UKIP, homophobia and the real sin behind the floods

Posted on by symonhill

UKIP councillor David Silvester believes that Britain’s recent floods are the results of sin. You may be surprised to learn that I agree with him. There the agreement ends, for we have very different ideas about what the sin is and how it has affected the weather.

In a letter to a local paper in Oxfordshire, Silvester has blamed the foods on the recent legalisation of same-sex marriage in England and Wales.

I respect the fact that many people interpret the Bible differently to me, but Silvester’s statements about the Bible are simply untrue.

In his letter, he writes “The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war.”

This is, to put it bluntly, nonsense. The scriptures make no reference at all to a “Christian nation”. They have no concept of a “Christian nation”. At no point in the New Testament is there any suggestion that Jesus’ followers should build a nation-state founded on their principles or expect any nation to prioritise them and their religion. There is certainly no suggestion anywhere in the Bible of a Christian coronation oath.

What Silvester is doing, like many before him, is rejecting the grassroots radicalism of the New Testament in order to pick bits from the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) that refer to ancient Israel. The people who use the Bible in this way then decide that the Bible’s comments on ancient Israel (or at least, the ones they’ve chosen to pick out) somehow apply directly to Britain as a “Christian nation” today. This simplistic approach manages to insult and misrepresent both Christianity and Judaism at the same time.

I don’t know if David Silvester sees any tension between the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus and the policies of UKIP (including even bigger welfare cuts than the Tories, withdrawal from the UN Convention on Refugees, a forty percent increase in military spending and denying the reality of climate change). I don’t know if he thinks that the UK was a “Christian nation” when Britain was engaged in the slave trade or when Britain’s rulers were committing genocide in Tasmania or suppressing religious liberty in Britain. But I do know that Silvester’s comments will attract more amusement than anger, at least in the mainstream media. Sadly, they will also serve to give people a skewed impression of Christianity. People who have never read the Bible may well assume that Silvester’s description of its contents are accurate.

That’s why other Christians need to speak up. Let no-one misrepresent us as being less Christian than Silvester and his allies, watering down the Bible or compromising the Gospel. We too should speak about sin. Sin is all that separates us from God, from each other and from creation. Sin has played a major role in these floods.

It is not sensible to say that any particular flood was caused solely by climate change. What we can say with confidence is that the frequency of floods and erratic weather conditions is a result of climate change. That change has been brought about by human beings pursuing the goals of capitalism led by politicians worshipping the idols of “growth” and corporations pursuing short-term profit.

Jesus’ solidarity with the poor is central to his teachings. It is at the heart of the Gospel. It is already obvious that the poorest people and the poorest countries will suffer the most as a result of climate change. Christians need to work alongside people of other religions and none in working for new economic systems in which resources are shared rather than hoarded or destroyed.

I don’t claim to live up to Jesus’ teachings. I’m not a better Christian than David Silvester. But I can see that sin is present in destruction, poverty and inequality, not in the love between two people who happen to be the same gender.

 

Gates is wrong: We need more cuts to military spending

Posted on by symonhill

My radio alarm clock woke me this morning with the news that the USA’s former defence secretary, Robert Gates, has criticised the cuts that are being made to military spending in the UK.

If a minister, let alone a former minister, from within the European Union had criticised cuts to social security, the right-wing media would be shaking with simulated outrage about “Europe” interfering in British politics.

However, those on the right who object to “Europe” are often happy for the UK to slavishly follow the US, particularly on foreign policy and military issues. Gates said the cuts could weaken US-UK ties. Such ties are based on the UK government following where the US government leads. They are a wilful abrogation of the British people’s freedom to determine their own policies.

There are people who back welfare cuts on the grounds of cutting the deficit but who take a different view when it comes to military spending (or “defence spending” as it’s euphemistically called). Many right-wing commentators cheer as the government snatches the livelihoods from thousands of disabled people, massively increases homelessness and prices working class people out of higher education, but they insist that it is essential that the UK maintains one of the highest military budgets in the world, despite containing less than one percent of the world’s population.

The rarely-mentioned reality is that the UK’s “defence” cuts are much smaller than most other cuts that the coalition government is making. If ministers were serious about cutting the deficit, they might start with the £100bn that will be spent renewing the Trident nuclear weapons systems, which can work only by killing millions of innocent people.

