Tories who don't get baptism
Vicars, apparently, are to blame for immigration chaos, writes George Pitcher. That's breathtaking ignorance
To date, it’s been “lefty lawyers” and unnamed “ human-rights activists” who have been to blame for the chaos that is uncontrolled immigration to the UK, both legal and illegal.
Now, as they flail about to find someone, anyone, other than themselves to blame for this shambles, two former Tory home secretaries have this week alighted on a new demographic to bear responsibility for “bogus” asylum seekers. It’s vicars. Yes, vicars and other ministers of religion who have allegedly been baptising refugees to facilitate “industrial-scale bogus asylum claims.”
Those are the words of the vocabulary-challenged Suella Braverman. Her predecessor as home secretary, Priti Patel, chimed in to call for “a degree of honesty [from] the Church of England as to what their motivations were” for baptising immigrants.
It is, frankly, breathtaking. Braverman is a Buddhist and Patel is a Hindu; I have always found those traditions highly educated in comparative religious education. But the sheer ignorance displayed here of our mainstream Christian faith, established in law, is truly staggering. It may go some way to explain why they bear the word “former” before their job titles.
I shouldn’t have to explain this – and I massively resent having to do so. But here goes: It is literally the job of the Home Office to vet asylum claims. Both Braverman and Patel have literally been home secretaries who have failed to do so. It is literally not my job, as a vicar, to do so.
Welcome all-comers
Our job, as a Church, is to welcome all-comers, to teach the Christian faith and to baptise those who accept it. That is emphatically not to say that we conspire in bogus claims to faith, or assist asylum-seekers to “game the system”, as these politicians and their useful idiots in the media claim.
We have courses of baptism preparation and I, for one, have suggested to aspirant parents of a child whom they want to attend a rather good Church of England school, but not to attend church, that they might like to think again.
But, equally emphatically, we are not there as a Church (praise be) to baptise the “right” sort of people, those of whom we approve and nice middle-class do-gooders. Baptism is a messy business. We baptise into the world as it is, rather than as we would wish it to be. So of course there are wrong ‘uns - it’s precisely because we baptise people who are sinners.
Gospel provenance
This has the soundest gospel provenance. When the risen Christ sends out his disciples to the world - the so-called Great Commission - he tells them to “make disciples of all nations, baptising them…”. It’s indiscriminate witness to the love of God. A consequence, in the Acts of the Apostles, is that 3,000 are baptised in a single day, an act that Braverman would doubtless have wanted subject to proper vetting.
Fortunately, her kind of proper vetting wasn’t applied to those courageous European priests who baptised Jews during the Second World War, whose motives may not have been entirely religious (and, yes, there were tragically priests of a very different kind).
It’s this context that makes Braverman’s attempt to make political capital out of the horrifying alleged attack by Abdul Azedi in south London and Patel’s bid to conflate it with Jamil Al Swealmeen, who blew himself up in Liverpool in 2021 – both were baptised into the Christian faith - so very offensive and hypocritical. If anyone’s policies (or lack of them) were responsible for these men, it was those of Braverman and Patel.
Cleverly’s golden opportunity
The current home secretary, James Cleverly, is presented with a golden opportunity to distance himself, or even put down, his incompetent predecessors. He’s requested data on the extent to which converting to Christianity plays a role in the success of asylum claims. And guess what? There isn’t any.
Braverman, in particular, has form in making up statistics. Her claim last year that most asylum seekers are economic migrants was fact-checked and rubbished. Much the same occurs with her claim of “industrial scale” abuse of baptism.
Sure, there’s anecdotal evidence. Such as 40-odd detainee asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm who have sought conversion to Christianity. But who is to decide their motives? Is it possible that scared and vulnerable people, in a hostile environment, might naturally turn to the offer of some human kindness? Frankly, I’d convert to the Conservative Party to get off the Bibby Stockholm.
Desire to integrate
It may be that the driver to some or many of these conversions is a desire to integrate with the British society that has attracted these immigrants in the first place. Right-wing Tories are especially keen that immigrants should embrace British culture. It’s difficult to conceive of a greater commitment to integration than converting to the established religion of this country.
But the desire to find a scapegoat for their own failings in government proves the stronger motivation. It’s the lack of religious literacy that’s so depressing. And the desire to avoid their own shame by blaming others.
Braverman and Patel will face judgment for that in due course. To be clear, I don’t mean divine judgment – I mean that of British voters.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest