Article

Change

Freedom of Belief

23 June 2023

4 min read

Away from home, cut off from home

As Refugee Week concludes, Belle Tindall moves beyond the headlines and learns the story of Azer and the thousands of churches who are providing a sense of home for those who have fled theirs.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

Welcome Network

No refugee alone – that’s the vision, that’s the hope, that’s the end game.

That is what is fuelling Welcome Churches, a charity that is encouraging, equipping and resourcing local churches to support refugees up and down the country. In the past twelve months alone, over one thousand churches have partnered with Welcome Churches to help ensure that their corner of the UK is a home fit for the people who are seeking sanctuary within it.

As a result, nearly eighteen thousand people have been welcomed into and supported by local churches in the past year.

One of those people is Azer.

Azer came to the UK in 2022, along with his wife, to study in Birmingham. The plan was to stay in the UK for two years, complete his studies, and then return home to Iran with the qualifications he needed to obtain a promotion in tow. However, just two months into his time at the University, Azer found that his bank account had been frozen, and he was unable to pay his fees, and therefore attend his classes. After assuming that this was down to some kind of technical fault, or perhaps a legal complication, Azer was horrified to learn that it was the Iranian authorities who had intentionally cut him off from his finances. Not only that, but they had also raided and seized his home in Iran, as well as raiding the home of his wife’s family.

He and his wife had been targeted.

Azer and his wife are Christians, which is a dangerous thing to be in Iran. Christian gatherings are prohibited, and any rumours of secret Christian activity is heavily monitored. In fact, practising Christianity can lead to imprisonment for ‘crimes against national security’. The pressure that Christians are under in Iran has led Open Doors to rank it as the eighth most dangerous country to be a Christian in the world.

Azer describes it this way,

Being a Christian in Iran and participating in the communities will have consequences, such as prosecution or execution. Converting from Islam to Christianity will have a price and your life is entitled to be taken by Islamic government agents. That's why house churches are held secretly. Absolutely, you fear. That's why everything is done in confidentiality regarding the worship services, and Bible readings.

As Helen, an Engagement Officer for Welcome Churches, says, ‘for some people it (Christianity) is literally life threatening, the persecuted church is a real thing’.

Despite the immense risks, Azer’s wife covertly practiced her Christianity while living in Iran, keeping Christian literature in her home. Something which, it seems, did not go unnoticed. As a result, returning to Iran is no longer a safe option for Azer, nor his wife. When asked how it felt to learn that his own government had targeted him and his family in this way, and to realise that his home could therefore no longer be his home, Azer described it this way,

We felt like all the organs of our body dismembered, and on the other hand, like something inside you has been lost which was your identity obtained during past years by your efforts. A mixture of helplessness, frustration, being thrown into the void, and implosion inside. Dealing with losing all your possessions and all your plans is very hard. Like somebody who survived after an earthquake and lost his family and home. On the other hand, feeling your life is in danger is harder to tolerate. We feel at any moment you can be killed by the agents. These threats last for a long time which is more difficult to cope with.

Because of the profound dangers that Azer and his wife face, they have applied for asylum here in the UK. Azer speaks powerfully of how being a refugee feels,

Even though being an asylum seeker carries legal status all over the world, you immediately have no social status and must navigate this extreme loss of identity in an unknown territory. Sometimes I cannot talk, think, or even concentrate and my wife and I often feel lonely and homesick for our parents and siblings.

The UN Refugee Agency reports that in November 2022 (the most recent statistics), there were 231,597 refugees, 127,421 pending asylum cases, and 5,483 stateless persons in the UK. Each with their own stories, their own fears, their own hopes. Each one having to juggle copious unknowns on a daily basis, navigating risks that many of us cannot fathom. The depth of emotion in Azer’s words as he speaks of his experience, it is hard to comprehend such trauma multiplied by such huge numbers. Yet, that is the reality that many local churches are coming face to face with, supported by Welcome Churches.

Believing that refugees are people to be supported, not problems to be solved, churches have been providing for their new neighbours in numerous ways: providing toys, clothes, food, warm spaces, games nights, social hubs and so much more. They have taken the biblical mandates to ‘welcome strangers’ and ‘love their neighbours’ incredibly literally, showing hospitality to people of all faiths, and none.

Of course, there is a political component to this that cannot be ignored, and one of Welcome Church’s core values is institutional justice for refugees and asylum seekers, believing that the Church/Christians should be at the forefront of ensuring that the Home Office is in a position to hear every case presented to it and respond with compassion. As Helen says,

It’s not for us to decide the validity of their claim. But neither is it for us to deny the validity of their humanity.

This Refugee Week is an opportunity to move beyond headlines, statistics and culture wars and ensure that people are seen, and stories are heard. It therefore seems only right that Azer gets the final word,

We ask Humbly that the UK (government) put themselves in our place, and then judge and treat us. In the meantime, we are thankful for all the love and compassion we have received from most of the British people. We pray to God to help and give us the power to reciprocate for this nation in the future.

Article

Culture

Freedom of Belief

Politics

13 March 2024

5 min read

Asylum row pits Church against State

From Westminster to Weymouth, the church incurs the wrath of statesmen.

