The God of Jesus is a God who suffers with us

Posted on by symonhill

Two weeks ago (Sunday 5th July 2026) I led worship at New Road Baptist Church in Oxford. I was honoured to do so; this is the church that I attended for years while living in Oxford and where I served as a deacon from 2021 to 2023. I was delighted to receive such a warm welcome there again.

Below is the text of my sermon. To be clear: this is basically the text that I wrote beforehand but in practice I deviated from the wording at times and added in a few extra comments.

The sermon followed two Bible readings:

Song of Songs 2, 8-13

Matthew 11, 16-19 and 25-30

I have the privilege of working as a university chaplain at Aston University. It is a real honour to be part of a multifaith chaplaincy team in a multicultural city. I learn so much from students of and staff of many faiths and of none. And one of the great things about being a chaplain is that I don’t know from one day to the next who I will see or what sort of conversations I will have. Some conversations will be extremely challenging, such as when students turn up in a state of considerable distress. At other times, I’m just chatting with students over cups of tea.

Then there are times when we’re talking about faith. Students of many faiths and none show a great ability to listen to each other about matters of faith and values. And I often find myself being asked questions about Christian faith, about Jesus and about the Bible.

Muslim students who want to know about Christianity often ask me, “What’s the difference between Catholics and Protestants?”. A Jewish student once asked me, “Do Christian deliberately make enemies so that they can love them?”

At times I am really saddened by how many non-religious students expect Christians to be judgemental. There are people who imagine that the Bible consists largely of lists of rules to be obeyed and sins to be condemned. And I cannot blame people for thinking this. It is not their fault. It is our fault. Well, perhaps not all of us individuals! But it is the fault of Christians. Christians have all too often given the impression that Christianity is all about condemning people.

Perhaps one reason why some people assume that the Bible is full of harsh rules and condemnations is that sometimes we don’t trust people to open the Bible and read it for themselves.

I recently experienced the surprised reaction of an atheist student who randomly opened a Bible in the Chaplaincy and found himself reading the book of Leviticus. Along with some rules that he found objectionable, he was taken aback to find a strong emphasis on justice for the poor, with rules to prevent poor people being exploited, far more radical than anything we encounter in society today. There are some parts of the Bible that even many Christians don’t talk about very often!

That leads me to the Lectionary readings for today. As we heard earlier, one of this week’s readings is from the Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon. It’s not a book that appears often in the Lectionary. Are the Lectionary-compilers are nervous of letting us look at it?

Song of Songs is an erotic poem hidden in the middle of the Bible. Hidden in plain sight, there it is in every copy of the Bible but rarely quoted. It is full of comments about passionate, physical love: “The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills”. The two main characters express affection and enthusiasm for each other – and for each other’s bodies. The passage that we read today is one of the milder excerpts from the Song of Songs. If you want to read the harder stuff, I recommend reading the whole Song of Songs, because the 18-rated passages won’t appear in the Lectionary.

So what’s an erotic poem doing in the Bible? It is a joyful celebration of love, of healthy and godly sexual expression. The Song of Songs does not directly mention God, but it is honouring to God. God is positive about human bodies throughout the Bible. It is an outrage that in our sin we have turned our bodies into a reason to shame each other, rather than something to celebrate.

In the creation narrative in Genesis 2, the first humans are described as “naked and not ashamed”, it is only after sin comes in Genesis 3 that they become ashamed of their bodies. God’s desire is that we are at ease with our bodies. It is not human bodies that are sinful, but the misuse and mistreatment of human bodies.

Human bodies can be harmed and mistreated. Sexual expression can be abusive, selfish and dishonest. Bodies and sexuality in themselves are gifts from God.

We should not be surprised to find an erotic poem in the Bible. We should not be surprised that God joyfully celebrates us. God does not inflict suffering on us. God suffers with us.

And this relates to the second passage that we heard earlier. “Come to me who are weary and heavy laden,” said Jesus in the passage that we heard earlier from Matthew’s Gospel. Several scholars point out that the phrase “heavy laden” was used by various Jewish writers at the time to refer to the effects of poverty and oppression under the Roman Empire. As the biblical scholar Warren Carter puts it, Jesus’ listeners were afflicted by “the political, economic and religious elite, and by the control of social superiors”.

So: God is not a boss, not a tyrant inflicting suffering on us. God is with us in the midst of our suffering, celebrating our bodies, our humanity, calling us to repentance, offering forgiveness and calling us to trust in the Kingdom of God – a very different sort of “kingdom” from the powers of this world, the powers of money and military might. “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” says Jesus. Jesus’ yoke is not like the yoke of the Roman Empire or other oppressive forces. It is a gentle yoke for those who choose a different way.

Thus the good news of the gospel can never be cheap or easy good news. The good news that Jesus brings is much deeper than shallow reassurances. People know how horrible the world can be. You have only to switch on the radio or open a social media platform to be reminded. In a world that has enough food to feed everyone in it, if only we organised it differently, people die every day from preventable hunger. Can there be any bigger sin in the world? 

The good news of the gospel is not trite or simplistic. It is not simply telling people that everything will be okay. The gospel involves proclaiming hope in the midst of horror, love in the midst of hate, the good news of the gospel in the middle of the bad news of the world’s sin and injustice.

The God of Jesus Christ is not a god who causes suffering but a god who suffers with us. He endured one of the most unimaginably painful forms of death that human cruelty has ever invented. He was sentenced to death by the forces of the Roman Empire that were occupying Palestine.

The Roman authorities may have thought that they could easily get rid of a troublemaking Jewish peasant. They were wrong. When God raised Jesus from the dead, the victory of love over evil was assured. The forces of sin, oppression and empire were put on notice that their defeat had begun.

