Tag Archives: Christianity

Lamenting suffering while following Jesus

Posted on by symonhill

On Sunday 4th October this year, I had the honour of preaching at St Columba’s United Reformed Church in Oxford. This was the Sunday after the horrific anti-Semitic stabbings at a synagogue in Manchester. Below is the text of my sermon. I am sorry not to have posted it sooner.

To be clear: this is basically the text I wrote beforehand but in practice I deviated from the wording a fair bit and added in a few extra comments. However, the substance is the same. You can watch the service online on St Columba’s URC’s YouTube channel.

The sermon followed three Bible readings:

If you ask people to choose their favourite books in the Bible, I doubt that Lamentations would feature in many people’s answers. But it seems particularly appropriate given some of the horrific things that we have seen in the news this week.

The passage that was read to us earlier was actually part of Lamentations Chapter 1 and part of Lamentations Chapter 3. I dare say the people who compiled the Lectionary didn’t want us to hear Chapter 1 on its own. That’s not surprising. The content of Lamentations can be roughly summed up as follows:

Chapter 1: Everything’s dreadful.
Chapter 2: Everything’s still dreadful.
Chapter 3: Yes, everything’s still dreadful. But there are, possibly, some glimmers of hope.

And so it goes on. Most of the book is lamenting suffering and injustice. It describes how things feel sometimes. How things are sometimes. But as it goes on, glimmers of hope appear. They are never more than glimmers. There is no triumphant finale or happy ending. But this is a book that recognises the reality of suffering while beginning to find hope. 

Written probably around the time of the fall of Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE, Lamentations is a book that records people’s pain, the depth of suffering, the harshness of injustice. Not to glory in such things, not to celebrate them – but to acknowledge them and to show solidarity with those who experience them. I suggest that this is something that as Christians we can all too often fail to do.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is good news. Some Christians seem keen to preach bad news instead – they’re full of talk of sin and suffering as if they were telling us something new, as if the presence of evil in the world was not pretty obvious already. But on the other hand, there are occasions when Christians are so quick to talk about good news that we forget how shallow our words can sound. When I became a Christian in the 1990s, there was a popular worship chorus that included the line, “In your presence, my problems disappear”. What nonsense. What blasphemy – to present Jesus as an individual problem-solving machine. Telling someone that their problems will be over if they put their faith in Jesus will ring hollow if they are shivering in the cold because they cannot afford both heating or food, or because they are frightened of leaving their house because the far right have been marching in their street.

Those who preach bad news, and those who preach a trite positivity with no depth to it, both make the same mistake. They both overlook the reality and extent of suffering that people are experiencing.

Proclaiming good news does not mean pretending that suffering is not real. It means proclaiming hope – not trite, shallow hope but deep, meaningful hope – in the midst of suffering.

There are times when I want to ignore the bad news. Sometimes I want to pretend that I haven’t heard it – whether it’s global, national or personal news. But of course some of us can ignore bad news more easily than others. You can ignore war – unless you’re in the war zone. You can ignore news of starvation – unless you’re starving. The horrific and heart-stopping news of the anti-Semitic murders in Manchester on Thursday was so vile that we might be tempted simply to shut it out of our minds. And then this morning, we awoke to more bad news of bigotry and violence: there was an attempted arson attack last night on a mosque in Peacehaven in Sussex. But as has been clear in the last few days, ignoring the news of the synagogue attacks is not possible for many British Jews, deeply affected and frightened in a very personal way. Nor is it possible for many Muslims, understandably scared by the opportunistic rhetoric of far-right and Islamophobic commentators who nonsensically blame all Muslims for the actions of the killer.

As Christians, we are not proclaiming bad news. Nor can we ignore the bad news all around us. We must be prepared to recognise the reality of it, to listen to people who are hurting, to allow ourselves to be challenged or confused, to show solidarity perhaps to people under attack – whether that be Jewish worshippers in Manchester, Muslim worshippers in Sussex, refugees scapegoated by the far right around Britain, children bombed in Gaza, or trans people and disabled benefit recipients turned into convenient scapegoats.

Le’ts also recognise our own role in the sins of the world. The world cannot be divided simplistically into goodies and baddies. This week for example I have been very conscious of the times that I have failed to challenge anti-Semitism. Recognising our sins does not mean we should spend time beating ourselves up. Rather it means that we can rejoice in God’s forgiveness, pray for God’s forgiveness for others and ask God to guide us in the present and the future.

Because in the midst of the horrors that we experience, we can cling onto, and gently point others to, the good news that we find in Jesus. This is not a shallow hope that comes only when we’re feeling good. God loves us however we’re feeling. It is not a calculated optimism based on an analysis of probabilities. It is a hope found in Jesus Christ. A hope, a faith, that the Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus is ultimately stronger than the all the might and power and violence of the kingdoms and empires and armies of this world.

Earlier we heard a passage from 2nd Timothy. It’s usually described as the Second Letter from Paul to Timothy. A sizeable majority of biblical scholars agree that it is unlikely that Paul actually wrote it, as it bears the marks of being written at a later time than Paul’s lifetime, and it also shows far greater acceptance of social norms and hierarchy than Paul displayed in his authentic letters. However, that is not a reason to write it off! The passage that we heard is encouraging the reader not to be ashamed of sharing in hardships “for the sake of the Gospel” and to remember “the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus”.

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. 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. We glimpse the Kingdom of God in small moments of kindness and in global campaigns for justice. The Kingdom of God flashes into our presence when people reach across boundaries and recognise their common humanity. On Thursday we saw the reality of sin with the vile murders at the Manchester synagogue. And we glimpsed the Kingdom of God when people of many faiths and none declared their solidarity with Manchester’s Jews. Working at a university chaplaincy, one of the most memorable moments of the day for me was when a Muslim member of staff used the chaplaincy prayer room to pray for the victims and for British Jews in general. In the midst of horror, let us keep our eyes open for the flashes of light.

Let’s look at that passage we heard from Luke’s Gospel. If we have faith the size of a mustard seed, says Jesus, we could uproot a tree and plant it in the sea. Well, I admit that when I look at that, I think: my faith has never moved any trees. I used to think: does that mean my faith is so weak that it’s not even the size of a mustard seed?

