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CofE baptises hundreds of asylum seekers ... letting them claim fear of persecution at home means they should stay here
THE Church of England has christened hundreds of asylum seekers who hope to use their new-found faith to win the right to stay in England, a senior bishop has revealed.
One church alone has baptised 200 Iranian asylum seekers, according to documents placed before the Church’s parliament, the General Synod.
Many of the new converts are thought to have used their beliefs as part of asylum claims put to the Home Office and to immigration court hearings.
The Bishop of Wakefield, the Right Reverend Tony Robinson, said of the new asylum seeker congregations: ‘This type of growth is exciting but costly and transitory.’
He added: ‘Helping people navigate the legal system is time-consuming for clergy, and many people choose to move elsewhere once they have leave to remain, to be close to friends and family or for work.’
The disclosure of the Church’s deep involvement in helping asylum seekers in claims for refugee status comes ahead of a debate on relations between inner city parishes and other faith groups when the Synod meets in York this weekend.
Bishop Robinson acknowledged in a paper prepared for the Synod that the CofE’s move into asylum assistance has not pleased some members of existing congregations.
The presence of asylum seekers was a ‘great joy’ but ‘brings challenges, particularly the complex practical and spiritual support of those seeking asylum in the UK, and balancing the needs of new believers with those of existing congregation members’, he said.
The role of the CofE in bringing asylum seekers into the pews has been developed as part of its Presence and
Engagement Programme, designed to assist clergy in parishes where more than one in ten of the population follow a non-Christian faith. The 200 Iranian asylum seekers were baptised over a five-year period in a parish church in Stockton-on-Tees near Middlesbrough, in an area where migrants who come into the country and apply for refugee status are housed while their claims are considered. Large numbers of asylum seekers are also reported to have been baptised in cities including Stokeon-Trent, nottingham and Manchester. Christianity was driven underground in Iran after the 1979 revolution brought radical Islamic clerics to power. Independent estimates say there may be 40,000 people who attend clandestine churches in the country. cal Western dictatorship evangelists has say driven the large clerinumbers of people towards Christianity, and the highest estimates claim half a million converts are in the country. nearly 4,000 Iranian asylum seekers came to Britain in the year to March. advice for clergy from the CofE says Iranian Christians arriving in this country may not have been baptised previously because the ceremony was too dangerous to carry out in Iran.
‘Some of those reported as converts receiving baptism have in fact been Christians for years in Iran but have not been able to mark this in a public way,’ the guidance notes.
When this is the case, baptism in an English church is ‘appropri- ate’, clergy are advised. The document adds: ‘There are complex reasons why people might not continue to attend church following their baptism – this is not necessarily a sign that their testimony was inauthentic.’
The Presence and Engagement Programme has supplied guidance to clergy on giving support to asylum seekers. Clergy are told they should record church attendance records of converts and if there is a tribunal hearing may attend court to give evidence that the conversion is genuine.
Supporters should also come to court – but they are warned that ‘judges are likely to react negatively if there is anything like an organised demonstration’.
Where someone has already had an asylum application turned down, a conversion to Christianity may allow a new claim, clergy are advised.
‘Time-consuming for clergy’