Thought for the Day, 31 October 2007

The Rev. Joel Edwards

In 1601 Queen Elizabeth issued an edict "for the expulsion of all the Blackamoors from the shores of Britain". Immigration was on the front page then, and it's still on the front pages today.

Britain is caught in a cultural convulsion in which 'difference' confronts us every day in a thousand different ways. What are we to do about the fact that between 7 and 8% of the working population are now 'foreign nationals'? And how are we to tackle the demands that makes on our health care, community provisions or education?

Well, for one thing we probably need to recognise that whilst we all argue about the statistics, this issue is never likely to be finally settled by any one political ideology. The subject will always be bigger than the ballot box and about a lot more than economics.

Immigration is a global cultural conundrum with no easy answers. And it shouldn't have any. For unless we want to be a moral island, we're always going to be implicated in responding to the poor and marginalised, the brutalised and persecuted.

As long as we care about justice and hate oppression in our world, we have given away our rights of convenience.

So now we must join our politicians and commentators in wrestling with the balance between those who may enter and those who may not.

Immigration is always going to be an emotive subject because it is also about more emotional and deeper things than jobs or accurate statistics. Ultimately it's a desperate debate about the soul of the nation - and who the nation is.

And all of us have to dig deep.

I'm from African stock, born in the Caribbean and raised in London. I'm a Christian leader who has worked in community and the Criminal Justice System. But when I get on the bus in East London and discover on my four-stop ride that I can't understand what most people are saying on their mobile phones I personally have to dig deep.

In rational or heated debates people of faith have an important point of reference. It's the idea of transcendence which ties us together to a common humanity in which the care of the stranger is always balanced by the needs of the nation.

And for Christian faith it's the conviction that in Christ people really can experience a new humanity in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free.

It doesn't make the problems go away but it helps us to deal with it.

Last Sunday I preached at a racially mixed congregation in West London. As a part of the worship they announced that two Nigerian members of the congregation had just passed their British citizenship test.

The place went wild!

I wonder what Queen Elizabeth would have made of it?