After planned cuts to military spending, the UK government will still have a massive military out of all proportion to the country’s size or to its other expenditure. A country’s influence no longer rests on the size of its army but Robert Gates, Liam Fox and even David Cameron seem to be living in the nineteenth century.

Very little of the “defence” budget is spent on anything that meaningfully defends the people living within the UK. People being thrown on the streets as a a result of the bedroom tax are unlikely to feel well defended. The reality is that the British people are under attack by British ministers and by the rich and powerful whose interests they promote. We need to defend ourselves from our own government.

Royal Mint responds to Kitchener coin petition

Posted on by symonhill

This morning, I received an email from a polite and friendly public relations manager at the Royal Mint. This follows my petition calling on the Mint to withdraw a £2 commemorative coin featuring Horatio Kitchener and his recruitment slogan “Your country needs you”. Last night, the petition – asking for the coin to be replaced with one that commemorates the millions who died in the first world war – passed 20,000 signatures.

The email consisted largely of a copy of the statement that the Royal Mint is giving to journalists who contact them about the coin and the petition. The Mint also pointed out to me that, “There seems to be some confusion about the new design being the only one to commemorate the anniversary of the first world war but this is not the case. It is part of a series of designs which will be released, encompassing a number of different high profile individuals and events from the wartime period.”

In reply, I said that I was aware of this but I acknowledged that I had not mentioned it much. The implication of the Mint’s response is that future coins will focus explicitly on commemoration of the dead. Whatever the choice of coins to mark other aspects of the first world war in the next few years, it will not make the Kitchener coin acceptable. To me, there are two reasons for this.

Firstly, because the first of a series sets the tone of a series. The very first coin to commemorate the first world war, as much as the very last, should focus on remembrance of the dead.

Secondly, and more importantly, because there is no context in which it is appropriate to produce a coin featuring a warmonger with the blood of millions on his hands. Kitchener’s atrocities prior to world war one are important. He commanded the troops that carried out the Omdurman massacre in Sudan in 1898. He later expanded the network of concentration camps for Boer civilians in South Africa, in which many died due to the appallingly unhealthy conditions.

In the light of all this, the coin would be bad enough if it simply featured a picture of Kitchener. But it goes beyond this, picturing his image as it appeared on recruitment posters, along with the slogan that accompanied it. This poster pressurised millions of young men to fight and kill other young men with whom they had far more in common than they did with Kitchener. Although the official age for going to the front was 19, many were allowed to join up much younger than this. The youngest person known to have died fighting for the British army in the first world war was 14.

It is not enough simply to argue that the coin depicts an important image from world war one. There are some events and images that we choose not to depict because we know that they give the wrong idea about what we are remembering. No commemoration of those who died in the appalling terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre would be likely to feature a picture of Osama Bin Laden.

Whenever we create a symbol, we make a choice. In choosing how to symbolise an event, issue or idea, we give an impression of how we understand it. How we understand the past affects how we act in the present and the future. British people’s minds are fresh from Tony Blair’s deceptions over Iraq, which may help to explain why thousands of people are angry about this coin. It is especially relevant at a time when generals and certain politicians are resisting even minor cuts to military spending while public services are slashed.

There are many suggestions about what images might be more appropriate for coins that mark the anniversary of world war one. A petition calling for a coin with Edith Cavell has also been very successful, passing 20,000 signatures. Other suggestions that I like include Harry Patch, Wilfred Owen and images of graves or of people marching to the front.

I hope that some of these images will appear on coins and that our campaigning will influence the Royal Mint’s choices of the rest of their series of coins commemorating the war. I hope l that some at least will emphasise remembrance of all who died and suffered. None of these choices can make the Kitchener coin acceptable or remove the reasons for calling for its withdrawal.

I am not asking for coins that simply reflect my own view of the war. I am a Christian pacifist, but many of the petition’s signatories have very different views. Judging from their comments, they include people who believe world war one was justified but that it should not be glorified; others are pacifists while some oppose world war one but not all wars. Many comments say something along the lines of “This coin is an insult to my granddad.” It seems there are many relatives of first world war soldiers who find this coin deeply offensive.

What all these people agree on is that commemorating the dead should be the main purpose of a coin marking the outbreak of the first world war. Without this purpose, the coin does more to serve Kitchener’s successors – people such as Tony Blair, David Cameron and Michael Gove – than to honour the history of the British people and the world around them.

