The other day I was alerted to the following tweet by Paul Embery:
Now, as it happens, I generally like Paul Embery. I think he has lots of sensible helpful things to say. We are (often) not politically far apart either. But I thought it worth perhaps offering some response to this as one of those church leaders who has asylum seekers converting (or, already converted) in his church.
Paul says 'church leaders should be called to give evidence.' It might surprise him, but that is precisely what we are called to do. I have sat in front of judges and given specific evidence of belief. We don't need an enquiry because we already give evidence in court. We are only called upon to give written statements and/or show up in court to give verbal evidence when the Home Office have rejected a case and an applicant is on appeal. An applicant has an initial interview with the Home Office - that is either accepted or rejected - without any input from church leaders. It is only if their application fails and the applicant appeals that church leaders are called to give a written statement of evidence and/or come to court to act as a witness on behalf of the applicant since they have known them.
It further bears saying that it is not churches who decide asylum cases. Nor, it should be said, do churches determine whether asylum claims are genuine or not. The sole question put to churches is, as far as you judge it, does this person appear to be a credible Christian. We make no judgement, indeed can offer no judgement, on the legitimacy of asylum claims. We have no insight into the country of origin nor the need for asylum. We are only asked a narrow question: do you think this person is a believer and why?
Many of the comments under Paul's tweet labour from a series of faulty misconceptions. There were various kinds of comment. Typical of the 'religion should not be grounds for asylum' kind was this:
The failure to recognise that being a Christian, in and of itself, is not grounds for asylum doesn't seem to register here. A French person, for example, seeking asylum in the UK as a Christian will not receive it. Religion is only relevant when the applicant is coming from certain countries where their religious practice is proscribed. So places such as Iran, where Christianity is punishable by imprisonment and torture, makes religion a relevant factor for such an applicant who claims to have left Iran because they became Christian. It would similarly be a relevant factor - undercutting the ridiculous claim that the world would be better if everybody was an atheist - if someone is claiming asylum from North Korea on religious grounds where Christian faith is punishable in prison camps. The same is also true for an Atheist applicant under certain theocratic nations where that is also deemed unacceptable, at which point Atheism would be characterised as a form of religious belief.
It needs to be noted Christianity is not, in and of itself, a grounds for claiming asylum. It is merely a factor that may be significant in the ultimate decision. The grounds of asylum are the same in every case: legitimate fear of being returned to your home nation because of credible claims of human rights violations or persecution. The sole issue at play is whether your country is a safe one for you. The factors that then impact that question are what country you are from, what the government policies are, what your claims of danger to your person are, etc. A country might be safe for me but not for you. It may unsafe today but not tomorrow. Your situation might be circumstantial or inherent to your person. It may based on your beliefs, immutable characteristics or particular actions you have taken. These are all factors that impact on the only issue that actually matters: is your country safe for you to return to or not? Do you need safe refuge in a different country or not? Religion or belief, in and of itself, is not a grounds for asylum.
For those reasons, tweets like this are technically correct:
But because that is technically correct, the Home Office and the courts do not grant asylum on that basis and never have.
Another set of tweets - which we will refer to as the 'stupid religious lot' category - infers that church leaders are just naïve and wave everyone through, summarised by these kind of tweet:
As I mentioned before, churches don't make direct statements to the Home Office at all. Asylum seekers attend a Home Office interview and present their own evidence. The Home Office have been known to ring up and ask - usually when they have already determined to grant asylum based on the evidence they have - that the applicant is known and continues to attend the church they cited as their current one. But this is not seeking further evidence, but usually confirming information they have already accepted and amounts to confirmatory due diligence on the part of the Home Office checking that the applicant continues in fellowship at the church they claim to be attending. It is not presenting any new evidence or making any claims. It's usually answering a set of yes/no questions put to you by phone by a case worker.
Nevertheless, when the Home Office reject a case, churches are then often asked to write supporting statements for the court and come in person to give evidence. Now, it bears saying, are there churches that naively wave people into membership and baptise based on very little? Without question such places exist. However, and this really should surprise nobody, the courts look for credible evidence from churches that their processes are actually robust. If a church simply waves people into membership without thought, the courts typically consider them (and rightly so in my opinion) naïve and foolish. Indeed, my experience is that the courts assume naivety and desperation to swell ailing membership figures on the part of almost every church leader. They only take you at all seriously (again, rightly so) if you can demonstrate clear and robust membership processes. The courts typically do not accept the word of church leaders as gospel truth, but consider them do-gooder dupes who are desperate to think the best of people so they can increase their membership rolls. In many cases, I don't think the courts are entirely unjustified in that assumption and it means that the church must demonstrate the robustness of their processes and that they rely on credible evidence to make these judgements.
It is, therefore, usually evident to the courts when churches do not open the door to all and sundry. We are always asked two questions: (1) have you ever rejected asylum seekers getting baptised or from joining your church in membership? The answer to which in our case is yes, with some frequency. (2) have you removed people from membership? To which the answer is also yes. Both demonstrate in and of themselves we do not simply bring people through the door without reason and equally that we are clearly not so desperate to keep people in membership to swell our membership figures.
However, we also always present in our written statements our process for determining genuine belief. It is the same process we apply to non-asylum seekers too. We have several steps of a process that must be gone through. We have key markers that we look out for, not just things people say but also what they do. We expect to see understanding of the gospel, a credible testimony and a clear outworking of what they claim to believe in their lives as we observe them more generally.
