A paper commissioned by Churches Together in Baildon and circulated with permission by the Moravian Church Social Responsibility Committee

BACKGROUND
Recently in Britain there has been disquiet in the face of some electoral success on the part of the British National Party (BNP). That success can be seen as part of a wider movement that has lead significant numbers of voters across western Europe to support such bodies as Austria's 'Freedom Party', Belgium's 'Flemish Bloc', Denmark's 'Progress Party' and, perhaps most spectacularly, France's 'National Front'. Each of these must, to some extent, be understood in terms of their particular national traditions and contexts. All, however, share certain similarities which mark them out as members of one recognisable 'political family' .They all represent similar responses to shared challenges. They all signify a response to the disturbances, tensions, conflicts, anxieties and fears attendant upon rapid socio- economic or cultural change and upon 'the globalisation' underlying such change. They signify an essentially defensive response to the breakdown of traditional communities and to their sense of abandonment as well as to the de-stabilising of communal and even personal identities that all of this may entail. In particular, they signify a negative response to the mass immigration which is so much a feature of our contemporary world A particular hallmark of all the relevant cases is the quest after scapegoats chosen from identifiable minorities of an ethnic, religious or cultural kind.

Equally, they all tend to be characterised by a mixture of racism or xenophobia and of an aggressive or intolerant nationalism. It is a nationalism that usually draws upon mythological and distorted, rather than carefully considered, interpretations of the past. They are interpretations that represent nostalgia for a past that never really existed. It is, at base level, a fearful nostalgia that prefers longingly to look backwards rather than creatively to look forward It is the nostalgia of those who, in large measure, have lost faith in current social or political arrangements and who have also lost hope for the future. Frequently, it is the nostalgia of those who have largely lost a meaningful sense of belonging and who, perhaps unconsciously, yearn for the ties of community. Not least they yearn for the restoration of a mythological or romanticised community free of 'alien intruders'.

The aggrieved, atomised and disorientated people finding themselves in such situations are particularly vulnerable to the appeals of ambitious demagogues, whose primary goal is the acquisition of power rather than the healing of wounds. Le Pen in France and Haider in Austria are recent examples. So far, however, none have come near wholly to fulfilling their ambitions. But this leaves absolutely no room for complacency. After all, Le Pen emerged as Chirac's chief opponent in recent French Presidential Elections, and Haider's party has formed part of a governing coalition. Similarly, followers of the maverick Dutch politician Pim Fortyne for a while governed Rotterdam, and similar groupings played part in the current national Italian government, presided over by Berlusconi.

In Britain comparably effective demagogues have not emerged. Equally, the BNP's 'success' in places like Oldham, Burnley and Bradford falls far short of the advances made by some continental counterparts. Nevertheless, their very presence must provoke Christians, along with other concerned citizens, carefully to reflect upon this phenomenon and, in particular, to reflect upon the nature of our response. It is of course possible to get the relevant issues out of proportion. For example, a recent survey of Bradford's population showed that, by and large, people had a more positive view of immediate neighbours than they did of the generality of their fellow citizens. Alienation seems to be very far from complete. Nevertheless, as even our city council recognises, big problems remain.

The issues involved are very pressing. Unless adequately addressed they could, in the very long run, put serious question marks against our 'liberal-democratic' political institutions and against the kind of relatively tolerant or open society upon which we tend to pride ourselves. Given the current distrust of politics and politicians such considerations cannot lightly be dismissed (political extremists and would-be authoritarian leaders routinely feed off such distrust). For Christians there is a special call to re-visit our tradition and to see in which direction the Gospel is pointing us. In view of the particular nature of the challenge confronting us on our own doorstep this, above all, entails some reflection upon Biblically inspired responses to the related questions of immigration and asylum seekers. What does our faith have to tell us about the treatment of those who may be presented to us as 'strangers within our gates' - about those who may be picked upon as our scapegoats?

A BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE
Both the Old and New Testaments have much to say about these themes. At the very heart of the Jewish faith is the assertion that 'The Chosen People' came together and discovered their unique identity as wanderers or refugees. As Deuteronomy, Chapter 26 beginning at verse 5, recalls: 'My ancestor was a wandering Aramean who took his family to Egypt to live. The Egyptians treated us harshly and forced us to work as slaves. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors. ..By his great power and strength he rescued us from Egypt. He brought us here and gave us this rich and fertile land.'