Well, perhaps. But let’s remind ourselves of a few things. Mustard seeds, as seeds, might be pretty small, but the plants they grow into are large and difficult to control – as Jesus and his listeners knew very well. This was an agricultural society, remember. Do we have that sort of faith? And why would we want to uproot a tree? I don’t think forestry management is at the centre of Chrisitan discipleship. But down the centuries, God has given people faith to move all sorts of metaphorical trees. The advances we have now – in medicine, in human rights, in matters such as religious liberty and practices of mutual respect and understanding – have been achieved because our ancestors trusted that such things were possible, often motivated by their faith in a God of love and justice. Their faith moved mountains.

Sometimes they did not see the results of their endeavours. The first people to campaign against the Transatlantic slave trade had died long before it was abolished. The first women to campaign for the vote did not live to cast their votes. Those of us who campaign today for an end to the arms trade may not live to see that campaign succeed – as it one day will. As Oscar Romero put it, we are prophets of a future not our own.

The news in recent weeks and months has been particularly vile. It can be hard to believe that, as Martin Luther King said, “the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice”. The gospel we proclaim is not a naïve or shallow hope that things might get better one day. It is rooted in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, described in 2nd Timothy as “God manifest in the flesh”. The God we worship is not a God who inflicts suffering, but a God who experiences suffering, a God who suffers with us.

Jesus was sentenced to death by the Roman imperial authorities, who thought they could easily get rid of 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.

As Christians we are called to recognise the reality of pain, to show our solidarity with people who are suffering and not to judge those who find it hard to believe that good news is possible. We are all broken people in a broken world, and we are compromised by the sins against which we protest. Yet however often we fail, God will not tire of forgiving us. So when our focus weakens or wanders, let’s ask God to keep our concentration on the Kingdom of God, on the Christ whose love and justice are triumphing over the sins and evils that see us divided and mistreating each other. Hatred and injustice will not win. Love will triumph. This is the Gospel we proclaim. 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.

Christians must stand in solidarity with asylum-seekers

Posted on by symonhill

Last Sunday (31st August 2025) I preached at Sherbourne Community Church in Coventry. As always, I was pleased to be asked to do so. Below is the text of my sermon.

To be clear: this is basically the text I wrote beforehand but in practice I deviated from the wording at times and added in a couple of extra comments. However, the substance is much the same.

The sermon followed two Bible readings:

Luke 14, 7-14

Hebrews 13, 1-8 and 15-16

I want to pick up on a sentence we heard earlier in the passage that was read to us from the Letter to the Hebrews: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

Now hospitality has always been important to Christian faith. I feel I should mention St Benedict, founder of the Benedictine order of monks. Benedict told his monks to greet ever visitor to the monastery as if they were welcoming Christ himself.

Of course hospitality is important in many cultures, but the form it takes varies from one culture to another. One of the first times I visited Northern Ireland, I recall visiting a friend’s relative in a farmhouse in a remote and very rural part of County Armagh. As we sat round the kitchen table talking, I found myself feeling quite disappointed, even slightly annoyed, that we had not been offered a cup of tea. Eventually, after being there about 40 minutes, our host finally asked if we would like a cup of tea. I was relieved, and said yes. Then I was taken by surprise. We were offered not just tea, but biscuits, cakes and scones and jam. I soon learnt this was a pattern. Cups of tea in rural Northern Ireland are not offered straight away, but when they are offered, they come with enough biscuits and cakes to constitute a small meal. Hospitality is different in different contexts.

Which takes us back to the Letter to the Hebrews. Who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews? Don’t worry if you don’t know the answer to that – nor does anybody else! It’s not one of Paul’s letters; it doesn’t claim to be written by Paul. Various scholars have various theories about the authorship. However, we just don’t know.

We do, however, know something about the people to whom it was sent: the readers of the letter. It is thought likely that they were a congregation in Rome, mostly of “Hebrews” – that is to say, Jewish Christians. These people who received the letter were people who had suffered, who faced persecution from the Roman authorities. As we heard in the passage earlier, the writer told them, “Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.” This wasn’t a suggestion to pray about remote situations. It’s clear from elsewhere in the letter that the congregation who received this letter were persecuted people. Some of them had been to prison. Some of them had been tortured.

These were people with every reason to be frightened. It would be entirely understandable if they were extremely cautious about who they opened their doors to.

But what does this letter-writer say to them? “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers”. Persecuted, frightened people, unsure who they can trust, urged to be hospitable to strangers. Strangers: people we don’t know, people who are different to us.

This is not an invitation to naivety. Of course those people who were facing persecution knew very well that they had to be careful. We too are right 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 love of strangers, the love across barriers of difference, is central to the gospel of Jesus Christ. As we heard in the reading from Luke, Jesus encouraged people organising a banquet not only to invite complete strangers different to themselves but to invite people who could never pay them back. 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”.

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 two colleagues carried on walking. It was clear that “everyone” did not include the cleaners.

What does it really mean to be welcoming, to be hospitable? I work as a chaplain in a multi-faith chaplaincy team at a university. I would like to tell you about a student who I met last year. 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. We have quite a lot of students from Nigeria at the university. Most of them are Christians.

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 all contact with him. On top of the unimaginable distress that this caused him, they had withdrawn all 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 well 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 asylum 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.

I remember Matthew’s fear that he would be put in hotel accommodation. He had met other asylum-seekers who lived in hotels, where several people would be crammed into a dirty room that was not cleaned and sheets were not changed regularly, with the normal facilities of the hotel cut off from them. And now, in August 2025, in addition to enduring this humiliation, asylum-seekers housed in hotels in Britain have had to endure people protesting outside the hotels claiming absurdly that they are living in luxury.

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 where they 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 as Christians we can stand by. 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 are rapists because two asylum-seekers have been arrested for rape? 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 not to have preached about this subject. But faced with lectionary readings on hospitality in a week of anti-migrant riots, it would have been bizarre to avoid it.

Nonetheless, I am conscious of the danger of hypocrisy. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews encouraged persecuted and probably traumatised people to welcome strangers. In effect, they were encouraged to show love even to their persecutors. 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?

As the Letter to the Hebrews says, let’s remember to show hospitality to strangers, to people different to us. In doing so, we may entertain angels unawares. Or at the very least, we may entertain human beings, created in the very image of God.

Palestine Action arrests threaten all our rights

Posted on by symonhill

I wrote the following article for the Church Times, who published it on 29th August 2025.

The Vice-President of the United States, J. D. Vance, has reiterated his claim that free speech is under threat in the UK. Any valid points that he might have about the policing of abortion protests are undermined by his failure to mention that hundreds of people are being arrested for supporting Palestine Action (PA).

The banning of Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act had only just come into force last month when footage went viral of the arrest of the 83-year-old priest the Revd Sue Parfitt at a protest. After less than two months, the number of those arrested in connection with PA has exceeded 700. Among them are clergy of at least four denominations.

PA was banned after its members broke into RAF Brize Norton to damage weapons. But the people accused of entering Brize Norton have been arrested under existing laws, as have other PA members. The ban does not target PA’s activists, but those who publicly agree with them. It criminalises opinions.

Most people who have been arrested so far have carried signs that read “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” I wonder whether I would be arrested for a sign that read “I broadly support Palestine Action, but think some of their tactics are misguided.” I easily could be. The first five words are illegal.

The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has doubled down. She claims that many PA supporters do not understand the nature of the group. So, why criminalise such apparently ignorant people? She says that court restrictions prevent her revealing “the full nature of this organisation”. In other words: trust the people with power: they know more than you do. I doubt whether this sort of request will work.

 PA was founded in 2020, when I was on the staff of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), Britain’s leading pacifist group. One of PA’s two founders is a PPU member. Impeding the arms industry has been the core of PA’s activity. The group’s critics label its members as violent. But, whatever the rights or wrongs of destroying property, the word “violent” surely refers to harming a living being. To describe the destruction of weapons as violent is to give property the same value as people.

Only the most grotesque priorities can lead ministers to condemn damage to weapons while continuing to supply those weapons to regimes that bomb children.

It is when they have deviated from targeting arms production that PA’s members have lost support. When they daubed paint and scrawled graffiti on Rico House in Manchester, protesting against Israeli landlords, their target was far from obvious to people working in rented offices there, many from the mostly Jewish local area. Whatever their intention, PA gave the impression that they were targeting Jews rather than genocide. This deterred potential Jewish supporters, and led to criticism from PA sympathisers who were keen to combine opposition to Israeli aggression in Gaza with resistance to anti-Semitism.

When it comes to targeting weapons, however, widespread revulsion against genocide in Gaza has increased support for PA just as they have been banned.

Nonetheless, it is possible to disagree completely with PA, even to want its activists imprisoned, and still to oppose the group’s proscription under the Terrorism Act. Mass arrests for expressing opinions are a threat to all our rights

“I was there to bear witness to the call of Jesus to stand with those who are being silenced,” said the Revd Dr Sally Mann (pictured), a Baptist pastor arrested in London on 8 August. Passionately opposed to British arms sales to Israel, she said that she would be just as opposed to arming Hamas.

Like several other clergy, Dr Mann received support from her congregation. The morning after the Roman Catholic priest Fr John McGowan was arrested, he was applauded at mass; but, when he had arrived at the demonstration the day before, he heard someone calling out “Where are the church leaders? Why aren’t they saying anything?”

Several bishops and denominational leaders have condemned the supplying of arms to Israel, but have avoided mentioning the ban on PA.

Among non-churchgoers, the reaction is quite different. Look at social-media footage of Ms Parfitt’s or Dr Mann’s arrests and you will see comments from people saying that their perception of Christianity has improved. They have heard people speaking of Jesus as their reason for standing against genocide and risking arrest.

If this discovery leads them to attend a church, will they find the same enthusiasm for justice and peace?

Sixty people already face trial for supporting PA. More than 300 prominent British Jews have called for the PA ban to be reversed. The Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, and several politicians, are backing Amnesty International and Liberty in calling for a review of terrorism legislation.

Silent bishops and denominations will face a choice as their own members stand trial for their beliefs. They can ignore one of the biggest issues facing us today; or they can bless those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. As Dr Mann puts it, “It is costly, but we need to call out genocide and war crimes no matter who commits them. Jesus shows us how to do this.”

My book, The Peace Protestors: A history of modern day war resistance (Pen & Sword, 2022) can be bought online from the Church Times Bookshop.

Ant Middleton wants a leader with ‘Christian values’- but Christian values are the opposite of his far-right nationalism

Posted on by symonhill

I recently wrote an article for Premier Christianity in response to Ant Middleton’s claim that he wants to defend “Christian values” as a candidate for Mayor of London. They published it in on 18th August. Below is a slightly extended version of the article.

As followers of Jesus, we are taught to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).

I am alarmed therefore by how many Christians are cheering politicians who promise to protect “Christian values”. We should not be so naïve as to welcome such comments without asking what is meant by them.

Celebrity and ex-SAS soldier Ant Middleton recently posted on X: “Our Capital City of our Christian country needs to be run by a native Brit with generational Christian values, principles and morals coursing through their veins”.

But what does he mean by “generational Christian values”? Following Jesus is not hereditary. It is a personal choice, albeit with major implications for society. Middleton also argued that only people born in the UK, and whose parents and grandparents were born in the UK, should hold “top tier government positions”. He may have overlooked the fact that this would rule out several former prime ministers, including Winston Churchill.

To attack a political opponent on grounds of ethnicity is to undermine the Christian values that Middleton claims to defend

Middleton made the above remarks amid an announcement that he planned to stand in the 2028 London mayoral elections. He was initially tipped to be the Reform UK candidate, but recently announced that he would stand as an independent to defend “British culture”. In his post, Middleton took aim at current Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Whatever we might think about Khan’s policies, the birthplace of his parents should be irrelevant.

Breaking down the divide

I cannot see into Middleton’s heart or question the sincerity of his faith. Only God sees into his heart, just as only God sees into my heart or yours. I can, however, say that his comments seem utterly incompatible with Jesus’ teachings.

Jesus broke down hostility between Jews and Samaritans, and Jews and Gentiles. The New Testament is full of challenges to ethnic and social divisions so that “there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all” (Colossians 3:11). To attack a political opponent on grounds of ethnicity is to undermine the Christian values that Middleton claims to want to defend.