This does not mean that we should simply sit back, accept things as they are, and wait for God to intervene in the future. Jesus promised his followers that the Holy Spirit would be with them now. The Kingdom of God is both now and not yet, breaking into our mundane and often unjust realities even as we await its total fulfilment in the future.

Trusting in the power of God, the power of love, is an alternative to trusting in the idols that are worshipped by the powers of this world – the powers of money or markets or military might. Jesus makes clear that this will lead to negative reactions from those who prefer the status quo. In the passage we heard earlier, we saw Jesus noting this his critics attacked him for eating and drinking, despite having attacked John the Baptist for being an ascetic!

So Jesus’ followers might be smeared. They might face far worse. Earlier this year, Christian pastors in the US spoke of being detained by ICE, Trump’s deportation enforcers who are known for snatching people off the streets with very little accountability. I was struck by the words of the Anglican Bishop of New Hampshire, Rob Hirschfield, who asked his clergy to make sure their wills were written because he fears where the situation may be heading. He said, “It may be that now is on longer the time for statements, but for us, with our bodies, to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable”.

We may not be in that position in Britain. However, it is very clear that the far-right is on the march in Britain, with racist riots becoming increasingly common. Some of that racist violence is carried out by people claiming to defend what they describe as Christian Britain. Perhaps we need to ask what Jesus is calling us to do to defend the good news of God’s love.

Hatred and injustice will not win. Love will triumph. This is the Gospel we proclaim. It is the gospel of Jesus. It is the gospel of love. And it is good news.  

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My book, The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2015) can be bought in paperback or e-book, priced £9.99.

The gospel of hospitality in the midst of prejudice

Posted on by symonhill

On Sunday 14th June 2026 I had the privilege of leading worship at Foleshill Road United Reformed Church in Coventry. As usual, they were very welcoming. I am sorry that I forgot to post the text of my sermon on here before now!

My sermon is below (this is basically the text that I wrote beforehand but in practice I deviated from the wording at times and added in a few extra comments).

The sermon followed two Bible readings:

Genesis 18,1-15 and 21,1-17

Matthew 9,35 – 10,16

Usually when I preach, I focus on the Bible passages that are set in the Lectionary. One of the great thing about using the lectionary is that it leads us to reflect more deeply on parts of scripture that we might not otherwise think about as much. And today we’ve had two intriguing passages that seem to me to be very relevant to issues that we face in the world today.

I must admit that I’ve struggled a bit with that passage from Genesis about Abraham and his three visitors. But it’s fascinating. Although there are many things that we can learn from this passage, I want to suggest that one of the main themes of this story is hospitality. As we discussed earlier, hospitality takes many forms in many cultures. In the part of the world that we now often call the Middle East, there is a massive hospitality culture.

Abraham doesn’t know these three people, or anything about them, but his main desire when they come near his home is to give them food. I was recently discussing this passage with a Jewish friend who pointed out to me that it is not actually Abraham himself who prepares the food for his guests. It is Sarah who does the cooking and it is a servant boy who kills the calf. Though to be fair Abraham seems to serve the food.

We could spend a lot of time discussing who the guests are. People have spent centuries upon centuries reflecting upon the guests’ identity and discerning possible answers. The idea that they were in some sense divine, or at least messengers from God, goes back long into Jewish tradition, while within Christian tradition, there is long tradition of associating these visitors with the Trinity. Glimpses of God are partial, messages are mysterious and yet in offering hospitality to these apparently random passers-by, Abraham, Sarah and their household are able to encounter something of God. They would not have done so if Abraham had not run to greet them. I think it is crucial to note that it is hospitality, an openness to the other, that leads to this encounter with the divine.  

The second passage – from Matthew’s Gospel – is also about hospitality. Now I admit that we don’t have time to go into as much detail with this passage as I would like to – but then I often don’t have time to go into passages as much as I would like to! In this passage, Jesus tells his disciples to focus on taking his message to Jews rather to Gentiles and Samaritans, but this is clearly a stage in a process; later in the same Gospel, in Matthew, Jesus tells his followers to take the gospel to “all nations”. 

In the Genesis passage, Abraham and his household offer hospitality. In the Matthew passage, Jesus tells his followers to expect hospitality.

He tells them to take no gold, silver or copper, no extra tunics or sandals because “workers deserve their food”. Jesus seems to say that we should prepared not only to offer hospitality but to receive it, to assert our rights as well as to respect those of others. This may come as a surprise to some people. So I must go back to something we discussed earlier: the hospitality culture in the Middle East, still there now let alone in the time of Jesus.

Of course the form that hospitality takes varies from culture to culture. But hospitality has always been central to Christianity, whatever cultural forms Christianity takes. The Letter to the Hebrews declares, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” St Benedict, founder of the Benedictine order of monks, told his monks to greet ever visitor to the monastery as if they were welcoming Christ himself.

Hospitality to strangers is not an invitation to naivety. We have to be careful about what today we call safeguarding. But being careful does not mean distrusting people just because they are strangers, or different to us. They, like us, are made in God’s image. God loves them just as God loves us.

The apostle Paul teaches in Galatians that “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, because you are all one in Christ Jesus”. The love of strangers, the love across barriers of difference, is central to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is why it is so appalling to see people on far-right marches, with racist messages, claim that they are defending “Christian values”. They are doing the opposite.

With the coming of Jesus, divisions of nationality, class, gender and status are overcome by the Kingdom of God. This is a central aspect of the gospel that we as Christians proclaim!

However, I suspect that most of us exclude people far more than we like to think we do. We may often do so unconsciously. When I started a new job a few years ago, I was shown round by two colleagues who said they would introduce me to “everyone” who worked there. At one point, we passed the cleaners as they went about their work. I paused uncertainly as my colleagues carried on walking. It was clear that “everyone” did not include the cleaners.