To sign the petition, please visit bit.ly/KitchenerCoin. 

Stop the Kitchener coin! Please sign

Posted on by symonhill

Yesterday, I blogged about the Royal Mint’s bizarre plan to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of world war one with a £2 coin featuring Horatio Kitchener and his slogan “Your country needs you”. The coin will do nothing to commemorate the millions of people who died and suffered in the first world war. Instead, it features a leading warmonger.

Today, I have started a petition about this. Please sign and spread the word. You can find the petition here.

Thanks very much!

New £2 coin glorifies war

Posted on by symonhill

You may easily have missed a news story that received relatively little media attention as Britain and the world celebrated the beginning of 2014.

The Royal Mint have revealed the design of a special £2 coin to mark the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the first world war. It is described as a “commemorative” coin, but it does not commemorate the millions of people who died. Instead, the coin’s design glorifies war and celebrates a leading warmonger.

The coin features a picture of Horatio Kitchener, a general and peer who was made Secretary for War when the war broke out. The coin includes the words “Your country needs you”, famously printed on recruiting posters next to the image of Kitchener pointing outwards at whoever happened to be passing.

I’ve nothing against a coin to mark this important anniversary. Indeed, I think it’s appropriate that we mark it. Like many others, I will be mourning the millions of lives wasted and asking what we can learn from this futile war. I appreciate that not everyone shares this view, just as not everyone shares the pro-war views of David Cameron and others. However, nearly everyone in the UK would surely agree that it is right to mourn and commemorate the dead. Why can this not be the coin’s focus?

Let’s be honest about Kitchener. His supposedly heroic war record includes his command of the troops that carried out the Omdurman massacre. In 1898, Kithchener’s troops, armed with machine guns, killed around 10,800 Sudanese people armed mostly with swords and spears. At least another 16,000 Sudanese were wounded. In contrast, 48 British troops were killed in this “battle”.

At the outbreak of world war one in 1914, the prime minister Herbert Asquith appointed Kitchener as Secretary for War despite his lack of political experience. Asquith recognised that Kitchener was a popular “hero” figure who could help the recruitment effort.

As the prime minister’s wife Margot Asquith put it, Kitchener was “more of a great poster than a great man”. Amongst his other actions, he urged the cabinet to make things very hard for conscientious objectors and suggested that they were simply trying to avoid danger (hardly the case for the objectors who spent years in prison and those who were sentenced to death, even though the sentences were commuted).

I don’t know how the Royal Mint reached this appalling decision. I hope there is still time for them to replace the coin with one that is truly commemorative. Even if there is not, they can certainly refrain from putting into a circulation something that so casually glorifies war and champions a warmonger.

Looking for Bible-reading notes for 2014?

Posted on by symonhill

When I became a Christian, I read daily (or almost daily) Bible reading notes, each exploring a particular Bible passage. They were helpful, at least in terms of assisting me to be disciplined about reading the Bible. They were less helpful in that they frequently jumped around the Bible and often implied that there was only one interpretation of a particular passage (to be fair, some did this more than others). They tended to assume that the reader had a rather straightforward view of biblical authority and they almost never drew any explicit social or political meaning out of the passage in question.

Of course, some were (and are) much better than others. In the last few years, it’s been a genuine delight for me not only to encounter some really good Bible-reading notes but also to have been asked occasionally to contribute to them.

I feel really privileged to have contributed to Fresh from the Word, a set of Bible-reading notes for 2014. Many of the notes have a focus on social engagement and they are intended to be useful to new Christians and to those still exploring and working out their relationship with Christianity. Each reflection is a page (or slightly less than a page) long, to help you to reflect on a relatively short passage.

I’m only one of dozens of contributors. They include Greenpeace organiser Malcolm Carroll, Christian musician Aileen Few, Baptist journalist Mark Woods, poet Nicola Slee and Quaker scholar Eleanor Nesbitt. The editor is United Reformed Church minister and writer Nathan Eddy. My contribution is a week’s worth of notes for November, around the theme of conversations with Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel.

You can order the book here, priced £8.75. Please let me know what you think!

Celebrating revolution at Christmas

Posted on by symonhill

Tonight and tomorrow, millions of people will gather in churches to tell each other a truly subversive story.