We should note that many who use the rhetoric of “Christian values” also talk of defending “British values”. Many also tend to be strongly nationalistic and anti-migrant. In the 2015 UKIP manifesto, Nigel Farage MP, now leader of Reform UK, said Britain needed “a much more muscular defence of our Christian heritage and our Christian Constitution”.

Independent MP Rupert Lowe recently launched a new political movement, Restore Britain. On X, he said it’s aim was to “slash immigration, protect British culture, restore Christian principles, carpet-bomb the cancer of wokery”.

Yet both men consistently use demeaning language when speaking about migrants and refugees and rely on highly questionable statistics. Farage recently claimed that Afghan men in the UK are 22 times more likely to be convicted of rape than British-born men. He did not, and could not, cite the slightest shred of evidence for this claim, which was later disproved by critical journalists. Despite this, it was repeated without evidence by his supporters on social media.

I do not expect all Christians to agree on all aspects of migration policy – or any other issue. Christian values cannot, however, be squared with demonising particular people groups, dismissing the needs of refugees or showing less concern for people of one nationality than those of another.

Scripture is full of commands such as: “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” (Leviticus 19:34).

A Christian Britain?

Nationalistic and anti-migrant parties mistake Christianity for Britishness – and for their very narrow notion of Britishness at that. If you visit parts of social media inhabited by these groups, you will find simplistic equations between being British, being white and being Christian. The reality that a large percentage of British Christians are not white seems to pass them by.

The central role of Christianity in British history is difficult to overstate. While Jesus’ teachings have at times inspired people with power in Britain, they have on many more occasions inspired people to resist the powerful.

Following Jesus is not hereditary. It is a personal choice

Jesus’ teachings inspired anti-slavery activists. In the 17th century, they inspired people to stand up for religious liberty against the monarchy, leading to the emergence of Baptists, Congregationalists, Quakers and other Christian movements we still recognise today.

Christian faith has been central to peace workers and war resisters in Britain and around the world, including people working for justice and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

The nationalistic and authoritarian attitudes of Middleton, Farage and Lowe have little in common with these people’s values. They are more comparable to the values of the rulers and powerful bodies who many of them campaigned against.

Christian values continue to inspire British people to take action. “I believe Jesus actually meant what he said and he modelled nonviolent resistance to oppressive power,” said Baptist Pastor Sally Mann, who was arrested in London on 9th August. Sally had peacefully declared support for Palestine Action, a group banned under the Terrorism Act despite destroying weapons rather than using them.

On the same day, Rev Robin Hanford, a Unitarian Chrisitan minister, was assaulted by far-right demonstrators in Nuneaton for supporting refugees. They tried to pull off his clerical collar and accused him of being a “traitor to his religion”. But it is Robin’s views and not theirs that are consistent with Jesus’ approach to nationality.

“Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,” said Jesus (Matthew 7:21). The nationalistic politicians and candidates who want to preserve Britian’s “Christian values” seem less keen to pay attention to Jesus’ words.

I pray that God will give us courage to follow Jesus’ example of standing with the marginalised and pulling down barriers, rather than falling for the claims of those who misuse Christian language to attack people different to themselves.

The Peace of Christ or the Peace of Rome?

Posted on by symonhill

I was honoured to be asked to write about active nonviolence for Shibboleth, an excellent new Christian magazine that I heartily recommend (not just my own article!). This is my article, which appeared in Issue 2.

Jesus was executed by one of the most violent empires in history.

It is staggering just how rarely this is mentioned in churches. For centuries, we have been told that Jesus was killed by “the Jews”. Antisemitism has combined with attempts to depoliticise Jesus’ message by shifting the blame away from imperial authorities.

We cannot, however, get away from the fact that Jesus was condemned to death by Pontius Pilate, Roman governor of Judea. The gospels present the Jewish leaders as complicit in Jesus’ death, but these were the Jewish leaders who collaborated with Roman rule and owed their position to not upsetting the Romans. They were not representative of Jews generally.

Supporters of Roman rule championed the “Pax Romana” or Peace of Rome. For them, “peace” was a euphemism for order, control or an absence of conflict. There is no conflict when all resistance is crushed. The Romans claimed to bring “peace and security” to conquered lands. “When they say ‘peace and security’, then sudden destruction will come upon them,” wrote Paul in one of his earliest letters (1 Thessalonians 5,3).

Jesus proclaimed a very different sort of peace. I suggest that to understand Jesus’ teachings, we need to recognise that he was speaking to people for whom violence was a daily reality. They included civilians abused by Roman soldiers, slaves beaten by their “owners”, women mistreated by men.

Yet many Christian discussions of the ethics of violence start from the wrong place. They focus on war between nation-states and the decisions of governments.

Of course, national wars appear in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), which contains varied attitudes to violence. Those passages that justify massacres do not in any sense point to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Many other parts of the Hebrew Bible include prophetic condemnations of violence and oppression. At certain points, Israelite forces are reminded to rely only on God’s strength – Gideon is told to reduce the size of his army so his victory is attributed not to military power but to God’s power (Judges 7,2).

Wars between nation-states today generally involve people being ordered to fight by their governments, based on the bizarre premise that we all have more in common with our rulers than with people like us who happen to have been born on the other side of a line on a map.

But the Christ who breaks down barriers exposes the reality of violence. And it is with Jesus’ teachings that a Christian ethic must surely begin.

When Jesus’ spoke about turning the other cheek, he was speaking to people who were used to being hit.

“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek…” says Jesus (Matthew 5,39). To be hit on the right cheek (with the right hand) implies a backhanded slap. This was the way in which people disciplined supposed inferiors. Masters backhanded slaves, men backhanded their wives, employers backhanded workers.

The submissive response to being hit is not to turn the other cheek but to cower, cringe or step backwards. These are all very understandable reactions. To respond with violence is also understandable, though probably futile when the aggressor has far more power. But calmly turning the other cheek is a gesture of nonviolent defiance, potentially confusing the aggressor and tipping the balance of power, at least for a moment.

