As the BNP are forced to abandon its ‘whites only’ membership party, the Rt Rev Gordon Mursell has used a pastoral letter published in parish magazines across the Church of England’s Diocese of Lichfield to ask what it means to be British.
"Britain will never be great again if all we have to offer is xenophobia and dreams of a lost empire," he said.
"But it can indeed be great again if it signs up to the values of Jesus’ kingdom - a place where people are judged by where they’re going, not where they come from, a place where what matters is not borders but compassion and courage and commitment and dedication, a place where a rich diversity of people live under the lordship of a God in whom 'there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus'."
In his letter, the bishop portrays the collective attitude of Britons, saying: "We sniff disapprovingly when a Pole or a Latvian is found guilty of a crime in this country; but we haven’t much to say when the British are, for the third year running, voted the worst foreign tourists in Europe, when drunken louts on Greek islands start groping locals, or the Barmy Army at test matches here at home scream abuse at the Australian captain."
He said there was "nothing wrong" with being patriotic but warned against a patriotism that is "taken to the extremes".
"We have no problems with an economic migrant moving from Glasgow to Birmingham, or Los Angeles to New York - but we mind very much if another economic migrant wants to move from Kiev to Manchester. Why? Because there’s a border in between," he said.
He warned that Britain was becoming increasingly "little England-like" by spending billions on border controls.
"Yet even a fraction of all that money could be used to support investment by British companies in Somalia or Ukraine or wherever most migrants come from," said Bishop Mursell.
"That investment would provide jobs for British workers and, by improving the economy of the foreign nation, would enable would-be migrants to stay at home and get jobs there."
He paid tribute to Patch for requesting that there be representatives from the military not only of the UK but also of Germany, France and Belgium at his funeral.
"That surely is the kind of patriotism to admire," he said.
He contrasted this approach with the ministry of Jesus Christ, saying: "Nothing is more striking, in the ministry of Jesus, than the fact that he took almost no interest in where people come from - whether they were Jews, or Samaritans, or hated Roman soldiers, scarcely bothered him at all - but a very great interest in where they were going, in what their future might be, and in what potential they had if they were willing to travel with him.
"In his kingdom, what mattered was not ethnicity or geography but the values you sought to live by, and the God you sought to worship."