They will tell of a baby born to a semi-homeless family living under a viciously oppressive regime. They will declare that the mother’s husband was not the baby’s father; this was a very unconventional family. They will tell of how the puppet ruler of the area was so frightened by this obscure baby that he killed all the children in the town to try to get rid of him.

They will add stories about visits to the child from migrant travellers, who foiled the king’s attempts to hunt down the baby. They will say that the child was visited also by people whose work was looked down on, but to whom God chose to reveal the news of the birth.

In many countries throughout history, and in some today, the authorities have tried to suppress Christians telling these stories to each other. After all, they challenge authority, monarchy, national loyalty and family values.

Over time, the people with power have become more subtle and effective in their methods. They have found it much easier to tell these stories themselves, repeating them so often that they become familiar and disconnected from the realities of life, death, power and politics today. Some of us can be quite comfortable with this. We can enjoy the stories, but not the challenge they bring to our lives. Even those of us want to change the society we live in can still cling on to the comfort of familiarity.

No king, no dictator, no burner of books has ever suppressed the Christian message as well as those who have domesticated Christianity. Turning subversion into a fluffy story is much more effective than banning it.

At times, we glimpse the transformative potential of Christmas. On Christmas Day ninety-nine years ago, German troops on the Western Front displayed a sign reading “We no fight. You no fight.” The British responded in kind, and the opposing soldiers were soon shaking hands and playing football. The authorities on both sides responded by criminalising such behaviour to make sure it didn’t happen again. If people realise that they are fighting people who are just the same as them, they might decide that there are better causes to fight for, and better ways to fight for them. If the troops had gone on playing football into Boxing Day, they might have stopped the war.

The baby we’re talking about this week grew up, despite the king’s murderous intention. He continued to be in conflict with authority. He welcomed and challenged all whom he encountered. He declared his solidarity with the poor and marginalised, while offering just as much love to the rich and powerful as he called on them to repent. He spoke of the kingdom of God, a revolutionary notion in an empire whose emperor expected to be worshipped. He was executed after a rigged trial by the local rulers, helped by the collusion of religious leaders. Some of us have faith that the oppressive powers could not hold him and that God raised him from the dead to continue to lead and liberate us.

That really is something worth celebrating. Merry Christmas.

Alcohol and Islamophobia

Posted on by symonhill

As a teetotal Christian, I would not want to sell alcohol. If I worked at Marks & Spencer, and had politely asked a customer to pay another member of staff for her champagne, I doubt that it would have led to a national media story. Marks & Spencer’s policy on this issue has hit the headlines because of a staff member who made such a request – and who is a Muslim. This conveniently suits the agenda of the right-wing media, obsessed as they are with portraying Muslims as weird.

Ever since 2001, stories involving Islam have come to be regarded as inherently more newsworthy than stories involving most other religions. In the light of the controversy, Marks & Spencer confirmed yesterday that they would not force a Jewish member of staff to handle pork. This has hardly been reported at all. It would not, of course, suit the agenda of those who like to accuse supermarkets (and society generally) of “giving in” to Islam.

In the last few hours, I have received a stream of aggressive messages on Twitter as a result of expressing my sympathy for the Muslim checkout worker concerned. Of course, there is an argument that all staff in supermarkets should be required to handle any item on sale. While I do not agree with this argument, it can be expressed reasonably and peacefully. The tweets I have received, on the other hand, consist largely of attacks on Muslims.

One of the most bizarre tweets asked why I had not condemned the killing of Lee Rigby. Firstly, I have done (on Twitter and this blog, at the time of the murder). Secondly, how can anyone possibly compare a polite refusal to sell alcohol with a cold-blooded murder of an unarmed man in the street? This is the grotesque level of bigotry to which media-fuelled Muslim-bashing has led.

Bill Main-Ian, UKIP’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Carshalton and Wallington, tweeted me to tell me I was talking “absolute rubbish”. He added, “There is no force about it. If their beliefs are in conflict, why are they applying for the job?”

Perhaps because there’s mass unemployment, Bill, and half a million people reliant on food banks thanks to austerity policies that UKIP support.

Another tweet asked if I would support a Muslim who refused to serve gay people. One Twitter user told me it was like “refusing to assist people who are different to me”, which would lead to her being “sacked for discrimination”.