Of course it does not work in every situation. The same can be said of Jesus’ teaching to go “another mile” – which would cause trouble for Roman soldiers who were permitted to require civilians to carry their packs for only one mile (Matthew 5,41). These methods of nonviolent defiance are suggestions. Different contexts need different suggestions, with similar principles.

Jesus’ protest in the Temple is sometimes presented as inconsistent with turning the other cheek. I suggest instead that Jesus’ teachings and actions are entirely consistent. The Temple protest was disruptive but not violent (violence involves hurting people, not damaging tables). It involved the same principles of nonviolent resistance that Jesus championed in the Sermon on the Mount.

Active nonviolence is not about judging those who are driven to resist violence with violence. I cannot condemn someone who picks up a gun in a horrendous situation that I have never faced and cannot imagine. This is different to encouraging such things.

Active nonviolence is about seeking to live by a different power. This is the power of the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed, which turns notions of kingship on their head. The Kingdom is both now and not yet, a future reality that is glimpsed in the here and now in every moment that testifies to the love of God, from small moments of kindness to global campaigns against injustice.

Given its centrality in the New Testament, it is very surprising that we don’t talk more in churches about loving our enemies. Loving enemies does not mean having no enemies (how can you love your enemies if you haven’t got any?!). Nor is it a concept that can just be explained away, as with Augustine of Hippo’s tortuous argument that it is possible to love someone while killing them. Arms dealers and militarist politicians are my enemies, but I cannot kill or demonise them, nor fail to recognise my own sin and complicity in violence, if I love them in the upside-down power of the Kingdom of God.

The New Testament makes clear that living by this power – or trying to – is not about avoiding conflict. As Martin Luther King pointed out, a commitment to peace involves conflict with those who wage war. When Jesus said that he had “not come to bring peace but a sword”, he spoke about divisions within families and communities, so in that context he meant “peace” in the narrow sense of an absence of conflict (Matthew 10,34-36). The gospel involves conflict with forces of violence and injustice.

The New Testament does not teach us either to kill our enemies or to pretend that we have no enemies. Serving the Kingdom of God involves engaging in conflict with love – something that it is not possible in our own strength, but only by the subversive, transformative power of God that we see in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is a power that forces of violence and domination will not tolerate. That is why, as the Quaker peace campaigner Helen Steven used to put it, following Jesus “leads straight into trouble”.

The Christ who saves us calls us to live differently

Posted on by symonhill

Last month (on 6th April 2025) I preached at Sherbourne Community Church in Coventry. I was very pleased to be asked to do so. Below is the text of my sermon (I am sorry not to have posted it sooner; I was delayed by health problems and other issues).

To be clear: this is the text I wrote beforehand but in practice I deviated from the wording at times and added in a couple of extra comments. But the substance is much the same.

The sermon followed two Bible readings:

John 12, 1-8

Philippians 3, 3-14

Some parts of the gospels are really weird. Some of us have got so used to reading the gospels that we can forget how odd parts of them would sound if we hadn’t read them before. And we have a great example with the passage from John 12 that we heard earlier.

Here we have Mary pouring a load of expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet. This story appears in various forms in other gospels too, although there are significant variations – about who the woman is who does this, and about how she does it. But the idea of a woman physically pouring oil on Jesus seems to have been widely recognised in one form or another.

And what a strange thing it is to do. And in John’s version of the story, Judas pops up says that it would be better to have sold the ointment and given the money to the poor. And if you’re like me, you might find yourself thinking, Didn’t Judas have a point?

Okay, John tells us that Judas had an ulterior motive, that he really wanted to embezzle the money. But if he had been going to give it to the poor, would that not have been a better use for this ointment than chucking it all over Jesus? If we believe Judas – and we might not, of course – then the ointment could have been sold for 300 denarii. That would have been the best part of a year’s wages for someone on a low income in that society.  Are there not better things that could have been done with it?

Jesus responds to Judas’ comment by reminding his disciples that they can continue to support the poor. Compassion for the poor out is not simply a one-off act for unusual moments like this. “You always have the poor with you,” he says.

Outrageously, there are still Christians who misuse this line to argue that Christians should not try to end poverty. This is ridiculous. Jesus was reminding his disciples of the situation they were in and would continue to be in for the foreseeable future. He was not opposing attempts to end poverty. Poverty is not something created by God. It is created by humans. Indeed, nowadays we know the world has enough to feed all the people in it, if we organised things differently. We – humans – created poverty and we – humans – can end it.

Jesus’ comment – like all his comments – was made in a specific context. Jesus thanks Mary for her faith in him. And the writer of the gospel uses it to make a point about Jesus: the ointment is to anoint him for his burial. Because Jesus would soon die, executed in unimaginable pain by the forces of the Roman Empire.

For much of John’s Gospel, Jesus seems to be very focused on his upcoming death. I find it hard to imagine how this would have affected his day-to-day thoughts. And here we have a connection with the second reading – the reading from Philippians that we heard.

Paul wrote the Letter to the Philippians while he was in prison, while he awaited to find out whether he would be executed. I find that Paul’s letters tend to make a lot more sense when we realise that he wrote them to particular people at particular times. He didn’t know that people would be reading them 2,000 years later!

Paul’s mental anguish seems clear in his letter to the Philippian Christians. He wrestles with thoughts about whether he will live or die, about his desire to be with Jesus clashing with his hope of living longer and continuing to serve Christ’s people on Earth. At times he seems to fear for the communities he has founded that he may be leaving behind. Here, perhaps, we encounter Paul at his most vulnerable. Philippians contrasts with the finely crafted theological nuance of Paul’s letter to the Romans, with the passionate anger of his letter to the Galatians, with his frustrated attempts to resolve conflicts in his letters to the Corinthians. In Philippians, Paul seems very aware that he might be at the end of his life.

This sheds light on the words that we heard earlier. We hear Paul listing things he could boast about, particularly when it comes to religion. He has always been an observant and religious Jew, he says. He was blameless under the law. He persecuted Christians. All the things his critics boast about, he could boast about too!

But then he tells us that none of this matters. “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ,” he tells us.

Paul’s religious observances would not save him. His zeal and law-keeping would not save him. His persecution of people with different beliefs would not save him. He can be saved only through the grace of God, by the love of God that Jesus reveals.  

