Article

Church and state

Creed

Politics

3 February 2025

6 min read

JD Vance and Rory Stewart have both missed the point when it comes to who to love

An unlikely Internet spat can help us understand ourselves better

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Side by side pictures of JD Vance and Rory Stewart

Everyone seems to be leaving it these days, but be that as it may, the other day something quite extraordinary happened over on Elon Musk’s X.

In case you didn’t see it, the Vice President of the United States of America and a Yale Professor, who is also a co-host of the biggest politics podcast in the UK, found themselves arguing about an abstruse aspect of Augustinian theology. Before we get on to the theology itself, just pause for a moment to think how remarkable that is. For decades we have been told that religion is on the way out. The secularisation thesis claimed that the more wealthy and sophisticated societies become, the less religious they will be. Religion, we were assured, is a part of humanity’s infancy, and now we're grown up, we don't need that kind of nonsense any longer. Religious language and ideas would fade from the popular mind as quickly as the church numbers decline, and we’ll all be better off for it.

And yet here we have something straight out of the middle ages - politicians and public thinkers arguing the toss about the interpretation of one of the greatest of the early Fathers of the church. Yes, church numbers continue to fall. Yet we cannot rid ourselves of religion and theology as vital sources for thinking about our life together. God may have been shown the door. But he continues to haunt the building.

Now JD Vance and Rory Stewart are both serious Christians, the former having converted to Roman Catholicism, the latter a baptised and recently confirmed Anglican. Sharing a common faith, of course, doesn't mean they will agree upon everything - and they don't. The argument emerged from an interview in which JD Vance claimed that there was a Christian ‘order of love’ by which your first calling was to love your family, then your neighbour, then your immediate community, then your fellow citizens and then the rest of the world. The ‘far left’, he claimed, had inverted that, by putting the love of the stranger above the love of our immediate neighbour.

Rory Stewart responded by saying it was ‘a bizarre take on John 15:12-13 - less Christian and more pagan / tribal.’ And in the usual social (or unsocial) media fashion, others weighed in on both sides of the argument, some pointing out quite rightly that it related to Augustine's teaching on the ‘ordo amoris’ – the order of love.

JD Vance may have done his theological research via Google, but it’s hard to criticise him for that. Vice Presidents have a day job after all, and at least he tried - it’s hard to imagine his boss quoting the ordo amoris anytime soon. And he has a point.

Jesus does say that the second great commandment after loving God is to love our neighbour – literally the person ‘nigh’ - right next to you. Yet who is my neighbour? It’s complicated. The parable of the Good Samaritan seems to suggest that your neighbour may well be a person who you happen to find in great need, yet awkwardly, may belong to the entirely opposite tribe to you. For the Democrat, it might be a hated Trump-voting gun-toting Republican. For the arch-Conservative, it might be the blue-haired, nose-ringed woke activist in the local café. Jesus also suggests at times that love for spouses, parents, brothers or sisters might come second to the call to love his friends: “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ Pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers!”

Loving my family teaches me to love my friends. Loving my friends teaches me to love my neighbours. Loving my neighbours teaches me how to love the stranger.

St Augustine, in the City of God (Book 15, if you’re interested) does talk about the importance of the right ordering of our loves. Yet he doesn’t delve much into love of family, community, nation and so on. His point is about directing our loves and desires at the right things. He mainly wants to tell us (something both Vance and Stewart both seem to have missed) that the primary object of human love ought to be not your family, your neighbour, or the immigrant applying for asylum - but God. And as we learn to love God, we learn a different kind of love than the kind we are used to.

The problem comes when we think of love as like a kind of cake. There are only so many slices of cake and you have to be careful who you give them out to because sooner or later they will run out. In this way of thinking, love is a limited commodity where you have to be sparing who you love, because there isn't enough to go round.

Yet divine love is a bit more like fire. When you take a light from a candle and light another candle with it, the first candle is not diminished, but continues to burn brightly. Fire can be passed on from one place to another and spread widely because it's not finite in the way that a cake is.

Augustine's understanding of love is that if this kind of divine love has grasped your heart, then love becomes something that you are rather than something that you do. There can never be a conflict between loving God and your neighbour or even your neighbour and your enemy, because divine love extends to whoever it comes into contact with, like fire warming everything with which it comes in contact. This kind of love, unlike ours, is not drawn out by the attractiveness of the beloved, but it just loves anyway. Which is why it is capable of loving the enemy as much as the friend.

They may have missed the key point, but I tend to think both JD Vance and Rory Stewart have much to learn from each other. Our love does begin with those closest to us. It is entirely natural to love our family, friends and those we encounter every day. Yet to suggest that somehow this is an alternative to the love of the stranger is a mistake.

Of course, loving your family and friends may sound easy. But it doesn't take much to realise it's not always that straightforward. Families and marriages are not always a bed of roses. Loving a difficult spouse or an errant child teaches you to keep on loving that person, even when they (or you) are acting badly, precisely because you have a stronger bond than just the attraction you initially had for them. This kind of experience begins to teach you this different kind of love. Loving our family and friends is therefore a kind of tutorial in divine love, the kind that spreads like fire. Practising the art of love on those closest to us helps us learn the skills of loving others. Loving my family teaches me to love my friends. Loving my friends teaches me to love my neighbours. Loving my neighbours teaches me how to love the stranger. And loving the stranger might even help me learn to love my enemy.

The Danish Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once wrote:

“The task is not to find something loveable, but to find whatever has been given to you or chosen by you, loveable, and to be able to continue finding them loveable, no matter how they change.”

If this brief internet spat directs us towards this kind of love, then it will have been a good argument, not a bad one.

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Article

Comment

Community

Migration

Politics

20 May 2025

5 min read

Starmer’s ‘island of strangers’ rhetoric is risky and wrong

The Prime Minister needs an English lesson.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A prime minister stands next to an Albanian police officer in front of a ferry.

Border control. Starmer in Albania.

X.com/10DowningSt.

In a recent speech launching the UK government’s white paper on immigration, Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed concern that the country risks becoming an “island of strangers.” It is a compelling phrase - yet, for many, a deeply worrying one. Some argue it echoes Enoch Powell’s notorious 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech, in which the then Conservative MP for Wolverhampton claimed that people in the UK were being “made strangers in their own country”. Even if the reference was unintentional, the sentiment is divisive and dangerous. Here are five reasons why this narrative must be challenged.

Geography: We are fundamentally connected

First and foremost, the United Kingdom is not a single island. To describe it as such is not only geographically inaccurate but symbolically unhelpful and politically careless. This sort of language risks excluding all those UK citizens who live in the other 6,000 islands that make up our country - islands such as the Isle of Wight, Anglesey, the Hebrides, Orkney, Shetland and the Channel Islands, as well as the 2 million UK citizens who live in Northern Ireland. Many of our families, mine included, are testament to the fact that between the British Isles there are connections and marriages. We are islands, plural, united by a national bond of friendship and collaboration, and a shared story of connection across water.

Sociology: We are intrinsically social

The notion that the UK is becoming “an island of strangers” contradicts what we know about how human societies function. We are fundamentally relational - forming and building connections in our schools, workplaces, neighbourhoods, shops, and clubs on a daily basis. Even if we do not know the names of those who live across the street, we have a great deal in common. They are not strangers, but neighbours. In times of crisis, as shown during the Covid pandemic, neighbourliness is a critical front-line defence. To undermine that by calling our neighbours ‘strangers’ is a recipe for social breakdown. True social cohesion can never come through exclusion only by being deliberately nurtured through acts of welcome, the language of inclusion and recognition of shared purpose and identity.

Language: What we say matters

In his speech, the Prime Minister gave credence to the claim that migrants fail to integrate because they don’t speak English. He said: “when people come to our country, they should also commit to integration, to learning our language.” But English proficiency is not the main barrier to social cohesion. As a country that proudly recognises multiple languages: Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Cornish, British Sign Language, we should understand this. And as a nation who fails miserably at learning other world languages we should appreciate the enormous effort it takes to learn any level of English. The vast majority of migrants put us to shame in how quickly and readily they learn to communicate effectively. Might I suggest that the Prime Minister - whose speech contained questionable language that was factually untrue, politically dangerous and socially offensive - might benefit from an English lesson himself?

Honesty: We benefit from migration

When the Prime Minister claimed he was launching a strategy to “close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics, our economy, and our country,” he implied that migration is to blame for many of the difficulties the UK is facing. This is not a new tactic — some of the world’s darkest moments have been preceded by politicians stoking fear and resentment against immigrants for political gain. We must resist this rhetoric. Perhaps we could start by asking exactly which migrants are being blamed for this so-called "squalid chapter"? Is it the 200,000 people from Hong Kong who have arrived under the British National Overseas scheme, bringing skills and making major contributions to our economy? Or the 250,000 Ukrainian refugees who have been welcomed with open arms and helped knit communities closer together? Is it the 30,000 Afghans who supported British forces, risking their lives to do so? Or the 750,000 international students contributing £35 billion a year to the UK economy, sustaining our universities and global reputation for outstanding education and research? What about the 265,000 non-British NHS staff who work tirelessly to care for our sick and elderly? Blaming migrants for the UK’s problems is dishonest and dangerously divisive, potentially alienating the very people who are often most invested in making the country stronger, safer, and more successful.

Integrity: We need to fix the real problem

The Prime Minister’s use of the phrase “island of strangers” strikes a chord, not because we are all strangers to one another - we are not - but because many of us increasingly feel isolated in our own communities. There is evidence to support this emotional response. According to the Office for National Statistics, around 27% of adults in the UK report feeling lonely always, often, or some of the time. A report titled A Divided Kingdom, published just a day after the government’s immigration white paper, highlights growing intergenerational divides with only 5.5 per cent of children in the UK living near someone aged 65 or older, and just seven per cent of care home residents regularly interacting with anyone under the age of 30. Young adults are increasingly working remotely, reducing opportunities for casual, everyday social contact. Rising numbers of people live alone, and digital technology — while connecting us in some ways — often replaces the richness of face-to-face relationships.

These shifts are not caused by immigration, and blaming migrants for the disconnections and discontent we feel only distracts us from addressing the real causes of social fragmentation. We need to find ways to reconnect with one another in person, recognising in those around us the image of God, our common humanity and the opportunity for service.

Starmer’s narrative must be challenged before it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The great English poet and cleric John Donne famously wrote:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

It would be sad if, in our modern world, we lost sight of that truth and ended up becoming estranged islanders floating on a sea of fear and xenophobia.

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