How does facilitating people-traffickers reflect the nature of God?

Apr 18, 2022 by Jill

by Archbishop Cranmer:

The Home Secretary’s announcement that the thousands of asylum seekers (or economic migrants) crossing the Channel in an endless stream of dinghies (246,190 last year) are to be sent to Rwanda for processing has been a cause of consternation. The policy raises all manner of ethical questions, not least being the morality of flying hundreds of vulnerable people to a strange and far off land in Africa so soon after making the perilous and life-threatening journey from France to England; or of potentially splitting up families, or of subjecting them to an alien justice system whose notions of fairness may not deal with them equitably. It’s hardly welcoming the stranger with Christian hospitality, is it?

The Archbishop of Canterbury condemned the policy unequivocally, not to say intemperately, in his Easter sermon:

And this season is also why there are such serious ethical questions about sending asylum seekers overseas. The details are for politics and politicians. The principle must stand the judgement of God and it cannot. It cannot carry the weight of resurrection justice, of life conquering death. It cannot carry the weight of the resurrection that was first to the least valued, for it privileges the rich and strong. And it cannot carry the weight of our national responsibility as a country formed by Christian values, because sub-contracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God who himself took responsibility for our failures.

If a political policy is the opposite of the nature of God, it is evil. If it cannot stand the judgement of God, it is sin. The Archbishop has effectively accused Priti Patel of being anti-Christian in her policy-making, a statement which might itself be considered crudely partisan, if not the opposite of the nature of God, given his failure to recognise that her concern with the public good is every bit as genuine as his, and that she desires to seek and effect policy which is compassionate and conservative, if not Christian and moral.

Read here

Editor’s note: Whatever one thinks of the proposed immigration policy, was the Archbishop right to use his Easter Sunday sermon to attack the government on this issue? By doing so he focussed attention not on Christ defeating death, proving his lordship and calling for repentance and faith from all, but the church taking sides in a left-right, party political and ideological dispute about a complex problem.

See also:
Politics & the Resurrection: Holding the Archbishop of Canterbury to account for playing politics instead of guarding the Faith’. Andrew Doyle interviews Gavin Ashenden on GBNews.

Archbishop has misunderstood aims of Rwanda migrants policy – Rees-Mogg, by Geraldine Scott, London Evening Standard: