Justin Welby to call on public to show refugees generosity and love
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Version 0 of 1. The archbishop of Canterbury is to call on the public to show generosity and love to refugees as a way of countering hatred and extremism in the world. In his new year message to be broadcast by the BBC on Friday, Justin Welby will draw attention to Britain’s “long-established tradition of warmth and hospitality”. British people, he will say, have always welcomed strangers, the poor and the weak: “In today’s world hospitality and love are our most formidable weapons against hatred and extremism.” The mounting refugee crisis has preoccupied the Church of England and other faith communities throughout 2015. The leaders of the main religions in the UK have called on the government to increase the number of refugees fleeing conflict and persecution that the UK accepts. David Cameron announced in September that Britain would take 20,000 refugees from camps in countries bordering Syria over the next five years. The first 1,000 arrived shortly before Christmas. Church of England bishops, however, said the agreement was an inadequate response to the overwhelming number of people seeking sanctuary in Europe. They released a private letter to Cameron in which they described the mass movement of refugees as a moral crisis and urged him to increase the number Britain accepts to 50,000. “As the sheer scale of human misery becomes greater, the government’s response seems increasingly inadequate to meet the scale and severity of the problem,” said Paul Butler, the bishop of Durham. Welby has repeatedly raised the issue, and has urged church communities to initiate and support efforts to assist refugees. In his new year message, the leader of the worldwide Anglican communion will describe meeting a 14-year-old north African boy, now attending Marsh Academy, a school in New Romney, Kent, who fled his homeland after soldiers tried to abduct him. “This is just one example of the many desperate journeys children are making on their own to save their lives,” Welby will say. The school, he will add, is “not a rich school; many families in the area are struggling on a day-to-day basis. And yet this school and surrounding community are astonishingly generous. If they can do it, so can we all”. He will also refer to a chapel in Canterbury cathedral that was designated for refugees fleeing persecution in France in the 16th century. An inscription outside the chapel describes it as a testimony to the “large and liberal spirit of the English church, and the glorious asylum which England has in all times given to foreigners flying for refuge against oppression and tyranny”, he will say. In his Christmas Day sermon, the archbishop warned of an Islamic State “apocalypse” that could drive Christianity out of its Middle East birthplace. Isis was “igniting a trail of fear, violence, hatred and determined oppression” in the region, he said. |