by Simon Brennan, The Critic
Well-meaning clichés are unhelpful and unenlightening
One of the interesting things about the immigration debates, within Church of England circles, is how one sided they have been. Apart from a few dissenting voices, the majority position has been firmly on the side of immigration being A Good Thing. Stephen Croft, the Bishop of Oxford, has recently produced a piece responding to Nigel Farage’s announcement that a Reform government would deport 600,000 immigrants if they were to win the next General Election.
Bishop Steven’s blog, while light on Biblical interpretation, is heavy on well-meaning but fatally vague nods to ideas of compassion, justice, integration and community cohesion. This is interesting, for the good bishop was previously Bishop of Sheffield when the news of the grooming gangs scandal was breaking and he appears to have had little public to say about Rotherham or indeed Oxford other than to provide further evidence that the Norm Macdonald quip (“What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a dirty bomb, killing 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?”) remains right on point.
He’s not alone. The Archbishop of York also weighed in, calling the Reform approach “isolationist and knee jerk”, and saying policies relating to immigration needed “compassion and understanding”. Under the previous government the Bishop of Durham, described its immigration proposals (yes, the Rwanda one) as lacking in “compassion [that word again], justice and moral leadership”.
Why do we have such an emphasis upon immigration, regardless of the reasons, being a good thing? Is it just that Bishops, like anyone else, have simply soaked up the vibe of the last two decades with the constant messaging that diversity is good; multiculturalism is good; change is good? Is it a reaction to perceived discrimination from the Church to early immigrants in the 1950’s and 60’s whereby we now must be seen to bend over backwards in the other direction?