Since February 2022, a new crisis has been unfolding in Eastern Europe, following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia leading to a huge number of people having fled their homes – or what is left of their homes – to find safety elsewhere. Many have been welcomed in neighbouring European countries but in comparison far less by Britain. This is merely the most recent, development in the ongoing challenge of the British response to refugees.  Despite the hundreds who have drowned in the channel and the thousands in the Mediterranean these are merely recent examples in a decades-long history of such human suffering. They reflect a small proportion of the multitude of people who have been displaced from their homes worldwide as a result of war, government oppression, violence and social collapse. More than half of these were ‘internally displaced’ (i.e., refugees from their homes but remaining in their own country).  The vast majority of these are refugees in poor neighbouring countries.  Only a very small proportion have succeeded in finding their way to Europe, and an even smaller proportion are seeking to enter Britain.

Nevertheless, whatever the numbers coming here, the Church regards all these people as children of God, made in his image, whatever their nationality, culture or creed.  We owe each of them the fraternal love which arises from the recognition of our shared humanity, and our sharing in that image of God. This means that we cannot avoid our responsibility, when faced with their powerlessness and vulnerability, to work for their survival and their well-being. Of course, it is true that the arrival of large numbers of asylum seekers on our shores will present all kinds of difficulties: pressure on resources etc.  But the command to love our neighbour was not conditional, and it certainly was not conditional on it being easy or devoid of difficulties.

In the past refugees, while they may have been in need when they arrived in Britain, have subsequently contributed hugely to our community by their skills, their work, their culture, and their humanity. British government rhetoric around refugees, and the difficulties presented by their arrival, is often prefaced by reference to ‘our long and noble tradition of welcoming the persecuted’, and such like phrases.  These phrases are almost invariably followed by ‘but ....’.  And some new repressive measure is announced.

Is it actually true that we have a ‘long and noble tradition’ in this respect?  During the greatest moral test of the twentieth century, at least regarding refugees, this country did not demonstrate great generosity.   While six million Jews, and countless others of different ethnic and social groups, were annihilated by the machinery of the Third Reich, the UK admitted only around 60,000 Jewish refugees - about one percent of the number who perished. While around the world, governments blocked and hindered attempts by European Jews to find a place of refuge many Churches worked ceaselessly and often at great risk to find places of safety, to hide Jews from their persecutors, to work behind the scenes to rescue those in dire distress.  

We should perhaps therefore say that it is the Church which has a long and noble tradition, even when government institutions have failed.  In this perspective we should note the words of our present Pope, on the island of Lesbos on 16 April 2016, where thousands of people were arriving in flight from the civil war in Syria: ‘We are going to see the greatest humanitarian tragedy since World War II.... We hope that the world will heed these scenes of tragic and indeed desperate need and respond in a way worthy of our common humanity.’ 

But the Pope was not satisfied with pious wishes for ‘the world’ to heed the ongoing tragedy.  He sought concrete action - not only from governments and their agencies but he called for Christians and church communities to take direct action: ‘I appeal to the parishes, the religious communities, the monasteries and sanctuaries of all Europe to ... [each] take in one family of refugees.’ The Holy Father noted that, ‘It is violence to build walls and barriers to stop those who look for a place of peace.  It is violence to push back those who flee inhuman conditions in the hope of a better future.’

This is the authentic Christian language of the ‘long and noble tradition’.  It is a language the Church needs to recover, to amplify, and to act on, in a context where governments routinely violate it. The Church has a teaching about the dignity of human beings.   It is in the human person that we see the image of God.  It is our response to the hungry, the homeless, the frightened, the incarcerated, that constitutes our response to Christ himself.   If we place borders or social and economic order above the God-given vocation of love of neighbour, if we allow such things to silence our conscience and stifle our merciful response, we commit idolatry.  For we will have given to Caesar those things that belong to God.

We do not claim to have the technical expertise to resolve all the difficulties surrounding the growing number of refugees, forced migrants, displaced people.   But the situation requires not only a technical response, but a moral and spiritual one.   The humanity of the migrant or refugee demands a loving response.  

In the light of the foregoing:

• We urge our Christian brothers and sisters to respond to the call of Pope Francis for all parishes and religious congregations to offer hospitality to a refugee or refugee family.

• We call on government to prioritise not the inviolable sanctity of borders, but the inviolable sanctity of human lives, and especially the lives of the most powerless.

• We call on all Christians and all men and women of good will to work, to organise as communities and citizens, to bring the violence of ‘fortress Europe’ to an end, to create a continent of hospitality, and to commit to the creation of an international order in which the dignity of all is recognised. We urge our government to act together with the international community to address as a matter of urgency the situations around the world – situations of war, oppression, natural disaster, life-threatening poverty and political unfreedom – which cause people to flee their homes and seek refuge elsewhere.  This international action must involve governments, financial institutions, diplomatic and legal collaboration.

• We call on Christians, and all men and women of good will, to reject the language of hostility and suspicion towards refugees that is increasingly on offer, and to make that rejection known to our political leaders, to the media, and to our fellow citizens; thus we may learn to speak as a nation in a voice that is the true heir of that ‘long and honourable’ Christian tradition of hospitality.