THERE isn’t any evidence to support the “imaginative range of allegations” made by a former C of E priest concerning the Church’s apparent complicity in a “conveyor belt” of asylum-seeker conversions, the Bishop of Durham, the Rt Revd Paul Butler, has said.
The claims were made by the Revd Matthew Firth, a former Priest-in-Charge of St Cuthbert’s, Darlington, who left to hitch the Free Church of England in 2020. They were made within the wake of reports that the suspect in an alkali attack in Clapham, south-west London, Abdul Shokoor Ezedi, said that he had converted to Christianity before his asylum claim was approved (News, 2 February). Police reported on the weekend that Mr Ezedi, an Afghan national, is now believed to have drowned within the Thames.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph last week, Mr Firth said that the Church of England was “complicit” in allowing what he described as an “extraordinary” variety of baptisms of asylum-seekers at St Cuthbert’s. “I made a decision I needed to put a stop to the conveyor belt and veritable industry of asylum baptisms that was happening,” he said.
Responding in a letter to the Telegraph on Friday, Bishop Butler writes that the report “comprises an imaginative range of allegations from Matthew Firth, who resigned as a priest within the diocese of Durham in 2020.
“Mr Firth doesn’t offer any evidence to support these claims; nevertheless a check of the parish records shows that the portrayal of a ‘conveyer belt’ of applications is distant from reality. In fact, a complete of 15 people (13 adults, two infants) who could have been asylum-seekers have been baptised over the past ten years. Of these, seven were baptised by Mr Firth himself.”
His letter continues: “As priest-in-charge, he may have been aware of his responsibility to envision the authenticity of candidates. If there was anything amiss, Mr Firth must have reported it. Had he raised concerns with senior staff during his time at St Cuthbert’s, they’d in fact have been taken seriously and investigated. He didn’t achieve this.”
In an announcement released on behalf of St Cuthbert’s, a spokesperson for the diocese dismisses the allegations as “nonsense”, including Mr Firth’s claim that he had been “cold-shouldered” by senior clergy inside the diocese after raising his concerns.
“At no time did he raise concerns locally or with senior clergy concerning the variety of asylum-seekers being baptised on the church, and [he] produces no evidence of being bullied by local church members in relation to this matter.
“His claims of the church being a ‘conveyor belt’ of asylum-seeker baptisms are nonsense.”
The statement concludes: “We are extremely proud to have St Cuthbert’s, which is now under excellent leadership, as one among our churches, and pleased with the invaluable work all our churches in Darlington do to make sure asylum-seekers and refugees are welcomed. They work closely together to undertake this work with care and thought.”
Criticism of the Church of England’s involvement in asylum-seeker conversions showed no signs of abating this week.
An investigation by The Times published on Monday — under the headline “Revealed: How judges let criminals use Christianity to flee deportation” — found that, up to now yr, seven asylum-seekers, five of whom had previous criminal convictions, had cited religious conversion as a reason to remain within the UK.
The paper found that, since January 2023, the Upper Tribunal heard 28 cases through which a claimant referred to conversion to Christianity as a reason to be granted asylum. This constituted about one per cent of cases heard in that period. Of those, seven appeals were approved and 13 dismissed; in eight cases, the judge ordered a recent hearing.
Five of the seven migrants granted the best to remain had been convicted of great criminal offences, including a murderer and sex offenders, the paper reported.
Senior figures — each ecclesiastical and political — have turn out to be involved within the row. A former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, writing within the Telegraph on Sunday, said that, while he supported the place of the Lords Spiritual, he believed that their stance on immigration — particularly the present Archbishop of Canterbury’s opposition to laws on Rwanda deportation (News, 2 February) — was “flawed”.
His disagreement, he said, was “not with their compassion and Christian look after others, but their blindness to what migration is doing to our country — our culture, our infrastructure, and our common life”. Immigration was affecting the poorest hardest, and had led to the Church’s being “accused of boosting the credentials of asylum-seekers and gullibly accepting insincere conversions”.
Lord Carey described the Church’s response to the criticism as “thin-skinned”. “When you raise your head above the parapet, you have to expect to be criticised. . . But the Church hierarchy appears to be denying that there’s a problem in any respect, or anything questionable about its own actions and statements.”
While it was the job of the Home Office and the judiciary to use the asylum rules, church guidance on the authenticity of claims ought to be more robust, he argued.
During PMQs last week, the Conservative MP Tim Loughton accused the Church of issuing “secret guidance, for clergy supporting asylum applications for . . . Damascene conversions”, and the Archbishop of Canterbury of “scamming” UK taxpayers. Archbishop Welby responded that the “mischaracterisation” of churches had been “disappointing”.
In an interview with Radio 4’s Sunday programme, the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, identified that the guidance (a 2017 document, Supporting Asylum Seekers — Guidance for Church of England Clergy) had all the time been available on the Church on England website.
The Church was “open” to “looking again” at its guidance on assessing the authenticity of requests for baptism, to bring greater clarity, she said — “but ultimately, it’s the job of the tribunals and the Home Office to evaluate and vet. We will absolutely play our part and co-operate as much as we are able to, but we do have higher ideals by way of welcome and support.”
Baptism preparation within the Church was already rigorous, she said. “Clergy do take that seriously, no matter where individuals are coming from.”
Earlier within the interview, she had said: “As Christians, our primary responsibility is one among welcome and hospitality and support and teaching, but we’d like to try this in a way that is smart and aware that occasionally there are individuals who might attempt to scam us. . .
“It’s very difficult to look into the hearts of individuals and be 100 per cent. And that goes whether the person is from Britain or an immigrant from elsewhere. But we absolutely advise clergy to do the perfect they will. . . Inevitably, there will probably be a small variety of cases, however it seems to me that it’s flawed that that ought to be highlighted since it’s diverting attention away from the systemic problems, which is that we’ve got an immigration system which is overwhelmed and inefficient.”
Writing in The Times on Saturday, the Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron, who’s a Christian, agreed about where the responsibility lay. “Church leaders may provide evidence that somebody has repeatedly attended and made a occupation of religion. But they don’t judge whether that faith is real, any greater than for a middle-class family looking for to get their child into the local church school,” he said.
Declarations of conversion were “rigorously tested” by the authorities, he said, and conversion to Christianity from one other faith shouldn’t be viewed as “a simple option” but one with serious consequences for the person. He also agreed that “there will probably be some fake conversions, and the Church ought to be alert to the indisputable fact that people do attempt to game the system. But who apart from God can determine who has genuinely accepted Christ of their hearts and who has not?”