What does it really mean to be hospitable? I work as a chaplain in a multi-faith chaplaincy team at Aston University. I would like to tell you about a student who I met a couple of years ago. I’m going to call him Matthew. That’s not his real name, but I want to respect his privacy. Matthew was a postgraduate student from Nigeria.

Matthew turned up at the Chaplaincy one day in a state of considerable sadness. It was only a few weeks after he had arrived in Britain. His parents back home in Nigeria had discovered that he was gay. They had immediately broken off contact with him. On top of the unimaginable distress that this caused him, they had withdrawn financial support and stopped paying his tuition fees, meaning Matthew faced destitution and removal from his course.

If Matthew returned to Nigeria, he would be arrested for the crime of having sex with another man. More than that, he could be murdered, a not uncommon fate for gay people in his community.

I thank God that my colleagues and I were able to help Matthew to access some short-term financial support, and to introduce him to a church locally that welcomed him and did not condemn him for his sexuality. He decided to apply for asylum in the UK and I did what I could to introduce him to people who could advise him on the process. He was welcomed by a group of LGBT+ asylum-seekers, most of whom are Christians or Muslims, who gave him a sense of community and encouragement.

But then one day when Matthew came to see me in the Chaplaincy he had an awkward question. Despite the heartbreaking split with his family and the fears for his future, he had felt uplifted in the UK by the welcome and support he had encountered from the church he attended and from the LGBT+ asylum-seekers’ group. Up until that point he had not paid much attention to the British media. But now he had started to do so. He saw with alarm the way that asylum-seekers were described in many mainstream British newspapers. He was baffled by coverage that implied that life was easy for asylum-seekers when he knew from experience that the process of proving the need for asylum was tough, confusing and humiliating. Why, he asked, did so many British people seem to hate asylum-seekers?

I sat there facing him, and I was ashamed. Ashamed that parts of the British media, and parts of Britain, had descended to this. Ashamed that one of the richest countries in the world, with one of the highest military budgets in the world, claimed to be unable to meet the basic needs of its population as well as to welcome those fleeing persecution. But also I was ashamed of myself, and of the Christian Church, that we have not done more to stand up to the sort of narrative, to these sort of attitudes.

Now of course, there are many important debates to be had about migration, about asylum, about the right policies to adopt for different situations. I am sure that those of us in this church, like Christians generally, will disagree with each other about which party to vote for and which policies to endorse. And that’s a good thing. I don’t trust churches whose members all agree with each other! However, I suggest that hospitality, support for people in distress, refusal to demonise groups of people, rejection of lies – these should be principles that all Christians can stand for. And that means challenging the anti-migrant, anti-asylum-seeker and frankly racist narratives that are gripping much of the UK.

How did we arrive at the point in which it is normal to imply that all asylum-seekers and migrants are murderers and rapists because a tiny percentage of individual murderers and rapists happen to be asylum-seekers or migrants? One of the surest signs of prejudice against a group is to hold all its members responsible for the actions of individuals.

We cannot pretend that these things are not happening. Nor can we as Christians ignore the Bible’s consistent emphasis on the need to welcome the stranger. Take Leviticus 19,34: “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” This is not simply a one-off quote but typical one.

It would be a lot easier for me not to preach about this subject. But faced with lectionary readings on hospitality in the midst of racist riots, it would have been bizarre to avoid it.

Nonetheless, I am conscious of the danger of hypocrisy. If we criticise anti-migrant protesters for demonising others, do we risk demonising them? Do we risk talking of all of them as if they are all the same? The New Testament does not teach us to pretend we have no enemies. But it teaches us to love everyone, to love our enemies even though they are our enemies. It teaches us to recognise our own sin, and our own complicity in the sins of others.

So as we challenge exclusion, and racism, and prejudice, and the denial of hospitality, let us have the courage to ask ourselves. Who are we excluding? To whom are we failing to show hospitality? In the church, in our politics, or simply in our everyday lives, who do we demonise, overlook or simply leave out?

The reading that we heard from Matthew’s Gospel finishes with some challenging advice from Jesus: he urges his followers to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves”. I think that’s a good phrase to reflect on as we think about how to live, how to operate in a world that increasingly seems to be dominated by hatred, bigotry and racism. We are called to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves”.

That is very different to the attitudes that we often encounter in the world. There are people who cynically maintain that to be realistic we must water down our principles and take what we can for ourselves. Some give the impression that anyone who acts compassionately is unrealistic and naïve. But Jesus teaches us that we can be realistic about the horrors of the world – wise as serpents – while remaining compassionate and principled – innocent as doves.

Confronting hatred and racism is not easy. The situation we face may get worse before it gets better, and churches may have a tough part to play in the struggles ahead. So let us be prepared to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, striving to love our enemies and recognising that hospitality is central to biblical faith. As the Letter to the Hebrews says, in showing hospitality to strangers, we may entertain angels unawares. Or at the very least, we may entertain human beings, created in the very image of God.

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My book, The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2015) can be bought in paperback or e-book, priced £9.99.

Reading right-wing newspapers in a heatwave

Posted on by symonhill

With temperatures soaring and a new Prime Minister on the way, this seems to be the approximate content of most right-wing newspapers in the UK this week:

Page 1: Labour must ditch lefty Net Zero targets!

Page 2: It’s very hot!

Page 3: Don’t let lefty climate zealots into Andy Burnham’s new cabinet

Page 4: Temperatures breaking records around the UK!