But 2,000 years later, we can still make the mistake of relying on religious observances. Of course, it is good to go to church, to pray, to come together as Christ’s people to worship and talk and share Communion. It can be helpful to observe Lent and be disciplined in prayer. These are good and helpful things to do. We can honour God through them. But they will not save us. We do not have eternal life and salvation because of these things. We do not have them because of any our actions but because of God’s action through Jesus.

As Paul puts it the Philippian Christians, he does not have a righteousness of his own but only the righteousness that comes from God.

Some years ago, I helped a friend sell off his possessions at a car boot sale. We had a successful morning and as we were packing up, we found that one of the few items that we had left was a kite. We were approached by a couple with a small child, who was very upset. He had hoped to buy a kite he had seen on a nearby stall, but when he went back to it, the kite had been sold. Now he noticed that we had a kite. But he didn’t have the money to pay for it. Perhaps we were feeling generous because our sales had gone well, but we gave the child the kite. His tears turned to smiles, and his parents were very grateful.

“We’ve made a small child very happy,” I said to my friend afterwards. He replied, “Yes. If there’s a God, chalk that up!”.

Now my friend is an atheist, though perhaps he was having a moment of doubt. But he gave the kite to the child because he thought it was a good and compassionate thing to do, to make someone happy, not because he was trying to get into heaven. If I had given the kite to the child out of a desire for heaven, would that not make me more selfish than my atheist friend? I hope and think that God approved of our gift to the child, but I did not do it in an attempt to earn points with God or to buy my way to salvation.

In theory, as Christians, and particularly as Protestant Christians, we believe that salvation comes through the grace of God in Jesus, not through what we do. But do we really dare to believe this? That God’s love is so big, so wide, so mind-bendingly transformative, that God’s grace in Jesus can save us from our sins and bring us eternal life?

This is so hard to believe! A lot of people, including a lot of Christians, talk as if eternal life will come to us because of our actions. Some Christians talk as if they think they will be saved by believing exactly the right things about Jesus, about the Bible, about theology. But that’s just another way of trusting in our actions rather than in God. We are saved by Christ, not by Christianity. Some people seem to think that LGBT+ people are excluded from God’s salvation, as if we are saved by heterosexuality.

If I thought any of these things to be true, I would be very worried about my own chances of being saved. I am bisexual. Some of my beliefs might, for all I know, be completely mistaken. And if I am to be judged on my actions, I honestly am far from sure that my good deeds would outweigh my bad ones. But Paul reminds us repeatedly that there is no salvation in such things but only in turning to God’s love and forgiveness.

If we believe in salvation by God’s grace then does that mean that how we live doesn’t matter? Does this mean we can carry on day-to-day, conforming to the world around us and simply waiting for God’s salvation when we die?

No, I don’t think it does. Because putting our trust in Jesus means that we have a different starting point, a different focus, from the dominant values of this world. And that means that we will live differently, or at least that we will seek to live differently, while being prepared to turn to God and ask for forgiveness even if we repeatedly fail.

This takes us back to the text of Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. I hope you’ll bear with me if I tell you a personal story.

Twelve years ago, I was at a protest outside the London arms fair. The DSEI arms fair, which takes place every two years in east London, involves arms companies doing deals with representatives of governments from around the world, including some of the world’s most vicious and aggressive regimes. In 2013, I joined with other Christians in blocking an entrance to the arms fair by kneeling in prayer. When we refused to move, we were arrested and, at the police station I was the first of the group to be processed. As I was checked in, I asked if I could have a Bible to read in my cell. A policeman reached to a shelf behind the desk and gave me the Bible that they kept there.

I was in the cell by the time my friend Chris was processed. He also asked for a Bible. “You want a Bible too!” said a surprised police officer. “The last bloke asked for a Bible.” They managed to find another Bible for Chris, but by the time the third person was processed, the station was running out of Bibles. When the third person, James, was processed, they told him they would try to find a Bible, but he was already in the cell by the time they did so. One of the officers went to James’ cell and told him that he’d only managed to find a New Testament. “That’s okay,” said James. “I hope you’re not going to keep me here long enough to read both testaments”.

As I sat in my cell with my Bible. I decided to read Philippians. This was because I knew that Paul had written it in prison. Perhaps this was a bit arrogant on my part. It would be ridiculous to compare my own situation to Paul’s. He was in prison indefinitely awaiting a likely death sentence. I had just been locked up for a few hours. Nonetheless, the calming and encouraging words that Paul wrote in prison had a positive effect on me.

But they might not have done. Reading Paul’s words about how we are saved by Jesus alone, I could have concluded that the actions I had taken at the arms fair were not worthwhile. Resisting the arms trade couldn’t earn me points with God, couldn’t get me into heaven. Shouldn’t I just sit quietly at home, live the same as everyone around me, and wait for eternal life to come because of my faith in Jesus?

No, I couldn’t. Of course, not all of us are called to do things that lead us to be arrested. Following Jesus and his call on our lives takes many different forms for many different people. Some who respond most faithfully to Jesus live quiet lives of compassion that can easily go unnoticed – but they are not unnoticed by God.

As Paul writes in Philippians, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection”. I pray that God will give me more ability to trust in Jesus, to really trust in him, which at times I find so hard. To trust Jesus rather than in my own efforts or in the dominant attitudes of the world.

It seems to me that the more we trust in Jesus, the more we have to live differently. The more we trust in Jesus, the less trust we will place in the idols that dominate this world – the idols of money and markets and military might – systems that humans have created but which we find ourselves bowing down and serving. If we trust in the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaims then we cannot trust in the powers of this world. Psalm 146 reminds us, “Put not your trust in the powerful, mere mortals in whom there is no help”.  

Following Jesus is not about a list of rules. It is about a different starting-point, rooted in the love that Jesus reveals. This leads us back to that passage from John’s Gospel. Should Mary have sold the ointment and given the money to the poor? Perhaps that would have been just as good an option – or even a better option – than pouring it over Jesus. But in that moment, she acted on her faith in Jesus by anointing him in preparation for his death. And Jesus thanks her, Jesus praises her, for the actions that come from her faith.

