A new report published by Bristol University at the weekend studying data from the British Social Attitudes Survey about attitudes to immigration among faith groups shows overwhelming opposition to the current high levels of immigration into the UK.
This is unsurprising. The rapid, mass, uncontrolled immigration into Britain in recent times is unprecedented. More people have immigrated to the UK in the last 20 years than in the previous 900 years going back to the Norman conquest, with over 5 million migrants net since 1997, swelling the population of the country to record high levels. These are just the people counted by the government’s extremely poor and slapdash methods. It doesn’t include those who have smuggled themselves in on the back of a lorry or on a dinghy in the middle of the night.
The report shows that 87 per cent of Anglicans want immigration reduced, compared to 77 per cent of the population as a whole.
What caught the eye of the BBC however, who put together a report on the findings, was that regular churchgoers across all Christian denominations were less inclined to want to reduce immigration. 66 per cent of those attending weekly or more said they wanted to reduce immigration — a clear majority, but lower than the 81 per cent of those who attend once a year and 86 per cent of those who say they are Christian but never attend church.
The report states that it does not know the reason for this, but puts forward the idea of ‘cultural defence’ — although this is not defined and unsubstantiated.
A more likely reason, however, is the arrival of Antonio Gramsci’s ‘Long March Through the Institutions’ at the doors of the church.
In the BBC’s report, they wheeled out a couple of left-wing vicars to explain why mass migration was good. One of them runs an organisation called ‘Diverse Church’, which concerns itself with leftist narratives of class, race and gender, and agitates for the church to accept same-sex marriage. Its website links to the Institute of Race Relations, which includes articles on ‘Race and Class: Narratives that Marginalise: From Ferguson to Palestine’ and ‘Racial Violence and the Brexit State’.
The other — the Iran-born Bishop of Loughborough — haughtily declared that congregations needed to be “educated” to accept mass migration. In my own experience, the vicar of the church I used to go to recently began to use the pulpit to denounce Brexit and President Trump, and to call for more migration and gender equality — even though we have gender equality in the UK, and migration leads to exploitation of workers and unsustainable pressure on the NHS, school places and the housing market.
This is sadly typical of many churches which have become mouthpieces of the liberal left. They are supported by Archbishop Justin Welby who recently called for more immigration and suggested Brexit was within the “nationalist, populist, or even fascist tradition of politics” — slurring democratic Brexiteers as morally equivalent to Hitler’s National Socialists.
Christ commands us to love our neighbours, but also commands personal responsibility and confession of sins to get into a right relationship with God. In many churches today, which have been infiltrated by ‘progressive’ liberals, virtue signalling social justice has become the one and only message. There is little mention of the scriptures as they are abandoned to pursue leftist identity politics. The pulpit is used to promote the EU and mass migration, women’s rights, and increasingly the militant LGBTism of Stonewall.
Instead of Jesus Christ, they follow Jeremy Corbyn and Karl Marx. There are many good people who were previous regular churchgoers, but have left their congregations, despite retaining a vital Christian faith. It is not so much that they have left the church, but the church has left them.
The liberal-leftist vicars and bishops in the church who virtue signal about more immigration — usually from within sumptuous ‘grace-and-favour’ vicarages and palaces — studiously ignore verses like Acts 17:26, which says: “From one man he made every nation of men, to inhabit the whole earth; and he determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their lands.”
This is rather inconvenient for cultural Marxist infiltrators. Yes, Christians are to welcome the stranger and care for the poor, particularly to accept for and care for genuine refugees. But we are also to respect that God created nations, tribes, and peoples for whom he designated and appointed their own lands.
These vicars make no difference between accepting genuine refugees under the UN Refugee Convention — people fleeing for their lives for whom the UK is the first safe country they come to can find refuge — and mass uncontrolled economic migration, which pillages the best and brightest talent from around the world.
This denies other countries of keeping their own talented young people, while neglecting to train our own young people with the skills they need to thrive in the UK. It undermines the stability and order which allows nations and communities to thrive and be at peace.
Christians in congregations and those who have left regular church attendance understand this far more than the Oxbridge educated clergy class. Once again, we find that the people are more astute than the establishment.
David Kurten is a UKIP member of the London Assembly.