This, at one level, reminds us that even before recorded history the human story has been almost constantly marked by small or large-scale population movements, and 'immigration' is far from being a solely recent issue. At a deeper level we receive the picture of a God who identifies with and whose purposes are revealed through wanderers, strangers and those perceived to be outsiders or (at least for a while) of 'no fixed abode'. Indeed, it was in response to such a vision that the people of Israel came not only to accept obligations to widows and orphans (something not uncommon in the ancient world) but also, and more unusually, to wanderers and strangers. As Leviticus, Chapter 20, verses 33-34 says: 'Do not ill-treat foreigners who are living in your land. Treat them as you would a fellow Israelite, and love them as you love yourselves. Remember that you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.'

The Psalms, not least, take up the same theme and underline just how much it remained apart of Israel's collective memory and continuing experience. Thus in Psalm 39, verse 12, the plea is uttered: 'Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; do not hold your peace at my tears. For I am your passing guest, an alien, like all my forebears.' In a similar spirit in Psalm 146, verse 9, it is proclaimed that: The Lord watches over the strangers, He upholds the orphan and the widow.'

In this matter there is an underlying continuity between Old and New Testaments, even if, in the latter case, a whole new and radical dimension appears. Thus in familiar words from Luke's Gospel (chapter 4, verses 18-21), Jesus, when reading in the synagogue from the writings of Isaiah, wholly identifies himself with the understanding that God is on the side of the poor, the captive and the oppressed. Still more dramatically Matthew's Gospel (chapter 25, verse 35) proclaims that when all human affairs come under scrutiny at 'the Final Judgement' the righteous will include those who, in the spirit of Jesus, accepted the 'outsider': ' I was a stranger and you received me in your homes'. To give the proclamation even greater force, verse 40 of the same chapter adds: ' I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important of these brothers of mine, you did it for me!' The message is clear and uncompromising, within the Kingdom of God, when experienced in its fullness, all, irrespective of background, are made wholly welcome. Equally, those concerned to sustain the work of the Kingdom amidst our every day affairs, are expected to give visible expression to such values and aspirations. In so far as we as individuals and, more importantly, as societies fail to match up to such expectations we build our house upon shifting sands.

Paul (along with Christian thinkers) expressed essentially similar ideas in his own distinctive yet theologically grounded way. Thus Galatians, chapter 3, verse 28 asserts: '….there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free men, between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ Jesus.' Similarly, he develops the idea, rooted in the first chapter of Genesis, that all human beings have been created in God's image. Thus, for example, in 2 Corinthians, chapter 3, verse 18, he indicates that all human beings may be so renewed that: '....they reflect the glory of the Lord.' Viewed from this perspective all, irrespective of their background, are deserving of respect. There is a vision not of cultural differences eliminated but of divisions transcended.

OUR SITUATION
All of this said, there has to be a presumption, amongst Christians, that racism, xenophobia or rejection of 'the stranger' can have no place. Part of our commitment must be actively and 'at all times and in all places' to witness to such understandings. We have to recognise, however, that we live in a substantially secularised or pluralistic society in which our convictions cannot expect automatic attention. As individual Christians, and as Churches, we need to make our voices heard within the public arena in as cogent and compelling a way as possible. On the other hand, fundamental insights of Christian derivation have already, in substantial measure, been translated into the contemporary language of human rights -a language against which we can judge the actual everyday behaviour of societies and governments. Thus it is noteworthy that the 1948 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights' (drawn up largely in response to the horrors of Nazism) states that 'everyone has a right to leave any country including his own'. It also states that 'everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.' That notion of 'persecution' was taken up in the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which defined a refugee as someone who: '...owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.'
In practice, of course, all of this begs many questions. Firstly, though all may have the right to leave their country of origin, for that large number who cannot meaningfully be defined as refugees there is no corresponding right automatically to enter another country. This naturally includes all of .those who, in our day, would be described as 'economic migrants'. In balancing the claims of individuals against inherited understandings of 'national sovereignty' there is a presumption that governments retain a right to exclude many who come knocking at their door (such a presumption lies at the back of the legislation governing immigration into our country). On that basis there are many wanderers in the world who find themselves in a legal 'no-man's land' in a way that would not necessarily have been true in the ancient world. Today, the freedom to leave a place may not be balanced by a corresponding freedom to find an alternative home.

