Refugees: where is the Church Militant?

My text for the day is ‘By their fruits shall ye know them’, inspired by the 84 bishops who have called upon the Prime Minister to admit not 20,000 refugees over the next five years but 50,000, with 20,000 over the next 2 years.

 

Here is what they wrote.

 

"We believe such is this country's great tradition of sanctuary and generosity of spirit that we could feasibly resettle at least 10,000 people a year for the next two years, rising to a minimum of 50,000 in total over the five year period you foresaw in your announcement. Such a number would bring us into line with comparable commitments made by other countries. It would be a meaningful and substantial response to the scale of human suffering we see daily."

 

The bishops made no mention of the plight of their co-religionists or any proposal to help them preferentially.

 

And yet Christians are the most persecuted group in the world. Over 100,000 Christians are  killed every year because of  their faith. Over 200 million Christians are denied fundamental human rights  Of the 100-200 million Christians at risk, the majority are  in Muslim-dominated countries. Of the world's three largest religions Christians are the most  persecuted with 80% of all acts of religious discrimination being directed at them.

 

We may be witnessing the biggest ‘ethnic cleansing’ since the Holocaust, as ancient Christian communities disappear from Islamic countries. The worst offenders are  Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.

 

The work of Father Nour al Qusmusa, an Iraqi priest living in Jordan,  may be an example of what brave and dedicated clerics can achieve.

 

He went straight to the top and got agreement from King Abdullah to streamline the asylum process for Iraqi refugees. Caritas, the Catholic charity provides food and shelter. To date Father Nour has assisted 2,200 Christians to gain asylum in Jordan, although most want to emigrate to the UK, the US or Australia.

 

Compared with Father Nour’s resources, the assets of the Church of England are massive. It has property, money and manpower. It could shelter countless refugees in its redundant churches alone. But as they say in Suffolk ‘Talk’s cheap but money buys fat pigs! And don’t bother with the squatters in Calais. It transpires that they are overwhelmingly able-bodied young men who have never been in any danger – ‘economic’ migrants, not refugees at all.

 

So the big question for Their Graces is ‘What are you going to do about it? Apart from pontificate, that is.