Yes, it would, and rightly so. It would of course be wrong if a member of M&S staff refused to serve non-Muslims or non-Christians or gay people or disabled people or people over 6’2”. This is already illegal (if not enforced as much as it should be). It is not the same as not wanting to handle, or deal in, a particular product. We must not confuse freedom of conscience with freedom to discriminate.

As someone who would like to see the entire economic system changed, and workers given far more control, I am not suggesting that these confusions can be solved simply by M&S (or anyone else) adopting a simple policy. However, while private corporations continue to dominate employment, it should not be impossible to expect them to be reasonable about respecting conscience and religious (or non-religious) choices.

It has long been the case that employers such as M&S might allocate Muslims and Jews, along with other teetotal or vegetarian staff members, to duties such as the bakery counter or shelf-stacking. It is also a sad reflection on our consumer-driven, alcohol-drenched society that alcohol can be bought at every aisle in a supermarket rather than some of them only.

Even the customer who made the original complaint acknowledged that the Muslim checkout assistant was polite when explaining that she could not sell alcohol. Such respect and reasonableness seems sadly lacking in much of the discussion resulting from the utterly unnecessary media storm.

Oh, come on, all ye faithful

Posted on by symonhill

My article on the appalling theology of many Christmas carols appeared in the December issue of Reform, a Christian magazine published by the United Reformed Church. I’ve copied the article below. Please click here for more details of Reform magazine.

December is the only month of the year in which you can hear the same songs in supermarkets that you’re singing in church. It’s an odd feeling, as if God and Mammon have reached a temporary truce for the duration of the season.

There are plenty of secular songs playing in shops too. You’ve almost certainly heard the one about an omniscient tyrant who punishes people for crying (Santa Claus is Coming to Town). When I was very young, Santa Claus and God became slightly confused in my mind. Both seemed to be powerful beings handing out rewards and punishments.

Sadly, many people think that Christians really believe in this simplistic, abusive idea of God. Christmas, when people who rarely enter a church often pay their annual visit, could be a time to challenge this perception. Unfortunately, we seem to respond to their arrival by singing some of the most badly written, incomprehensible and theological dubious songs ever produced.

I am not saying all Christmas carols are bad. There are some good ones, but I would be happy to see most of them never sung in church again.

Some are so badly written that I’m amazed anyone wants to sing them. Presumably We Three Kings of Orient Are is supposed to mean “We are three kings of Orient”. I realise that grammatical flexibility is needed to make words rhyme, but this doesn’t justify moving the verb to the end of the sentence in a way that never happens in English unless you’re Yoda (I annoyed by this syntax am).

In the Bleak Midwinter imposes a north European landscape on Palestine, before saying a shepherd would respond to the nativity by choosing to “bring a lamb”. What would a newborn baby do with a lamb?. Even this isn’t as baffling as The Holly and the Ivy, which draws extremely tenuous connections between plants and the birth of Jesus.

I’m not condemning writers for their imperfections. I have at least as many as they do. But why are Christians so keen to sing such songs so often? What message are we giving out? Take the old favourite Once in Royal David’s City:

“And through all his wondrous childhood
He would honour and obey,
Love and watch the lowly maiden,
In whose gentle arms he lay..”

Would he? Mary may not have thought him very obedient after he hung around in the Temple debating theology while his parents frantically searched for him. But it gets worse:

“Christian children all must be
Mild, obedient, good as he”.

It seems the claims about Jesus’ childhood are only a prelude to telling children to conform.

There are much better carols that can be brought down by the context in which they’re sung. How can we sing enthusiastically about Bethlehem without recognising the oppression taking place there today? I’m happy to sing O Little Town of Bethlehem, but let’s acknowledge that we’re singing about a real place. Ironically, the lyrics say little about Bethlehem and it has much deeper theology than most carols, asking Christ to “be born in us today” and “cast out our sin”.

That leaves Away In A Manger, a song so full of bad theology that it’s difficult to know where to start. Christian theology proclaims a fully human, as well as fully divine, messiah. Yet this human baby apparently doesn’t cry. Even that isn’t as bad as “I love thee, Lord Jesus; look down from the sky”.