Steve Dew-Jones

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

A man wearing a waist coats sits at a desk and ask a questions of a panel of people with their backs facing us.

Lee Anderson MP questions clergy.

To tune into yesterday’s Home Affairs Committee hearing on asylum-seekers was to witness the Church in the dock.

The Church is “aiding and abetting” people-smugglers by being so welcoming to refugees, one committee member, MP Marco Longhi, claimed.

There were audible groans when one of the three Church representatives put forward to defend such claims - Baptist Union spokesperson Steve Tinning - revealed that seven asylum-seekers from the Bibby Stockholm have been baptised since October.

There were more groans when Mr Tinning claimed each of the baptisms had involved individuals whose conversions had taken place before their arrival on these shores.

“A likely story!” the groaner - I think it was the new Reform Party MP, Lee Anderson - seemed to wish to say.

The “hostile environment” facing asylum-seekers was referenced several times by the Church of England's Bishop Guli Francis Dehqani, and “hostile” would certainly describe the reception she received.

On the other hand, there was celebration for the “bravery” of the “whistleblowing” former Church of England minister, Rev Matthew Firth, who told The Telegraph recently about the alleged “conveyor belt” of asylum-seekers being baptised after falsely claiming to have converted to Christianity.

One committee member, MP Tim Loughton, suggested Rev Firth might be appointed to a prospective working group on the issue.

There was no such invitation for the other Church representatives.

It seemed in this particular hearing that to speak for asylum-seekers was very much to swim against the prevailing tide.

There perhaps could be no clearer illustration of this than when Mr Longhi flatly accused the Church of England of “working in the opposite direction” to the government’s efforts to deter immigrants from arriving on our shores.

While the Home Office minister tasked with responding to this accusation did not specifically charge the Church of this sin, he did caution them to “think very carefully” about how the work that they do “can be portrayed by those that are facilitating these terrible [Channel] crossings”.

There can be little doubt that the comments of senior figures, including MPs, have contributed to such threats.

Article

Comment

Freedom of Belief

Rows of soldiers march away from the camera, two in the back row turn their heads back.

What the Gaza conflict and the asylum seeker row have in common

Graham Tomlin

Iran’s persecution drives its Christians here. This is their story.

7 min read

16/02/2024

Dame Diana Johnson, who chaired the meeting, paid tribute to the churches “supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our country”, but such tributes were not forthcoming from the other committee members. Quite the contrary.

Dame Johnson also thanked Mr Tinning for highlighting the “sadness and fear” of church members in Weymouth who have been insulted and threatened since the stories of asylum-seekers converting in their church were publicised.

Mr Tinning said the church had received an email saying: “You need shutting down, and the backlash from this will be huge. The truth is, you know you’re lying and cheating our system. Treacherous to taxpaying people! Brace yourself!”

“This church is now fearing the backlash because of language used,” Mr Tinning said, “about whether taxpayers are being ‘scammed’, or others saying that ‘you attend Mass once a week for a few months and bingo, you're signed off by a member of the clergy’. It's just not true. And it's doing damage to the communities that are desperately trying to serve the poor and vulnerable in their areas.”

Dame Johnson said it was “quite disturbing” to hear the Weymouth church had been targeted. But again, this was to swim against the prevailing tide.

There was an eagerness to celebrate the “bravery” of Reverend Firth - this was mentioned by several committee members - to stand up against the powerful Church, while the bravery of regular church members to stand up for refugees seemed to be overlooked.

All of which leads one to wonder which is braver: to stand up against the Church, or to stand up against the State? And which is more powerful?

“The Church of England has come down on you like the Spanish Inquisition!” MP Tim Loughton suggested to Rev Firth.

And when Rev Firth reported being told that “people might try to get you” for speaking out, he received understandable sympathy.

But might it have been even more courageous for the other committee members to have joined Dame Johnson in also speaking out on behalf of church members like those in Weymouth who have been threatened simply for daring to assist asylum-seekers.

And there can be little doubt that the comments of senior figures, including MPs, have contributed to such threats.

Another element in the background of the hearing was Suella Braverman’s contribution, in absentia, by having recently claimed - in another widely read piece in The Telegraph - that churches around the country were “facilitating industrial-scale bogus asylum claims”.

The Home Office Minister, Tom Pursglove, was asked several times whether there was any evidence for this claim, the short answer to which appeared to be no.

“You’ll have to ask her,” was his repeated response.

But as Mr Tinning mentioned in his closing remarks, words are important, and what stood out most from the hearing was that the general consensus among MPs, it would appear, is that those who speak out against asylum-seekers and the Church are to be welcomed - perhaps simply because they are working with, and not against the government.

Perhaps it's little wonder, then, that churches who do stand up for refugees - which in the current climate would appear to be standing up against the State - incur the wrath of statesmen.

The question for the general public to decide is which is more harmful: the desire of the Church to speak up for asylum-seekers, even if some may be found to be bogus, or the desire of the State to stop them arriving at all costs.

Watch the full Home Affairs Committee hearing on Parliamentlive.tv.