Article
Comment
Community
Migration
Politics
5 min read

Our problem with immigration is not open or closed borders but the decline of Christianity

Christianity doesn’t provide immigration policy, but it could still unite our communities

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

Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron in front of flags.
Starmer and Macron announce their deal.
10 Downing Street.

So Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have done a deal on migrants. One in, one out. The EU might yet block the plan, and it may fail as many have before it. The Conservatives’ Rwanda idea never got off the ground. Will this one? Labour hail it as a breakthrough with the French agreeing to take back some migrants for the first time. The right-wing media complain this is a drop in the ocean and will make precious little difference. 

What interests me is the role Christianity plays in this debate, invoked as it is on both sides of the argument.  

On the right, the argument runs like this: Britain is (or used to be) a Christian country. It is now in danger of being overrun by people who do not share that faith, or the values that are rooted in Christianity. Therefore, we must put a rapid halt to excessive immigration, especially migrants from conservative Islamic countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia or Pakistan. If we don’t, we will see the UK change dramatically and lose its distinct Christian identity.  

So, in a speech last year, Reform leader Nigel Farage claimed that “Judeo-Christian values” are at the root of “everything” in Britain. These values, he said, were that “the family matters, the community matters, working with each other matters, the country matters.” 

I’m sure they do. Christianity has shaped the character of the UK over centuries. And there is undoubtedly a sense in many places, especially more deprived ones, that communities have changed and are becoming unrecognisable from what they were. The chattering classes in Hampstead and Chipping Norton are hardly likely to feel the pinch, yet Bradford or Burnley can feel very different now than they did 50 years ago.  

Yet it’s hard to identify Farage’s values as distinctly Christian. Many Muslims would claim much the same, and it would be difficult to describe his list as an adequate summary of the message of Jesus. ‘Judeo-Christian values’ are often identified on the right as being the same as ‘British values’, which are defined by the UK government as “democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.” It’s hard to imagine anyone getting crucified for preaching that.  

Yet Christianity is also used on the left. While he was Labour Leader in 2019, Jeremy Corbyn invoked Jesus in a call to welcome migrants: “The refugee crisis is a moral test. Jesus taught us to respect refugees. He himself said 'welcome the stranger…’ And the Bible says, 'the foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born'. 

He had done his homework. It’s a better account of the teaching of Jesus. Yet on the left, the welcome of the refugee is often part of a wider and deeper value of ‘diversity’ as a good in itself. Multiculturalism, the kaleidoscope of cultures found on many high streets with Indian, Thai, Italian, Moroccan restaurants, or the image of kids from different countries and religions happily running around a school playground is a beloved trope of secular progressive liberals.  

The trouble is that it is not how it feels to many in parts of Luton or Leicester. The residents of Hampstead and Chipping Norton can embrace multiculturalism because it does not fundamentally threaten their way of life.  

“The ebbing away of the faith is greeted with barely a fraction of the passion which accompanied Brexit.” 

Bijan Omrani

Embracing strangers is easier if you have a settled place to welcome them into. A home where the family gets on well, where the parents are united, the kids are content, is much more likely to be able to welcome in unknown guests with a proper curiosity to learn from them. A family full of tension and bickering is unlikely to welcome the stranger at all, as the newcomer will strain existing tensions even further. 

As theologian Oleg Dik writes: “A society which loses a sense of shared broad and strong identity is unable to welcome a stranger…. What makes us different is enriching only as long as we are all aware that we have something uniting us. In the absence of a uniting bond, difference turns out to be threatening.” 

The vision of the left – of diversity as an end in itself, held together only by a loose idea of tolerance or secularity which no-one thinks is worth dying for, threatens to erode the ties that bind us, as it gives no clear centrifugal core that can hold us together. 

Christianity doesn’t give you an immigration policy. Both left and right can claim some legitimacy in the Christian narrative. However, what Christianity does provide is a community that offers a moral schooling centred on the worship of Jesus, as the one who shows us the true shape of human life, the necessity of self-sacrifice, not self-indulgence as the key to a functioning communal life, and the sacred value of each person - beliefs which, in turn, can welcome the stranger into a secure and confident home.

These things have, over centuries, seeped out from their intense core in the Christian Church into wider society. Arguably today, they are being eroded ironically more by secularism than by Islam.  

The real problem of our time is not mass immigration (as the right would have it) or the failure to fully open borders (for the left). It is the widespread erosion of Christian faith.  

As historian Bijan Omrani puts it: “Christianity’s disappearance is being accepted with little consideration or debate. The ebbing away of the faith is greeted with barely a fraction of the passion which accompanied Brexit.” Now this may largely be the fault of the church itself, a failure of courage about its own message, and appearing like another social lobbying group for various causes rather than a community centred on the worship of Jesus. But it's also down to the swathes of middle class, educated Britons – like Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn - who like to claim the name of Jesus when it suits, and who live off the cultural heritage of Christianity without investing into its future by going anywhere near a church.  