This naturally implies debates within 'host' countries concerning the extent to which such 'strangers' should be welcomed and the extent to which, upon arrival, they should be made to feel at home. In reality different nations respond to such questions in different ways. In Britain policy officially has aimed to regulate the flow of immigrants whilst seeking to integrate 'new arrivals' as fully as possible into our society. The existence of racism and xenophobia in our midst obviously testifies to the imperfect success of such an approach. It may be suggested that for Christians there should always be a presumption in favour of generosity (especially to the clearly poor or disadvantaged) when it comes to admitting newcomers. Equally, we, as Christians, are mandated to work on all relevant fronts for the creation of an open and tolerant yet also cohesive society which prizes diversity and equally values all its members. The message of the Gospel points clearly enough in that direction. In our particular context the shadow cast by 'September 11th ' and subsequent events makes this an especially challenging but also a particularly urgent task.

This still leaves unaddressed the question of those who, in terms of international conventions, can properly be described as refugees and those who consequently become asylum seekers. Their presence has been very much grist to the mill of 'far right' political extremists and a source of often ill-informed irritation on the part of those disaffected voters to whom such extremists appeal. In reality, it needs to be said, the general thrust of official British policy in recent years has been increasingly illiberal. One measure of this is the fact that our immigration authorities only accord official refugee status to asylum seekers who they have given leave to stay in our society. As Church and other interested bodies have observed, those authorities exercise a huge amount of discretion which quite frequently entails the harsh treatment and even complete rejection of people who, in terms of the international agreements to which we are a party , have a claim upon our collective generosity. Agreements initially intended to offer protection to people fleeing persecution now, quite often, are interpreted in ways that lead to their exclusion.

This, at least in part, may be explained by fairly short-term political or electoral considerations. It signifies some fear of a 'backlash' on the part of an electorate all too frequently disquieted or pandered to by a xenophobic popular press. Equally, it signifies an attempt to steal the electoral thunder of bodies such as the BNP .
Most Christians might see the latter objective as entirely legitimate but might seriously question the chosen means. Christian insight, and accumulated political wisdom suggest that, in the long run, the cause of genuine social harmony and of healthy democratic government is best served by seeking to confront and remove the root causes of our fears and prejudices. Of course there are cases where the health of our society, and its cohesion requires the exclusion of some making claims upon our hospitality. Obviously criminal and politically violent elements are cases in point. Legitimate anxieties on that front should not, however, stand in the way of more concerted or determined responses to the problems of deprivation, social exclusion, distrust, alienation and general fearfulness which can offer political extremists a happy hunting ground. The Gospel encourages us to believe that love casts out fear. Arguably we need to seek the translation of such love into a quest for justice that will mean an exorcising of, and not a surrendering to, our national demons.

THE WAY FORWARD
Detailed exploration of such a quest lies beyond the scope of this paper. A few brief concluding points can, however, be made. Firstly, it is evident that a sense of deprivation, alienation etc is not simply a material matter. Material poverty is clearly a major factor in generating that sense of hopelessness, frustration and rejection to which extremists may appeal. But, as BNP inroads may intimate, that is not the whole story. Rather, as some experiences of continental fascism suggest, hopelessness, fearfulness and a pervasive sense of neglect may co-exist with a measure of material comfort. From this, and for locally rooted Christians, many things may flow. Of particular importance is the observation that the tackling of the issues raised above very much needs to be a locally rooted and 'bottom-up' affair. Politicians, religious spokespersons and other leaders clearly need to take initiatives at the national or city levels but, in the end, what most counts is the state of affairs close to 'the grass roots'. Equally, for all concerned and particularly for Christians, there is the need as effectively as possible to communicate (by deed as well as word) a well grounded and realistic sense of hope for the future -a sense of hope that can overcome that corrosive scepticism and destructive fearfulness that are so much part of our contemporary malaise. More concretely, Churches have an especially important part of play in nurturing new and imaginative forms of community. As previously observed political extremists may sense the existence of a desire for the supportive ties of community. They may appeal to those who, perhaps unknowingly, are in flight from the alienating consequences of our contemporary market driven individualism. Their response, however, is spurious. It ultimately entails the individual becoming submerged rather than supported. The Christian vision is infinitely more positive and capable of filling that moral vacuum by which we are surrounded. In this connection it seems instructive that, within the Bradford Metropolitan area, the BNP have not even stood for election in areas served by neighbourhood councils having some real decision-making power. Such councils appear to be both the inspiration and the expression of local cultures which, for all their possible limitations, appear to affirm the value of citizens and facilitate a measure of meaningful participation.

