Tag Archives: Christianity

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.

“The Jews” did not kill Jesus

Posted on by symonhill

Jesus was executed by the authorities of the Roman Empire.

This is one of the few features of Jesus’ life on which nearly all historians agree. There are many historians and biblical scholars who spend a lot of time arguing about which of the sayings and actions attributed to Jesus are likely to be historically accurate, about which of the incidents recorded in the gospels took place as historical events.

Scholars are on a spectrum from those who take the gospels as broadly accurate accounts of Jesus’ life to those who doubt all but a few details .

Virtually all of them, however, accept that Jesus was crucified. Crucifixion was a Roman method of execution (not a Jewish one) used against political troublemakers and rebellious slaves. It is almost inconcievable that Jesus’ followers, living in a tyrannical and violent regime, would have invented a story that would immediately label them as followers of someone that regime had executed as a threat.

For much of Christian history, however, Christians have put the blame on Jews – often on “the Jews” as a whole, as if every one of them bore responsibility for the killing of Jesus. This is particularly absurd given that Jesus was a Jew.

This claim has not only served as a justificiation for persecuting Jews. It has also helped to sidestep the intensely political nature of the death of Jesus. He was executed by an imperial power who objected to him promoting the Kingdom of God rather than the Empire of Rome (when you read the words “kingdom” and “empire” in an English Bible, they are translating the same Greek word, basileia).

The gospels, to varying degrees, show the Jewish leaders of the time colluding with the Roman authorities to execute Jesus. Matthew’s Gospel and John’s Gospel seem particularly keen to hold them responsible. There are various possible reasons for this, much debated by historians. All the gospels make clear, however, that in the end Jesus was executed on the orders of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

If the Jewish leaders encouraged Pilate to execute Jesus, this would not make all Jews responsible. But even here we need to be careful. Who were these Jewish leaders? They were the Roman-approved leaders: in practice, Rome would only allow a Jewish High Priest who did not resist Roman rule. It is unsurprising that when Jews rebelled against Roman rule in 70 CE (about 40 years after Jesus’ crucifixion), the Jewish rebels killed the High Priest and his colleagues. They were collaborators with the empire. They were not representative of the Jewish people.

I have been shocked in the run-up to Easter this year to see how persistent is the belief that “the Jews” killed Jesus. Perhaps I have become too used to academic New Testament scholarship (where Roman responsibliity is accepted) or to left-wing Christian groups (where the political nature of Jesus’ execution is emphasised).

I recently heard a street preacher in Birmingham declare that Jesus had been killed by “his own people, that’s the Jews”. I was shocked to see a reflection in the Church Times last week by Charles Moseley, in which he repeated the tired old claim that Pilate did not want to execute Jesus but gave into Jewish public opinion. Moseley did not not try to argue this point, or acknowledge that it has now been discredited. He simply asserted it as he might have done if writing 30 years ago.

Sadly, it seems that antisemitism is alive and well in many Christian circles at Easter. Ironically, those of us who campaign against the horrendous assaults of Israeli forces against people in Gaza are accused of antisemitism by political right-wingers and apologists for aggression. Yet Jesus was born in an empire, in a place where imperial soldiers controlled the population and religious leaders colluded with oppression. It is not dissimilar to the situation faced by many Palestinians today. This point is made repeatedly by Palestinian Christians, even when western Christians do not seem to have ears to hear it.

It is not resistance to empire and war that is antisemitic – to make such a claim is to conflate Jews in general with the current Israeli government and its forces. It is attempts to ignore the inherently political nature of Jesus’ death that lead to the blame being put on “the Jews”. Throughout Christian history – and still today – antisemitism has served the interests of those who want us to forget that Jesus challenged the political and social order. Following Jesus means continuing to challenge injustice and empire today.