The Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Rev Martyn Snow, in an apparent plea for dialogue and understanding, has conceded that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has a point when he says that church leaders are “out of touch” with believers over the issue of immigration.
Writing for The Times, Bishop Snow said, “Hard as it is for church leaders such as me to hear, there is a grain of truth in what he says.”
Farage’s comments appear to be backed up to a degree by research from the University of Exeter, which has indicated significant support for Reform among members of the Church of England.
Bishop Snow wrote that many Christians are in favour of tighter border controls “not out of hatred but out of sincere concern for social cohesion, pressure on public services and the pace of cultural change in their communities”.
The Church, he argues, must be for such people as much as it is for those who support current immigration policies. By rubbishing the concerns of those who oppose mass immigration, the Church could end up driving believers away.
Instead, the Church should be a space where people are free to disagree and where there is diversity of thought among people who sincerely wish to find God’s will.
While calling for the Church to join in the national conversation on immigration, Bishop Snow also asked people to listen and engage with each other with “respect, courtesy and love”.
However, while making such a call, the bishop also denounced what he called “inhumane policies” and “populist fearmongering” in an apparent dig at Farage.
Other Church leaders have been more direct in their criticism of Farage.
The Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev Steven Croft, published an open letter to Farage in response to Reform’s plans to deport illegal 600,000 migrants and withdraw from the controversial European Convention on Human Rights.
“I heard no compassion in what you said for those who are at risk from people traffickers; those who fled for their lives; those who long for sanctuary and safety; the vulnerable who would be forcibly deported," Bishop Croft said.
“The British people, as I understand them, want public policies founded on the deeply British and Christian values of compassion and care for those in need.”
He added, “I disagree profoundly with your attempts to politicise the questions of migration and asylum by deliberately increasing fear of the stranger in our communities."
The acting head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, also spoke out against Farage, telling The Mirror that Reform’s plans were “beneath us as a nation”.
Clearly, not everyone agrees with Croft and Cottrell. Church of England priest, Simon Brennan, said in a recent column for The Critic that church leaders often lean on “well-meaning clichés” about compassion, justice and community, while failing to grapple with the more difficult theological and cultural realities of large-scale migration.
“We really ought to be able to expect more from our Bishops than for them to simply offer soft-Left platitudes that sound like they were drafted by Peter Mandelson in 1998,” Brennan wrote, adding that there was "a clear sense that over the last few years there has been a rapid and significant cultural change in the country and at present the Church of England is way behind in terms of what is going on”.