Further to that, our church leaders have no authority to bring anyone into membership of our church at any rate. Though step one might involve an interview with the elders of the church, and the elders may make a recommendation to the church membership, it is for the church members as a whole to satisfy themselves that this person is a genuine believer. We expect our members to also interview and discuss with applicants for membership about their understanding of the gospel and their testimony. It is then a matter put before the entire church who must vote by a majority to accept the person into membership. This stops anybody simply being waved through by one naïve person. It also gives greater scope for people to say - because it can be easily missed by any single individual - that they know the life of this person outside of church meetings does not match up to their profession of faith. This would be a clear and evident grounds to not welcome somebody into membership.
It is our practice as a church not to attend court for anybody who is not in membership of the church. We are clear that the way the church affirms believers is through baptism into local church membership or, for already baptised believers, acceptance into membership. If we are asked for a letter of support for a non-member, we will write (because it is a simply statement of fact) that this person attends the church. We will not, however, attend court for any non-members. It is usually assumed, if we will not attend court, that we aren't willing to affirm this person is believer. Whilst there are various reasons why we wouldn't want to, or couldn't, say this person isn't a believer, if they are not in membership we are not affirming that they are one. Whilst we are happy to state the simple fact that they attend if they are not a member, that statement is generally not taken by the Home Office (and especially not the courts) to be at all persuasive of genuine faith. In my view, that is entirely right and proper.
The assumptions on display in that twitter thread, both about how faith impacts asylum claims and how the church deals with asylum seekers, are quite incredible. It displays total ignorance of how the system works, what is being claimed and the process that churches like mine employ. The truth is, we have robust membership processes in our church specifically because we want to protect the church. Forget asylum claims for the minute, church leaders are called to protect the church and (in the Baptistic polity we hold to) want to maintain as far as possible a regenerate church membership. We actively DO NOT WANT unbelievers in membership.
We are as aware as anybody that we are not infallible. We get it wrong sometimes. Just as the Home Office get it wrong sometimes. Just as the courts get it wrong sometimes. Wrong in every direction. They inevitably grant asylum to those they shouldn't and reject those who need it, just as the church will sometimes keep people out of membership who should be allowed in and let in those who should be kept out. There are no infallible systems.
Knowing that, we can only create as reasonably robust, yet fair, a system as possible. I will leave others to decide about well the Home Office do on that front, but I am simply outlining what we as a church do in that regard. We don't just pull everyone in, nor do we lock everyone out, but we have a system - a biblical and fair system that applies equally to non-asylum seekers seeking membership - that at least aims to be robust and look for evidence of genuine belief. When we have stood up in court and outlined it in front of cynical judges, judgements tend to return - even when applicants are rejected (typically for entirely reasons apart their faith) - that we are credible witnesses with robust processes in place to judge matters rightly.
I mention all this because it is simply untrue that churches 'just waving people in' is leading to huge intake of asylum seekers. The Home Office does not find such churches compelling and tend to reject their witness statements. Judges are even more inclined to reject those without robust systems. Even churches that have reasonable systems have to demonstrate to the court with evidence that their systems are robust. The working assumption is exactly the working assumption of those in the twitter thread: churches are naïve and have simplistic, soft processes. Which tells you, when churches demonstrate the strength of their membership process, it is recognised by the courts and similarly churches with weak processes do not help the cause of asylum seekers but tend to actively damage their claims.
Of course, the issue that prompted the latest comment - an asylum seeker who has a criminal record committing an acid attack - is really a very simple one. Such a person should have long been deported. Any UK criminal record that warrants jail time or is anything greater than a strict liability issue should result in deportation. Whilst I do believe in the right to properly appeal decisions - not least having seen both the numbers of those decisions overturned by the independent judiciary and the abysmal basis on which some Home Office original decisions are based - it is similarly worth noting that we have a problem in this country with refusing to remove those who have failed not only initial interviews but subsequent appeals.
Of course, that problem being what it is, we have problems like the one that occurred. Those who simply do not believe we should welcome any asylum seekers use such cases to make draconian and unworkable claims as to how they should be dealt with, knowing full well that their main goal is not to welcome or help anyone at all. It also leads to very simplistic claims and "solutions" which don't bear scrutiny such as 'religion is a grounds for asylum' (it isn't) and 'do-gooder churches just wave them in' (some do) and that gets people their asylum (it doesn't). The issue in the case before us is now being used to suggest that anyone who claims faith as a genuine need for asylum, and any churches that support such claims, should be stricken from the record and rejected. That does absolutely nothing to resolve the issue of persecution abroad for which people need asylum nor that, in many cases, people are genuine believers who are under threat of persecution in their home countries. Unless and until we resolve the problem of theocratic and atheistic totalitarian regimes refusing tolerance - and making international aid dependent on it, and even imposing sanctions on those who will not permit them - we will continue to face this issue.
Is it fair enough to refuse safe refuge to those who would pose a genuine danger to us, and evidence that they will be so? Absolutely. But using one such example to impose draconian laws that will affect many more genuine claims is no solution at all. If we actually deported those who are guilty of crimes, and won't put pressure on those who refuse to tolerate all forms of religious practice, we have no choice but to ask churches to provide evidence as to whether such people are genuine believers because they will be - by our own reckoning - in danger of persecution if we return them home. But I would argue those who perpetrate crimes unrepentantly are evidencing they are not genuine believers and should be deported. Those who perpetrate crimes and are repentant might be genuine, but evidence of proper repentance would include submitting themselves to justice and facing the reality that they might well be deported because of their actions and willingly doing so. In either case, the church isn't really needed to judge such professions of faith because they will be evident to all. For those who have not perpetrated crimes, and are claiming genuine risk of persecution because of their faith, what option do we have other than to ask churches who know them - as expert witnesses on the matter - to offer some evidence to that effect?
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