A good immigration policy needs the compassion that welcomes the vulnerable stranger. Yet it also needs a strong united community with a shared set of values, to welcome them into. Left and right may use Christianity in their rhetoric. But both miss something vital - that Christianity has to be practiced not just argued over. 

A renewed Christianity might be the saving of both right and left - or at least offer a deeper and richer narrative than either can offer on their own, one that provides a strong core that can holds a society together, yet also welcome the stranger as a gift and not a threat. 

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Article
Awe and wonder
Comment
Holidays/vacations
Monastic life
Psychology
5 min read

You can find the awesome in the everyday not just on holiday

The sources of awe are not scarce, but we do overlook them
A colourful street food van
Awesome in Singapore.
Swaroop Satheesh on Unsplash.

Are you starting to think about holidays? Have you heard yourself trotting forth the old clichés?  

“We’re looking forward to getting away from it all.”  

“We’re planning something special to take us out of ourselves.”  

“Well, it might not be that relaxing with the *kids/dogs/relatives* – but a change is as good as a rest!”  

Even if going for the budget-friendly ‘staycation’ this year, there is something about stepping out of our everyday busyness and chores that we find distinctly appealing. We hope that a change of routine, if not a change of place, will afford us some kind of renewal. On holiday we are freed to move to the edges of our lives, even if we can’t escape them entirely, and gain the view from the terrace over the box-hedge-maze of all things quotidian.    

But would it help us to visit that terrace a bit more often? This has long been the recommendation of scientists, poets and prophets alike. Most recently, a 2025 study from Yale University researched experiences of “awe” in the everyday. They recruited Long Covid patients and instructed them over a three-month period to slow down several times a day, paying attention to something that they valued or found amazing, whilst breathing and noticing any tangible responses or reactions in their body. The researchers called this process “awe”: Attention, Wait and Exhale. Amongst the participants in the study, the practice of AWE induced a measurable improvement in mental health.  

Of course, there have always been people who pause multiple times per day to turn their thoughts away from the mundane. In the Sixth Century, an Italian monk known as Benedict devised a “rule” for those living the monastic life, wherein brothers were required to pause for prayer eight times in every 24 hours – including in the middle of the night! This connected the members of the order not only with God but also with each other. Even if a brother found himself temporarily outside the cloister, going on a journey or working with the poor in the wider community, he was still expected to “join” his community in prayer at the regular hours, stopping whatever he was doing to pray in solidarity.  

There are still Benedictine orders today, and others who seek to “pray the hours” based on brother Benedict’s rule. But for most of us, our lives are far from this monastic ideal of community and regularity, even if we do practise the Christian faith. Within a busy schedule, stopping once or twice per day to pray can be a challenge, let alone eight times and regardless of convenience! No matter how much the scientists tell us that it will lift our spirits and do us good, such timefulness is the medicine that the modern life denies. But perhaps this is where the poets can supply deficiencies?  

In her great work, Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote: 

“Earth’s crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God; 
But only he who sees takes off his shoes— 
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” 

It’s a brilliant reminder that sources of awe are not scarce, even if we are prone to overlooking them. In speaking of “he who sees” Browning suggests that there are some people who see the world in a way that anticipates moments of wonder, and that such people are willing to “take off their shoes”. This is an allusion to the story of Moses in the Bible, who, when he encounters the miraculous mystery of the burning bush in the desert, is commanded by God to take off his shoes because the ordinary desert has now become sacred and holy ground – a place of awesome encounter.  

Perhaps we should take our cue from brother Benedict, and simply stop and kneel where we are, by the side of the path, in amongst the box-hedge.

This type of atunement is available to any of us, no matter how full the schedule. Even as I write – and you read – this article right now, any of us might pause to take in our surroundings and be able to find something to value and find amazing, a little bit of heaven crammed into earth. It might be a large thing, like the view from the window, or small thing, like the curling steam rising from a cup of coffee on the desk. Anything can become meaningful if we choose to observe its meaning; anywhere can become holy ground if we make it a place of encounter with all that is awe-inspiring and that transcends our daily lives.  

What stops us, I wonder? Is it that for me writing this article, and for you reading it, this is just another task that we feel we must finish so that we can hurry along to finishing something else? We must keep pressing on, threading our way through the box-hedge-maze today, because the time for visiting the terrace is not now, it’s later – in a few weeks’ time, when the schools break up and we can finally “get away from it all”. 

Perhaps we should take our cue from brother Benedict, and simply stop and kneel where we are, by the side of the path, in amongst the box-hedge. If we look closely, we might even notice that it is made up of a thousand million tiny leaves, each with its own little leafy life to live, each patterned with tiny, intricate veins. Beautiful, and for no obvious reason. Most people will never notice this – but we have seen it now. In the middle of all things quotidian, here is a common bush, and it is afire with God. There is nothing to stop us noticing this, and when we have done so, we can get up, take off our shoes, and continue to walk.

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free. 
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
 
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief