I have just listened to the most racist speech I have ever heard from a Christian minister in the UK.

The words of Canon Phil Harris could well have come out of the mouth of a Tommy Robinson-style Fascist ranting about his love of Britain from his sun lounger in Spain.

But they were not. They were delivered by a man in a clerical collar sitting in front of a bookcase containing Bibles and prayer books.

Phil Harris (pictured in the left of the picture, with his ally Calvin Robinson) belongs to a breakaway Anglican grouping; he is not ordained in the Church of England. While I am often critical of the Church of England and its leaders, I am pretty sure that they would not put up with the catalogue of misleading myths and unsubstantiated allegations that Harris used to effectively endorse the far-right thuggery of recent days.

Many of the most familiar tricks of racist rhetoric are here: associating migrants with crime, holding all migrants responsible for the actions of individuals, portraying the government as subservient to Islam, stating that migrants want to “overrun” and “subdue” the British people.

Apart from a brief quote from Jesus and a reference at the end to God’s blessing, you would not know the talk was being delivered by a Christian cleric if you closed your eyes.

Tapping into the crudest anti-migrant tropes, Harris declares that Britain has been “overrun” by “people who share different values and who seek to subdue us”. By “us” he presumably means white British people who share his values (and I’m speaking as a white British person who definitely does not share Harris’ values).

To justify all this, he expresses his horror at various recent murders and other crimes, including the horrific stabbing of children in Southport. Harris focuses on crimes committed (or allegedly committed) by migrants and people of colour. He could have listed just as many murders committed by white British people, but chose not to.

Harris refers to a woman in Ipswich “beaten to death by two Somali immigrants while walking her dog”. In fact there is no evidence that Somali migrants were responsible for this horrible murder. This claim was spread online by the likes of Tommy Robinson. The police have now confirmed that Somali migrants are not suspected of the crime.

Harris goes on to claim that:

“Knife murders and knife crime are out of control and they are normally committed by a certain demographic.”

This is all a pretty blatant attempt to portray migrants and people of colour as more likely to commit crime, and to hold them collectively responsible for the actions of a few individuals.

Harris frames his speech as a message to Keir Starmer. Early on, Harris says:

“It’s been three days since Sir Keir Starmer made his ill-fated communist speech when he told the concerned citizens of the United Kingdom that they were far-right.”

I had to replay that part several times to make sure I had heard him correctly. I struggled to believe that anyone would use the word “communist” to describe the policies of a man who has betrayed almost every socialist promise he made when he was elected leader of the Labour Party.

The people who Starmer described as far-right were attacking mosques, throwing bricks at police and destroying shops belonging to Muslims, migrants and other minorities. Harris calls these people “concerned citizens”.

Harris offers no criticism of economic structures or other systemic injustices in Britain. The only powerful people who he criticises are an ill-identified “liberal elite” who are supposedly giving into Islam. At the end of his talk, he tells far-right protesters (who he claims are really “centrists”) to protest peacefully, but he offers not a word of criticism of the violence of recent days.

His view of the far right is chilling:

“It’s the sensible people, the real grown-ups, who are now standing up for this nation and for liberty and for freedom and all that is good.”

While I have often criticised clergy for upholding capitalism and militarism, and even for failing to tackle racism, I have never seen anything so blatantly far-right come out of the mouth of a Christian cleric in Britain. Far-right clergy may be familiar in the US, but the Christian Right in Britain is smaller and not usually quite so extreme.

Thankfully, such views are expressed only by a tiny minority of active Christians in the UK. However, they seem to be getting more vocal now that the people they support have taken to the streets.

Harris is an ally of Calvin Robinson (pictured right, with Harris on the left), a priest in the Nordic Catholic Church and former GB News presenter with 357,000 followers on Twitter. Robinson speaks approvingly of calls to ban Islam in the UK, laments the decline of the British Empire and describes LGBT+ Pride marches as demonic.

Harris and Robinson led an online prayer service for “our nation” on Sunday evening. Comments on You Tube included people thanking them as they praised the far right. One wrote, “I’m praying for the lost and taken, and the English boys on the streets tonight protesting”.  

You would have no idea from these people that the Bible contains hundreds of statements encouraging people to welcome refugees and migrants, or that Jesus challenged racial divisions in his own society, or that the New Testament is full of encouragements to break down ethnic divisions.

Christianity is not simply an aspect of British culture, like roast beef or driving on the left. It is a faith rooted in the life, teachings, death and resurrection of a Middle Eastern refugee. Idolising nationality is incompatible with following Jesus.

As a Christian, I am acutely aware that Christians need to do much more to challenge the likes of Harris and Robinson. Their views border on Fascism and we must not let them misuse Christianity to spread their vile hatreds.