We are called to live with our focus on God, not to be saved but in response to being saved by Jesus. We are not saved by our actions, our religious observances or our correct opinions, but only by the love of God that we encounter in Jesus. That love enables us, as Paul writes in Romans 12, to refuse to conform to the world around us and instead to allow ourselves to be transformed by God’s love. This is the love revealed in Jesus, a love that can transform us, a love that can transform the world.

Backlash continues over police raid on Quaker Meeting House

Posted on by symonhill

Churches Together in England (CTE) have become the latest organisation to criticise the police raid on Westminster Quaker Meeting House.

CTE are a bit late to the party, given that a full two weeks passed between the raid on 27th March and the CTE statement on 10th April. Nonetheless, given that CTE includes Christians with such a range of views, and that as a body it’s not exactly known for progressive positions, the statement is very welcome.

CTE have asked for a meeting with the Metropolitan Police and called for “an appropriate review by the police and its accountability structures”. While police “accountability structures” are weak to the point of barely existing, it would be interesting to see what comes out of a meeting between CTE, the Quakers and the Metropolitan Police.

If you’re not yet aware of this incident: at least 20 police broke down the door of Westminster Quaker Meeting House on the evening of 27th March. They swarmed through the building and arrested six young women attending a welcome talk by the nonviolent protest group Youth Demand.

Police also entered the other rooms in the building, including a room being used by a life drawing class and – staggeringly – a room hosting a private counselling session.

Youth Demand is not a Quaker group. However, they share with many Quakers a commitment to nonviolent direct action, in this case over climate change and war in Gaza.

Quaker Meetings were frequently broken up by the authorities in the seventeenth century. Now as then a place of worship has been attacked by violent representatives of the state seeking to stop peaceful people from acting on their conscience.

There has been coverage of the Meeting House raid in many places, including on the front page of the Sunday Times on 30th March. Personally I have written about it for the Morning Star and for Premier Christianity.

Other critics of the police raid on the Meeting House include Christian Aid, the Green Party, several MPs and members of the House of Lords and even Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The much shorter list of people who have refused to condemn or even question the raid includes Yvette Cooper, the Labour Home Secretary.

Police raid Quaker place of worship hosting campaign group’s welcome talk

Posted on by symonhill

On Thursday 27th March, at least 20 police officers broke down the door of a place of worship in central London and arrested young people who belong to a peaceful protest group.

New anti-protest laws have in recent years allowed the police to become ever more heavy-handed and anti-democratic in their approach to protest. Raids on people who are planning direct action – and not even doing it – have become more common.

Nonetheless, the police attack on Westminster Quaker Meeting House (pictured right) is particularly alarming for several reasons.

Firstly, the event was described by Youth Demand as a “welcome talk“ that was “publicly advertised”, to discuss protests against the genocide in Gaza. In other words, this event was open to anyone. That includes people with no experience of taking part in, or even talking about, civil disobedience or direct action. Anybody who went along out of interest may very likely be frightened of attending any political meeting again. This is police intimidation.

Secondly, it seems you can now be raided for having conversations about actions that you might take. Given that this was a welcome meeting, it is disingenuous for the police to imply that everyone there was in the middle of some sort of high-level planning of mass disruption. The police comment given to the media focused on what “Youth Demand have stated” their intentions to be. This is very different to everyone present being intent on taking part in such things. Given that the police raided other Youth Demand members’ homes in London and Exeter, it seems that they were attempting not only to arrest certain members of Youth Demand but also to intimidate all the others.

Thirdly, the police have raided a place of worship. Apologists for the police have been quick to jump on social media and point out that the people arrested were not Quakers (or at least, probably not Quakers). This is irrelevant. Quakers have a strong theology of not separating the “sacred” and the “secular”, so they do not believe their buildings to be more sacred than other places. This is also irrelevant, however. Religious groups expect their buildings to be places of safety and welcome; those who visit them should be able to expect this (speaking personally, Westminster Quaker Meeting House was a great place of welcome and community to me after I nervously moved to London 20 years ago). Westminster Quaker Meeting House is also the home of two Quaker wardens, who have now experienced the violation of their home by the police.

The police are clearly abandoning the sort of sensitivity and caution that might once have made them reluctant to break into a place of worship. A statement from Quakers in Britain described the incident as “an aggressive violation of our place of worship”.

Of course, this whole incident cannot be understood without the context of the genocide in Gaza, which is enabled by Keir Starmer’s government. Like the Tory government before them, they are happy to arm Israeli troops killing civilians in Gaza and Saudi troops killing civilians in Yemen – and many other vicious regimes around the world. The young people arrested in Westminster Quaker Meeting House were not planning violence. They were seeking to resist violence.

This police raid seems fairly clearly to be an attempt to deter people from taking part in Youth Demand’s upcoming protests. For this reason if for no other, let’s make sure we support them! Tessa, a member of Youth Demand speaking outside Bromley Police Station yesterday insisted that “this blatant act of intimidation by the Met Police” would not stop them.

Among other things, it is vital that religious groups condemn the police’s behaviour and their violation of free speech, freedom of assembly and religious liberty. This time it was a Quaker Meeting House. Next time it could be a church, mosque, temple or synagogue.

Why Christians should back free speech – and not believe J.D. Vance

Posted on by symonhill

I wrote the following article for Premier Christianity, who published it on their website on Thursday 13th March 2024. As I was writing for a Christian audience I focused on the faith that I share with them, although (as I hope all my writing makes clear), I believe passionately in working alongside people of many faiths and none.

Two and a half years after I was put in the back of a police van, my hands cuffed behind my back, Thames Valley Police have admitted that I was unlawfully arrested. 

I am acutely aware that most people who are wrongly arrested receive little or no publicity and are not in a position to take legal action against the police. 

I was able to take legal action only because of Liberty, whose excellent lawyers advised and represented me. I was helped, practically and emotionally, by a wide range of friends, comrades and strangers. They included fellow Christians, along with people of other faiths and of none.  

My arrest took place in September 2022, shortly after I left church in Oxford. I found myself amid crowds of people trying to negotiate their way around town as roads were closed for a ceremony declaring Charles Windsor to be king. 