Jesus is not in the sky! Jesus is here, in our midst, wherever two or three are gathered in his name. He is calling us to him today, not waiting for us on a cloud. Yet, with more people in church than we’re likely to see for another year, we decide to reinforce the misconception that Christians worship a God “up there” and are unconcerned with people’s lives down here.

We have something exciting to proclaim at Christmas. Let’s sing of a baby born amidst scandal to an unknown girl in an obscure corner of a brutal empire. Let’s tell of how that baby frightened rulers, challenged the powerful and set out to change the world with a gang of confused fishermen and prostitutes. How he lived so freely and faithfully that he was killed by a vicious government with the collusion of religious leaders. And how he has risen from the dead to meet us, heal us, free us and save us.

A song by John Bell and Graham Maule reminds us that “A saviour without safety, a tradesman without tools, has come to tip the balance with fishermen and fools”.

Happy Christmas.

Anti-Roma prejudice and an unlikely prediction

Posted on by symonhill

Come January, the right-wing media in the UK might have some explaining to do. The Daily Mail (and their friends in UKIP and the Tory Right) have been telling us that Britain will be flooded by immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria, as the last restrictions on their immigration to the UK are lifted.

Some of the rhetoric gives the impression that you will barely be able to move in London, Dover or Skegness for the number of Romanians and Buglarians pouring off the boats.

I dare say that Nigel Farage and his friends will soon be brushing away the figures showing that Romanian and Bulgarian immigration is lower than predicted. Neither UKIP nor the Daily Mail let the truth get in the way of scaremongering.

Much of the coverage easily confuses “Roma” with “Romanian”. Last month, the Daily Star ran a front page attack on “Roma” immigration. It quoted the former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, who has suggested that such immigration could lead to riots.

I find it hard to believe that such immigration could really reach the levels of Polish immigration a few years ago; the UK was not in the middle of an economic crisis in those days.

The Sun said recently that that Romanians and Bulgarians would come to Britain for its welfare state and “generous benefits”. This is even more unbelievable, given that to get here they will have to pass through countries with considerably more generous welfare states (notably Germany).

One of the reasons that might help to draw migrants to Britain is the fact that they are more likely to speak English than the languages of certain other European countries. Ironically, the global dominance of the English language is an indirect result both of US global power and of the general British unwillingness to learn languages. These are both things that tend to be defended by the same people who condemn immigration to the UK.

In the 1930s, the Daily Mail ran attacks on Jewish migrants “pouring” into Britain. They were fleeing the Nazis.

Today, racism and xenophobia are still alive and powerful in the UK. The BNP may be disorganised and the EDL disintegrating, but the Mail and the Sun always had far more power than both of them. UKIP are considered a respectable mainstream force, as their racism comes with suits and smiles.

Decades after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and other forms or racism continue to be powerful forces. The recent cases of children being snatched from Roma parents who don’t look like them shows crude racial bigotry hovering just below the surface of supposedly democratic state authorities.

I began this blog post on a train from London to Brussels. The journey took two hours, slightly shorter than the train trip from London to Manchester. To get on the train, I was required to walk through a metal detector and then display my passport. Why is this required for Brussels but not for Manchester or even the much longer journey to Scotland? Because of a series of historical accidents that divide people up into nations and nationalities.

Corporations can largely ignore these borders, moving money and employment wherever the mood – or the profit – takes them. The rest of us are confined by them, encouraged to define ourselves by them and to rate those of our nationality as being more worthy of life and work than those who live across an arbitrary border.

Lack of housing is blamed on migrants rather than on the failure of successive governments to build decent social housing and to stop people leaving houses empty. Low pay is attributed to migrants willing to work for less, rather than a lamentably low minimum wage.

It is common to blame our problems on those who seem different to us. I know that I can do this too. My prejudices are not acceptable either. The first step to overcoming prejudice, at a personal or social level, is acknowledging its existence.

Being British is part of my identity. So is the fact that I have a beard. These two aspects of my identity are of roughly equivalent importance to me. But I am constantly told that I must rate one of them as more important than anything else about me. Indeed, we are so accustomed to thinking in this way that we barely notice we are doing it.

When Jesus was asked “Who is my neighbour?”, he responded with a story about a man who showed love to a stranger despite racial, religious and cultural differences (commonly referred to as the “good Samaritan”). It’s time we recognised nationality and ethnicity for the arbitrary and trivial distinctions that they are.