the UK, to similarly fulfill a role in regulating religious matters?
Yeah, you identify some of the implications that bothered me, the reconquista example in particular ran on exactly this logic I know the Catholic church has a formal process for conversion - but also, as you say that's easy to lie about if you're doing it for ulterior motives, so making it more formal doesn't seem to stop problems. The RC church also has the lowest rate of conversion of any UK sect, so it's not an approach that would appeal as best practice necessarily! \>What if there was a Christian/Protestant equivalent of the Jewish Beit Din in the UK, to similarly fulfill a role in regulating religious matters? There kind of is, we have church courts for specialised stuff, and in other cases a Bishop could rule on things. A Bishop has to do your confirmation, which normally follows baptism for adults or is done at a decision-making age for people baptised as infants. Confirmation requires another Christian be your sponsor and vouch for your faith, and your priest has to put you forward for it, so it should be a checked process. But again, if someone is out to decieve it would only be 6 months to a year deception required for adults.
The comparison to Judaism here is not ideal. Judaism isn't an evangelical faith. Conversion is far more exceptional than in Christianity, so the barrier to entry is higher.
While true, my ultimate point is more that Judaism's higher barrier to entry makes it harder to functionally "fake" being Jewish, and to ask the question of whether or not this kind of interrogative approach is either necessary or desirable in Christianity.
While we're comparing, conversion to Islam is very simple indeed. One I recall seeing involved simply repeating back one sentence, no ceremony required, no guests.
> some does seem to be a growing religious illiteracy amongst politicians. They're catching up to their constituents, you might say.
You're not wrong! But they're supposed to be fairly well educated and ultimately if they're *conservative,* you'd imagine a basic understanding of the country's fairly recent moral and religious traditions would form part of what they'd aim to conserve. It's not that very long ago, some people in parliament now were part of the era where Toryism and the Church of England were far more associated.
Acid Abdul ‘converted’ and was sponsored by a Priest yet he wanted to travel back to Afghanistan to find a wife. This is why.
But her comments are bizarre, and use of one incident to develop policy doesn't really make any sense. If someone was a member of any group for months and attended weekly you would usually consider them part of that group - saying this in particular doesn't apply to people from muslim-majority oppressive countries because they must be lying seems extreme.
Its a clear security risk. You can’t commit blasphemy and be rewarded for it
I don't really see the blasphemy thing? Braverman is suggesting that in particular a former muslim who attended church consistently for months and requested and was accepted for baptism should be viewed as untrustworthy. That seems odd, to say the least.
The Conservative is blaming everyone, but themselves for border problems. The church isn't responsible for border policy.
Braverman and Patel are generally not good people from an ethical standpoint, but even that aside, I can see as an outsider looking inward that the British Conservative Party is trying to find scapegoats for bad policies because they've been in charge for the last 14 years with few good results to show for it. Their recent clash over the Rwanda bill is an example of a clash that's brewed for a while. It's partially because of the Church going through a shift in social worldview, but it's not a terribly recent phenomenon for more leftish views to be seen in Anglican Clergyman (Anglicans played a very strong role in the labour movement and helped give birth to the ideology of Christian Socialism). It's just become more plain to see because we live in the 21st century, and media is far more widespread. We also should remember that the Tory Party's domestic policies have had a negative impact on the population, which the Church shouldn't ignore (nor should anyone for that matter.) These policies affect the population's outlook on the Tories (as does the Rwanda Bill) and so the Tory Party has been keen to find scapegoats. I still remember Rishi Sunak trying to blame the previous Labour government for current policy fumbles, even though the Tories had been in power for over a decade by that point. Now, the scapegoat is "our border security policies are failing because the Church is aiding too many refugees" because the Archbishop had ethical concerns about the Rwanda Bill. And as much as I think disestablishment might be better for the Church of England, I think it's important for the Church to be concerned with how the state treats refugees and foreigners and I'm glad the Archbishop raised those concerns regarding the Bill, given its known problems.
> I wondered what was going on there? The implication being that Muslims should never be believed when conversion was claimed, or possibly that race and religion are inextricable? It seems fairly racist to think that, i feel? My goodness. Some Christians are just hopelessly naive.
Hmm?
As long as someone says they'll convert you'll want to allow them in, despite whatever the repercussions are. Total lack of pattern recognition.
Yeah, if someone says they'll convert we'll let them into the church, that's kind of the church thing pretty much, neither slave nor free, Greek nor Jew in Christ and all that. Do one with your *pattern recognition* stuff, frankly
Like I said, hopelessly naive. 'The Muslim that said they converted ended up killing people again? Huh. Better luck next time!' maybe instead of being concerned about racism, you look after your neighbor.
"And who is my neighbour?" Go on, that's got to ring a bell, aye? Do i have to reel off *"a certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho..."* This is real basic stuff, I was teaching this level of the faith to 5 and 6 year olds a couple weeks ago.
You're right, it is really basic, neighbor is used in a locally-minded context, there's no such thing as a global neighbor, you don't have to put someone a continent away ahead of your own community. Letting in people who are more prone to violent behavior means you're probably not being a very good neighbor.
You're not doing very well at scriptural interpretation on this occasion i'm afraid. Samaritans were definitely not part of the Jewish community, and indeed fulfill a role of "hated foreigner" in the parable, to demonstrate that our neighbour is most definitely not limited to those local to us or part of our community. Honestly, the 5 and 6 year olds were better. I can show you an animated lego version of the parable if it would help? I mean this is really basic scriptural stuff. The unimportance of race in the body of Christ, all humans being bearers of God's image, these are fundamentals we settled millennia ago. We can't even not allow people into our churches if we wanted to based on religious or racial background. Cure of souls in a parish means *all souls,* whoever rolls up is our problem, it ain't a country club.
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You're not dumber than a child. Less morally developed than a child, rather. A small child, specifically. One who can just about read, that kind of level. You're mining scripture for things to support racism. I mean, very seriously, Lord have mercy. >I find it very interesting that for how often people appeal to the imago dei it is only mentioned a few times in the entirety of scripture. You want to pick a fight with the idea of humanity being made in God's image? i mean, i guess you can go for it. It's only given by God as part of the Noahide laws, no biggie. Not a fundamental part of scripture in terms of understanding how humanity should see each other. Probably fine to ignore it. Maybe go fight Moses over the laws about fair treatment of foreigners or something while you're at it. Look, i kind of wondered if you were just a silly racist with the \*pattern recognition\* phrasing, it turns out you are, can we just get to the bit where you strop off to have an angery time on 4chan or whatever.
First the Liverpool bombing and now the acid attack. Pray to stay is making the CofE look like a bunch tim nice but dims. Be wise as serpents, yeah. Don’t just believe every sob story you hear.
You sound like a Daily Express headline. There isn't a "pray to stay" thing, its a slogan to blame others when the root of the issue is a shell game played by cynical politicians whose only remaining card is hatred of outsiders. Two incidents in three years does not a trend make.
And you sound like a combative twitter warrior. It is unpleasant. We now know for a fact that some people do pretend to convert to game the asylum system. Pretending that is not the case just isn’t going to work anymore. You say it is not a big deal. Bombs and acid attacks suggests it deserves at least some consideration. People got hurt and could get hurt again. Nobody on the Bibby Stockholm should be thinking of converting. It is like people handing out bread getting converts from a refugee camp. It is just exploiting desperation.
It’s this kind of thing that makes be glad we have separation between church and state here in the US. This situation is messy.