Secondly, Christians, by virtue of their distinctive calling, have a special responsibility to speak the truth (and to nail the lie). They are called upon to shed light in dark places within which destructive forces may otherwise become embodied. Clearly the shouldering of such a responsibility may take many forms. It may entail the challenging of dangerous myths. For example, we need constantly to be reminded of the extent to which Britain, over several millennia, has been in receipt of many different waves of immigrants. Equally, we need to be reminded that all national identities are liable to be provisional, malleable and changing things. Likewise, the Church, at all levels, is called upon to spell out the extent to which the handling of immigration and asylum questions has become crudely politicised rather than being the subject of informed debate or of judicious decision-making processes designed properly to honour 'the stranger' at our door. Not least, there is a call to speak out when, in the quest for power politicians, of whatever stripe, are untruthful or otherwise show disrespect to their electorates. Above all, there is a summons unambiguously to affirm those values, policies and persons seen to be underwriting some authentic sense of 'a common good'.
Thirdly, it should be borne in mind that all the issues raised above cannot, in the end, be divorced from still wider questions concerning global injustice and conflict. After all 'economic migration' and the plight of refugees stem from the existence of a world where resources are most unevenly divided, destabilising conflicts persist and serious inequities consequently endure. Viewed from this perspective the 'economic migrant' may be almost as much the victim of injustice as the obviously deserving asylum seeker. Equally any serious slowing down of the contemporary world's great migratory movements presupposes a much more determined assault upon the great issues of trade, indebtedness and entrenched poverty .At present such problems are, if anything, intensifying. We sometimes speak of the economic benefits of immig1:ation perhaps forgetting in the process that it may mean attracting to ourselves scarce professionals badly needed elsewhere, whilst leaving the less skilled to their fate. We may be draining away precious resources from developing countries whilst they sink further into poverty. Perhaps such problems will always be with us but there is a need clearly to recognise what lies at the root of our difficulties. Large-scale population movements have indeed been a permanent feature of human history and, despite much attendant suffering, they have frequently contributed to our long-term enrichment. We can, however, be far too fatalistic or indifferent to the suffering that both causes and accompanies displacement. Christians are called upon to be alert to all dimensions of this most pressing of matters.
Finally, and to place this whole question in the most ample of contexts, our faith reminds us that, in one sense, all of us are simply travellers. We are called upon to value this world but not to regard it as a 'fixed abode'. The Second Vatican Council invited the Church to see itself as 'a pilgrim people', always on the move and disposed to 'travel light' .Such a precept may often be honoured more in the breach than in the observance. Nevertheless, it stands as a permanent challenge to our complacency and as a call to see all our temporal commitments in proper perspective. The presence of 'strangers' in our midst points to deep questions about ourselves. How we respond to such 'strangers' does indeed reveal a great deal concerning who we truly are.

copyright Kenneth N. Medhurst 2004

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andrew Bradstock and Arlington Trotman (eds) - Asylum Voices: Experiences of People Seeking Asylum in the United Kingdom (Churches Together in Britain and Ireland 2003).
John Macquarrie and James Childress - A New Dictionary of Christian Ethics (SCM 1986).
Robert Paxton - The Anatomy of Fascism (Allen Lane, January 2003).
Fritz Stem - The Politics of Cultural Despair (Anchor Books, California, 1965).
Jurger Moltmann - Theology of Hope (SCM 1967).
Lord Parekh - The Future of Multi-ethnic Britain (profile Books 2000).