I remained silent as the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire read out expressions of grief for Elizabeth Windsor. But then he declared Charles to be our king, stating that we owe him “obedience”. I had just been in church, celebrating King Jesus. Unlike earthly kings, Jesus calls us to choose to follow him. He does not demand our obedience based on accidents of birth. 

I find it hard to stomach the description of Charles Windsor as our “rightful liege lord”. To me, it seems to be demeaning to God’s image to expect one sinful human being to bow down to another.  

I called out: “Who elected him?” 

A couple of people told me to shut up. I said that a head of state was being imposed on us without our consent. 

I might well have left it there. But three security guards came over and told me to be quiet. When I asserted my right to speak, they began to push me backwards. 

The police intervened – not to arrest the security guards for assaulting me, but to arrest me. I was led away and handcuffed. 

I will forever be grateful for two complete strangers who followed us down the road, asking the police why they were arresting me. They said that while they didn’t agree with my opinion, they thought Britain was a “free country.” 

Several other people were arrested around the same time, for similarly minor acts of dissent. A woman in Edinburgh who prefers to remain anonymous was arrested while peacefully holding a republican placard. 

Three months later, I was charged with breaking the Public Order Act 1986 through behaviour likely to cause “harassment, alarm or distress.” I had not harassed, threatened or insulted anybody. Two weeks later, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the charges, saying there was little prospect of conviction. 

After my arrest, I was taken aback by the level of media interest. I received hundreds of supportive messages, dozens of abusive ones and a few death threats. I have also heard from many other people who had been wrongly arrested.  

Anti-protest legislation introduced by the Conservative government – which Labour has failed to repeal – has been used against non-violent anti-war and climate campaigners. But it is not only legislation that is the problem, but the culture within the police force.  

I have lost count of the number of times I have attended protests at which Black and Asian people are the first to be questioned or arrested. Police ignorance about free expression has been highlighted by clumsy attempts to enforce buffer zones where abortions take place. While it is reasonable to prevent intimidation or aggression, this should not be confused with quiet and respectful praying.   

Unfortunately, those who talk loudest about free speech seem to be uninformed about whose free speech is being denied. JD Vance recently undermined his own argument about Britain’s lack of free speech with an outrageous untruth about people in Scotland being prevented from praying in their homes. 

Meanwhile, various celebrities claim that they are being “cancelled” when voluntary organisations such as Students’ Unions decide not to invite them to speak. 

But it is not the rich and powerful whose free speech is threatened. Free speech is at risk in the UK because police are arresting people for nonviolent protest and expressing their opinion. Unlike Vance and the supposedly “cancelled” celebrities, most have limited power to do much about it. 

As Christians we believe that all people have value and worth, and that Christ died for us all. The voice and dignity of one person is as valuable as those of any other. Called to love our neighbours – whatever their faith or lack of it – we cannot call for our rights to be respected without recognising the rights of others.  

This is why I urge all Christians to uphold freedom of expression and principles of equality. This means urging Keir Starmer’s government to repeal the anti-protest laws that Tory ministers put in place. It also means calling for a major overhaul of policing. 

In calling for our rights to freedom of speech, we are asserting the value, dignity and equality of every human being, made in the very image of God.  

The Church of England has not even reached the starting-point

Posted on by symonhill

The General Synod of the Church of England have raised their weapons, taken aim and shot themselves in their collective feet.

They voted yesterday to improve the Church’s safeguarding procedures, handing parts of the process over to an independent body.

This in itself is a good thing. It’s an improvement on the current situation, and there’s no doubt that many grassroots Anglicans are working hard to prioritise safeguarding (even if others are not).

But what they have voted for is less than what we were led to expect.

Faced with two options for improving safeguarding, the Synod voted for the weaker option (“Model 3”). The proposal to fully hand over safeguarding to an independent body (“Model 4”) was not passed.

Some who voted for the partial measure had understandable reasons for doing so. As the Church Times reports, there were fears that full independence would take too long to implement, leading some to suggest that partial independence would be a better option as it would get things changing more quickly.

This seems to me to miss the point that the Church of England must act far more quickly than it has usually done in the past. Moving at their usual speed should not be an option, whatever the details of new systems and procedures.

At least as important as the new procedures themselves is the message that was sent, however inadvertently, to victims, survivors and the public in general. Most survivors who were involved in the issue were calling clearly for fully independent safeguarding to be introduced.

To choose the weaker of two alternative systems is not only – as the journalist and anti-abuse campaigner Andrew Graystone put it – a “punch in the gut” for victims of survivors of church-based sexual abuse. As Joanne Grenfell, Bishop of Stepney and lead bishop for safeguarding, said after the vote, “The Church has missed a huge opportunity to send a message to victims and survivors that we hear their concerns about trust and confidence.”

This is another step in turning large chunks of the British population away from churches.

The abuse crises are not affecting the Church of England only. Those of us in other churches have no right to complacency. This is not only because of our own safeguarding failings but because much of the public no longer distinguish between one Christian denomination and another. Far fewer people know about the distinctions between churches than was once the case (and why should we expect them to?).

Today, the General Synod have reaffirmed in many people’s minds the impression that Christian churches are not on the side of victims.

This is utterly contrary to the teachings of Jesus, who sided with the poor, the marginalised and other victims of injustice and kept his harshest words for the rich and powerful and religious leaders.

He said we should love our enemies. He did not say that the perpetrators of injustice should not be our enemies.

There is an alternative for churches in the UK now. Radical changes to safeguarding systems should be only a starting-point.

Beyond this, we could address the cultural and structural problems that lead to abuse. As Jonathan Gibbs, the Bishop of Rochester, pointed out in yesterday’s debate, the recent abuse crises in the Church of England were due to less to poor procedures and more to a culture whose workings are “so supple and so powerful that at times we don’t even realise it is happening”.

We could ask God to guide us in the painful and challenging work of changing the culture of our churches, overhauling our power structures, centring the voices of victims and affirming our solidarity with the people with the least power. We could signify our repentance by voluntarily giving up our privileges, such as opt-outs for faith schools and bishops in the House of Lords. We could show our willingness to stand in solidarity with people of all faiths and none as we recognise our own failings and stand against abuse, injustice and sin.

The Church of England’s General Synod have indicated now that they have not even reached the starting-point.