Page 5: Lock them up! Don’t go soft on extremist climate protesters

Page 6: Top tips on keeping cool in this sweltering heat

Page 7: Burnham must raise defence spending! We need to spend money on things that keep us safe, not on tackling climate change

Page 8: Why are we not better prepared for heatwaves?

Page 9: The Green Party are dangerous left-wing extremists

Page 10: Comment piece: Well, we coped in 1976! (Although that was a one-off and now heatwaves happen every year, but we won’t mention that).

Page 11: Comment piece: Why we must invest in North Sea oil & gas

Back page: Sports events cancelled due to the heat  

Far-right Pastor Chris Wickland joins racist rioters in Southampton

Posted on by symonhill

Looking at the pictures of the far-right demonstrations in Southampton last week, you may have seen a man in a clerical collar.  

This was Pastor Chris Wickland, minister of Living Word Church in Titchfield in Hampshire.  

Despite my many criticisms of Wickland, I can’t imagine him personally chucking a dustbin at a police officer. But his views are not much different to many of those who did.

Who is Chris Wickland?

Wickland is one of a small but increasingly vocal and emboldened number of out-and-out far-right clergy from independent churches or fringe denominations who are explicitly allied to figures such as Tommy Robinson.

Earlier in the day, Wickland was interviewed by Tommy Robinson himself. In the interview, posted on Instagram, Wickland declares that “minorities are being elevated way beyond” the majority.

Chris Wickland’s social media feeds are fall of vicious posts dehumanising Muslims, migrants and LGBTQ+ people, along with support for the far-right in the USA. He has a tendency of using the word “effeminate” to describe Christians and churches with whom he disagrees.

Chris Wickland has at least showed himself willing to engage in discussion with people with whom he disagrees. That is to say, he did when I met him in December, when I went along to watch part of Tommy Robinson’s “carol service” in central London. Wickland appeared on the stage next to Robinson wearing clerical dress, a great piece of visual propaganda for Robinson’s claim to be defending “Christian” Britain.

Tommy Robinson didn’t stop when I called out to him as he walked past me on the way out of the “carol concert”. Chris Wickland did, however, stop when I challenged him and was at least willing to answer my questions about his views. He was polite, but his arguments were full of the most tortuous twisting of scripture to fit passages that were ripped from their context to fit into a nationalist, racist agenda.

Making the far-right seem respectable

None of the clergy who turn up at Tommy Robinson events belong to mainstream denominations – but this shouldn’t make us complacent. Rikki Doolan, who seems to have played a major role in Robinson’s reported conversion to Christianity, is another independent minister. Cei Dewar, Phil Harris and Brett Murphy, whose views are essentially fascist, are associated with the Confessing Anglican Church.

At the same time, Nigel Farage and the Reform Party seem to have given up even the pretence of not being racist following the tragic murder of Henry Nowak. Reform Party members include a large number of Christians in mainstream denominations. Reform make much of their belief in defending a “Christian” Britain (which never really existed) and upholding “Christian values” (which they somehow square with turning back refugees and cutting support for the people most in need).

However marginal figures such as Wickland may be, they are increasingly confident and explicit in their views as the Overton Window in Britain lurches far to the right.

When casual observers see a man in a clerical collar in the footage of violent racist demonstrators, perhaps the biggest fault lies with mainstream church leaders who are failing to recognise the size of the problem or to do much about it. Those of us who reject the far-right because of our Christian faith need to be far more vocal and visible in saying so.

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My book, The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2015) is available in paperback or e-book for £9.99.

Reform’s Makerfield candidate is bearing false witness about “Christian heritage”

Posted on by symonhill

The Reform party’s candidate in the Makerfield by-election is misleading voters to whip up anti-Muslim feelings. He is misleading voters while claiming to defend Christianity.

Robert Kenyon, who is hoping to beat Labour’s Andy Burnham on 18th June, posted a picture of himself on social media on Thursday (29th May) outside a building in the constituency. Alongside the image, he wrote:

“St Mary’s Church in Ince once served the people of Makerfield. Now it’s a mosque.

“Our Christian heritage is being erased. Reform UK will ban the conversion of churches and protect Britain’s traditions.”

At best, Kenyon has failed to check basic facts about an important issue before commenting on it publicly. At worst, he has wilfully misled voters.

Some fairly basic research reveals that the building in question stopped being used by St Mary’s Church some years ago.

It is not and never has been a mosque. It is a building for the community that hosts a food bank and includes a prayer room used by Muslims. The food bank is open to local people of all faiths and none.

The Reform party – and other far-right groups – have recently been whipping up fears of churches being turned into mosques. The number of occasions on which this has happened in reality are tiny.

Yet by pushing the “churches-into-mosques” narrative, the far-right are fuelling the narrative that Islam is threatening and replacing Christianity. This of course is a thinly veiled way of suggesting that people of colour are a threat to white people.

Perhaps the nastiest part of Kenyon’s tweet is the framing of the first sentence:

“St Mary’s Church in Ince once served the people of Makerfield. Now it’s a mosque.”

St Mary’s Church used to serve the people of Makerfield says Kenyon. He then says, “Now it’s a mosque”.

Thus being a mosque is presented not simply as the opposite of being a church but as the opposite of serving the community.

This is nonsense. Many mosques, like many churches, serve their local communities, including people of other faiths and no faith. Of course, there are other mosques and churches that do less for their communities. But it is utter nonsense to claim that a church will serve the community but a mosque won’t.

As a Christian, I am disgusted by Reform UK’s misuse of Christianity. I know that many other Christians do too, although church leaders are often far too slow to speak out against the way that Reform UK – and others – are speaking about such things.

Reform UK and much of the rest of the far-right seem to think that Christianity is a synonym for Britishness, or at least white Britishness, and a very narrow form of white Britishness at that.

It is not. Following Jesus is at odds with Reform UK’s vicious hostility to refugees, their candidates’ refusal to repent of the harm they have caused, the demonisation of minorities and Kenyon’s vicious misogyny.

Being a Christian is not about standing in front of a community building that includes a Muslim prayer room and telling lies about it.  

Christians must speak out about anti-Semitism in churches

Posted on by symonhill

As a non-Jewish Christian, I have to be honest and speak out about the anti-Semitism that I have frequently witnessed in Christian churches. I wrote a comment piece about this issue for this week’s Church Times. The article is copied below.

It is much easier to condemn something if we think that we are not part of it. When it comes to anti-Semitism, churches have historically been part of the problem. Do we have the courage to admit that, in many ways, we still are?

Church leaders have rightly expressed horror at recent anti-Semitic violence in Britain. Other faith groups have made similar statements. As Rabbi Lev Taylor put it last month, “When Finchley Reform Synagogue was threatened . . . their local community came to uplift them. Mosques, churches, and community centres. The Lebanese community brought doughnuts. . . These people don’t hate us: they stand with us.”

Nonetheless, if responses from Christians are to carry weight, we must recognise that church teachings have for centuries played a major part in fuelling Jew-hate. The deep roots of Christian anti-Semitism are still bearing bad fruit today.

I spoke in a sermon last year of the need to support innocent people under attack, whatever their nationality or religion. Referring to suffering that I had witnessed in the West Bank, I made my opposition to Israeli occupation clear. Shaking hands after the service, I was shocked when two people made anti-Semitic comments.

One blamed “Jews” rather than Israeli authorities. The other talked about an unpleasant Jewish teacher whom she had known as a child. It took me a moment to work out why she thought this was connected to my sermon.

Another example that I could cite was someone making an anti-Semitic comment to a Jewish friend who accompanied me to church.

To learn about prejudice, we need to put the voices of those affected in the centre. Attempts to understand anti-Semitism must begin by listening to Jews. As a non-Jew, I have been hesitant to write about this. There is a danger that this hesitation becomes an excuse for not speaking out about the reality: that churches are the context in which I have most often witnessed anti-Semitism.

Jesus’s Jewishness is, thankfully, discussed much more widely nowadays, but anti-Semitism continues to infect sermons and hymns.

Take the Good Samaritan. Like me, you have probably heard preachers say that the priest and the Levite failed to help because they feared ritual uncleanliness. Discussing this passage with Jews, I find that this almost never comes up. They say that the need to save life takes precedence. I am sure that most of these preachers do not intend to promote anti-Semitism, but they unwittingly perpetuate an image of Jews as ritualistic and rule-obsessed. Some prejudices could be overcome simply by listening to members of the group about whom we are talking.

As a university chaplain, I witness students of varied faiths having difficult, but fulfilling, conversations about each other’s beliefs and assumptions. I fear that only a minority of churches readily engage in such dialogue.

One issue frequently mentioned by Jews in conversation with Christians is the much repeated — and harmfully inaccurate — claim that Jesus was crucified by “the Jews”.

The order to execute Jesus was given by the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate. The situation is complicated by the Gospels’ emphasis on the guilt of Jewish leaders. But, as many biblical scholars point out, these were Jewish leaders who were collaborating with Rome. The High Priest held his position only with Roman approval. They were not representative of Jews as a whole.

To acknowledge that Jesus was killed by Roman imperial power is to recognise that he was a threat to the powerful. We cannot tackle anti-Semitism without engaging with complex issues of power, injustice, and structural sin.

Alongside recent anti-Semitic hate crimes, including the murders in Manchester and stabbings in London, there have been arson attacks on Muslim places of worship in Blackburn and Peacehaven. A Sikh woman in Walsall was raped by an Islamophobe who mistook her for a Muslim. There are, sadly, many more examples. To oppose such outrages effectively means speaking out against them all.

Of course, some have an interest in narrowing the issues. Anti-Semites, ludicrously, blame all Jews for Israeli violence in Palestine. The mirror image of this bigoted claim is seen in the Israeli government’s attempt to portray anyone who speaks of genocide in Gaza — even the United Nations and Amnesty International — as anti-Semitic.

A commitment to the value and dignity of all people leads many to oppose anti-Semitism and Hamas for the same reason that they campaign against Israeli atrocities. None the less, I am alive to the increasingly urgent need for anti-war campaigners to speak out much more clearly against the anti-Semitic attitudes that are found among a vocal minority within movements for Palestinian rights.

I cannot conscientiously do this if I do not speak also about anti-Semitism in churches. Christians are right to stand in solidarity with Jews in resisting anti-Semitism. To do so effectively, we must — to quote a famous Jew — cast the plank out of our own eye.

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Symon Hill’s books include The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2015)

University chaplaincies under threat

Posted on by symonhill

I wrote this article for the Church Times, who published it on 24th April 2026.

If you took your lead from the more disheartening corners of social media, you might think that humans could never get on with people different from themselves. I am lucky to have regular reminders that this is untrue — because I work in a university chaplaincy.

This really hit me after the far-right riots of summer 2024. That September, students of many backgrounds, faiths, and nationalities turned up at our university and undermined all the far-right’s myths in the first week of term.

One day that week, in the chaplaincy, I saw a student in a kippah and a student in a hijab chatting about the differences between halal and kosher. The next day, a student with colourful hair and revealing clothes sat alone at a board games event before a group of conservatively dressed Muslim women invited her to join their game.

At our weekly philosophical discussion group, I have watched students with passionately different views on the British Empire restrain themselves from interrupting as they listened to one another. Members of a generation routinely patronised in the media show a greater ability at dialogue than politicians three times their age.

Several academic studies show that Christian chaplains in higher education (HE) still outnumber chaplains of other faiths put together, but the numerical dominance is declining. There seems to have been a particular buzz around Muslim chaplaincy recently, with new books, conferences, and courses.

Christians have nothing to fear from multifaith chaplaincy: following Christ surely leads us to serve our neighbours of all faiths and none. Some students who come to our chaplaincy seek reassurance that our purpose is not to convert them. When we focus, instead, on meeting their needs, they are left with a much better impression of Christianity; and some end up asking about Christian faith.

The Revd Dr Jenny Morgans, an Anglican chaplain at King’s College, London, and author of Christian Women at University, reports that “chaplaincies particularly serve students experiencing isolation, including international students and LGBTQIA+ students, who may feel marginalised in other religious spaces”.

This echoes my experience. I am asked about Jesus and faith by students who would be unlikely to go to church — including some who would be afraid to do so — to ask such questions. Yet, I know one senior church leader who advocated withdrawing chaplaincy funding because it did not result in more people turning up at his churches.

The threat to Christian chaplaincy in HE does not come from Muslim, Jewish, or Humanist chaplaincy: it comes from university funding decisions — and from attitudes in churches.

Since the HE sector is facing funding problems, axing chaplaincy budgets can seem — to the sort of university managers who cannot fit pastoral care into a spreadsheet — a quick way to save a few pounds. But not all chaplains are funded by universities themselves. Traditionally, about half of the funding for Christian chaplains comes from churches. Some of that money is drying up.

It is not easy to find up-to-date statistics: several denominations are astonishingly bad at providing them. Go to a gathering of HE chaplains, however, and you will find that the mood of enthusiasm for our work is marred by a thread of sadness about cuts and under-appreciation.

The funding picture is varied, but some trends are visible. While academic research is inevitably a few years behind, experience suggests that it is no longer as unusual as it was in England to find a university without an Anglican chaplain.

Having spoken with several chaplains who are wrestling with funding negotiations, I do not want to put their chances in jeopardy by naming specific universities; but the examples are not hard to find.

The withdrawal of denominational funding can happen quickly and have significant consequences. A recent Roman Catholic decision to scrap the funding for both RC chaplains at a large redbrick university left the university’s chaplaincy team almost halved, putting significant strain on the other chaplains.

In the Midlands, meanwhile, an informal deal between the Methodists, Baptists, and United Reformed Church has broken down. There was a “gentlemen’s agreement” about which denomination would fund a Free Church chaplaincy post at which universities. But, as new people in each denomination faced pressure over budgets, they did not feel bound by a deal that sounded as though it had been written on the back of an envelope in a pub two decades before.

There need to be more than clearer structures and accountability, however: there need to be changes in culture so that chaplaincy is truly valued. Churches can learn from chaplaincies, and so can the world as a whole.

It is not true that difference must lead to prejudice, and disagreement must lead to hatred. It is true that God has created human beings different from one another and yet able to live and learn together. Many university chaplaincies testify to this truth through their everyday work. It is work that churches can do much more to support.

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Symon Hill is a Baptist chaplain at a university in the West Midlands. His books include The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2015).

Palm Sunday was an illegal demonstration

Posted on by symonhill

This morning (on Sunday 29th March 2026) I had the privilege of leading worship for Palm Sunday at Sherbourne Community Church in Coventry.

Below is the text of my sermon (this is basically the text that I wrote beforehand but in practice I deviated from the wording at times and added in a few extra comments).

The sermon followed two Bible readings:

Matthew 21, 1-11

Psalm 118, 1-2 and 19-29

The first Palm Sunday sounds like it was pretty chaotic. People cheering and shouting “Hosanna”. Branches and leaves being waved. Cloaks being thrown on the floor in front of Jesus on a donkey. It doesn’t sound like an orderly event.

But if we look at the gospels’ descriptions more closely, it seems that it was much better organised that we might assume. Jesus and his followers had to arrange things in advance so that, for example, the disciples who were sent to fetch the donkey would know where to find her.

When they found the donkey – or, in Matthew’s version, the donkey and the colt – they had to say specific words: “the Lord needs them”. Clearly the people looking after the donkey and the colt did not know these disciples personally. It sounds as though the words were prepared in advance as a sign that they had come from Jesus. They were basically a sort of password.

There are other passages later than the one we’re looking at today that give further clues – about what to say, who to follow and so on. They all give the impression of something that had been carefully arranged – and arranged secretly.

They had to arrange this event – or at least some of this event – in secret, because what they were doing was illegal. To put it in modern terms, they were organising an illegal march.

So why would a donkey-ride be so controversial? Well, the Jews of Judea and Galilee were under the rule of the Roman Empire. It was a brutal rule. Many historians have analysed how Roman rule had increased poverty among the Jews.

Several attempts at rebellion had been unsuccessful. The Jews were allowed to keep worshipping in the Jerusalem Temple, but only as long as they offered regular prayers for the Roman Emperor and didn’t disturb Roman rule. The Jewish priests who were by then in charge in the Temple were those who had been approved by the Romans because they co-operated with Roman rule. They were viewed by certain other Jews as collaborators.  The whole situation was uneasy, unpredictable and volatile.

The most volatile time of the year was Passover, the major annual Jewish festival when Jews celebrate liberation from slavery. Jewish sensitivities were heightened. The Roman authorities became nervous. An account from the time by the writer Josephus records how the Romans increased the number of troops around Jerusalem as thousands more Jews poured into the city to celebrate the Passover festival.

And in the run-up to Passover, Jesus rides towards Jerusalem on a donkey. What was Jesus trying to say?

Well, firstly, Jesus acted like a king. “Hosanna”, which means “save us”, was traditionally something shouted out to a king. Throwing your cloak on the ground was a sign of loyalty, often used in royal processions. Waving branches and leaves also gave the impression of a royal procession. We didn’t hear mention of palm leaves in that reading from Matthew earlier, incidentally, because it’s John’s Gospel that mentions that palm leaves, but the gospels all talk of something similar. Jesus’ supporters acted like people welcoming a king.

But as far as the Romans were concerned, the only king who these people were supposed to follow was the Roman Emperor! It was treason to suggest anything else. Decades earlier, the Romans had set up a puppet king, Herod the Great, and called him “King of the Jews”. He was the Herod who had tried to kill Jesus as a baby. But by the time that Jesus was an adult, Judea was ruled directly by a Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. Occasionally Jewish rebels had tried to lead revolts and called themselves “King of the Jews”. The Romans had crushed and killed them. Calling yourself a king without the Romans’ permission tended to end with a death sentence.

But the second message that Jesus gave out was quite different. Although on the one hand, Jesus acted like a king, on the other hand, he really doesn’t. Kings ride on warhorses or chariots. They don’t ride on slow, stubborn animals such as donkeys! It would be like a president or a celebrity turning up not in a limousine but on a pushbike. Jesus would have looked a bit silly. This was a sort of royal procession, but in some ways, it was a parody of a royal procession. It was poking fun at royal processions.

But Jesus wasn’t the first person to think of a king of a donkey. The prophet Zechariah told the people of Jerusalem that their king would come “humble and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (that’s Zechariah 9,9). Zechariah went on to say that this king, rather than bring war, would “command peace to the nations”.

The Jews who saw Jesus on a donkey would have known Zechariah’s prophecy. They would have known that Jesus’ supporters were proclaiming him a king. But perhaps they would also have recognised that Zechariah was not writing about a warlike king. After his donkey-parade into Jerusalem, Jesus didn’t take the city by force. Instead he led his disciples in a protest at the Jerusalem Temple, overturning tables and challenging moneychangers, causing disruption without physical harm to anyone.

The donkey ride and the Temple protest are the loving, nonviolent but forceful actions of a king whose power does not lie in coercion and military might but in love and truth. The upside-down Kingdom of God cannot fit easily into the categories of this world.

The donkey parade must have been extremely confusing for the Roman authorities. Perhaps that’s why they didn’t break it up. Or perhaps they were a bit less concerned because it was on the edge of Jerusalem rather than the middle. However, I suspect that they were afraid of the crowds if they had tried to stop it, so they let it continue for the time being. It’s worth noting that when Jesus was eventually arrested, it was under cover of darkness and he ironically asked the soldiers why they had not arrested him at the Temple “in the daytime”.

Nonetheless, the people who cheered Jesus and waved palm leaves were taking a massive risk. They didn’t know whether the Roman authorities would react or not. They shouted “hosanna” and celebrated. In the face of injustice and under threat of retribution, they nonetheless rejoiced in love and truth and justice.

What risks have we taken for Jesus? Or what risks are we prepared to take? We might not always think of it as taking risks for Jesus. We may take risks for the sake of love and compassion when we reject the temptation to choose greed or selfishness.

It is risky at times to choose the truth of human dignity and justice over colluding with unjust economic and social systems. It is not easy to do this. We are all broken people in a broken world. We are all compromised by the structures of the world around us. But however much we fail, God keeps offering forgiveness. Jesus shows us the way.

Riding a donkey into Jerusalem, Jesus reminded us that we can celebrate love and truth in the midst of injustice and suffering – without denying the suffering. Remember the passwords and the preparation for collecting the donkey? It’s a reminder that sometimes we need to prepare carefully together, supporting each other and seeking Christ’s guidance, if we are going to challenge the established way of doing things. In confronting injustice without using violence or promoting hatred, Jesus reminds us to love our enemies.

As Jesus rode on that donkey, he knew he would soon face crucifixion. God raised him from the dead, and the powers of sin, death and oppression were put on notice that their days were numbered. The power of love and justice and truth – the power of God revealed in Jesus – will ultimately win out.

It is this power that makes it possible for us to acknowledge the vicious reality of the suffering of the world and still proclaim hope that love will triumph. This is not a naïve hope that denies suffering, but a deep hope rooted in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So like Jesus and his followers on that donkey-ride into Jerusalem, let us defy the powers of injustice, put our faith in the God of love and cry out, “Hosanna! Jesus is king!”.

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My book, The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2015) can be bought in paperback or e-book, priced £9.99.

1,000-strong Christian Bloc joins Together Alliance march against the far-right

Posted on by symonhill

You can tell when a march is big if you’re near the back of it. It you have to wait for hours before you even start moving, it’s a good sign that there are far more marchers than were expected.

The people at the front of yesterday’s Together Alliance march in central London reportedly reached the end of the route only shortly after those of us near the back had begun to march. Organisers estimated that half a million people had taken part.

There were people of many faiths and none, of many backgrounds, ages, nationalities, sexualities and genders; students, workers, unemployed people, young people and pensioners. There were trades unions, community organisations, faith groups and campaign networks.

We were united in rejecting the racism and hatred peddled by far-right groups such as Reform UK, Restore Britain and Unite the Kingdom. We were united for an inclusive, compassionate Britain in which resources are divided fairly and minorities are not scapegoated for the actions of billionaires and the consequences of unjust structures.

Amongst the many “blocs” (loosely organised sections) of the march was the Christian Bloc.

The point of the Christian Bloc was not to divide Christians from the other marches. That would undermine the unity that the march was championing! Rather, it was to the challenge the far-right’s attempts to co-opt Christianity. Christian nationalism has been increasingly visible in the UK in the last two years or so. Far-right figures claim to be defending “Christian Britain” as an excuse to demonise Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ+ people and others. We wanted to send a clear message that these people don’t speak for Christianity. There are many British Christians ready to stand in solidarity with our neighbours of other faiths and none.

When the idea of a Christian Bloc was first talked about, I thought we might get a few dozen people – perhaps over a hundred if things went well. A few days ago, organisers from groups including Better Story and Christians for a Welcoming Britain were suggesting there would be hundreds.

But I still hadn’t quite taken it in. When friends messaged me to say they would be in the Christian Bloc, I responded by saying “See you there!” – or similar words. Christian blocs at protests are usually small enough that if you know someone else who is going, you can be fairly sure that you will bump into each other. It hadn’t occurred to me that the Christian Bloc would be so big that I would simply not see many friends or acquaintances who were also there.

My first big surprise came when I arrived at Oasis Church Waterloo for the pre-march service. There were, by my admittedly rather rough estimate, about 400 people there. They were struggling to fit more people in. The numbers increased as the Christian Bloc assembled. As we marched down Piccadilly, the Guardian estimated that there were 1,000 people on the Christian Bloc alone.

We were not of course the only Christians on the march. I know that there were other Christians in the trade union blocs, the refugee blocs, the LGBTQ+ Bloc and elsewhere. They included some who had attended the church service before the march began. Nonetheless, I am delighted that so many joined a bloc that was specifically there to challenge the far-right’s misuse of Christianity and to reject Christian nationalism.

As the Christian Bloc marched, it was great to share greetings and encouragement with others, including Jewish and Muslim groups marching near us.

Well done and thank you to everyone who took part or expressed support!

Christian nationalism may be growing in the UK. So is the resistance to it. We need to keep going!

Christians must stand up for Muslims’ right to pray in public

Posted on by symonhill

For the first time that I can remember in my lifetime, there are MPs calling for an end to freedom of religion in the UK.

Nick Timothy, little-known Tory front-bencher and Shadow Justice Secretary, last week attacked an entirely peaceful public iftar that had taken place in London’s Trafalgar Square. This Muslim event, which involves sharing food and includes prayer, was open to people of all faiths and none.

It was the sixth time it had happened, but perhaps Timothy had only just noticed it. The more likely explanation is that racist dog-whistling has become more politically acceptable than it was five years ago.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday, he attacked “the domination of public spaces”. Apparently with no sense of irony, he described this peaceful event that was open to all as an “act of domination and division”.

Nigel Farage – perhaps alarmed that far-right hatemongering was going on without him getting any headlines out of it – quickly joined in. In his usual style, he went further, and called for Muslim public prayer to be banned.

I cannot recall a previous case of a party leader (at least not the leader of a party mainstream enough to be in Parliament) calling for members of a particular religion not to be allowed to worship as a group in public.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has shamefully backed Nick Timothy, although they seem a bit vague about Farage’s “ban” call.

To their credit, some other Tory MPs have disassociated themselves from Timothy’s vile remarks, most notably Emma Best, the Tories’ deputy leader on the London Assembly. All the centrist and left-wing parties have thankfully condemned Timothy and Farage’s comments.

The controversy exposes the hypocrisy of right-wingers who like to condemn what they call “cancel culture” and who claim to be proud of Britain. Surely one of the greatest reasons to be proud of Britain is British traditions of freedom of religion and civil liberties. We have these rights because our ancestors struggled for them, often in the teeth of opposition from monarchs, militaries and – at times – religious leaders.

I am pleased to have seen a number of people of other faiths stand up for the right of Muslims to practise their religion.

 As a Christian, I am glad to see Christians challenging Farage and Timothy and speaking up for religious liberty. At the same time, however, I am disappointed. Christians as a whole, particularly Christian leaders, need to be far more vocal in showing solidarity with our Muslim neighbours.

As Christians we need have no fear of religious liberty. The Gospel of Christ advances by love and compassion, not by coercion and proscription. Many other religions such as Islam and Judaism share our trust in the God of love, even while we disagree about important matters such as the divinity of Jesus.

It is not other religions that pose the biggest threat to Christian faith. It is the destructive idols that we have created. These are the idols of money and markets and military might – and the idols of nationalism and sectarianism.

Most of the people who struggled for religious freedom in British history were themselves Christian history. As a Baptist I am proud that Baptists have always rejected state control of religion.

The first book calling for freedom of religion of Muslims and Jews in England was written in 1612 by Thomas Helwys, one of the first British Baptists. Helwys declared that, “The king is a mortal man, and not God, therefore he hath no power over the mortal soul of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual Lords over them”.

Calling for religious liberty was outrageously radical when Helwys wrote those words. In the 21st century, I would have thought that rejecting religious liberty would been far outside acceptable political debate. But far-right rhetoric has now become so mainstream that this is no longer the case.

Christians in general and church leaders in particular must speak up in support of Muslims who are under attack for peacefully praying. This is partly a matter of loving our neighbours as ourselves. It is partly a working out of Jesus’ teachings about breaking down barriers and recognising that those who are different to us are indeed our neighbours.

It is also a matter of self-interest. Every time that someone’s rights are suppressed, the restriction of the rights of others becomes more likely.

As the Jewish News put it on Thursday, “If you think that could not happen here, you are kidding yourselves. Uphold religious rights for all – you’ll never know when you’ll be glad that you did.”

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There will be a Christian bloc at the Together march on Saturday 28th March 2026 in central London. The march unites people of all faiths and none, including trades unions, migrant groups and community organisations, in challenging the far-right. Join us!