‘I can’t comment on Brexit,’ said the Essex bishop, almost crossing herself at the B-word
RAYMOND Chandler wrote of ‘a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stainedglass window’. Here we had a whistleblowing vicar to make Justin Welby clench his fists so hard, any communion wafer would be milled to a powder.
The Rev Matthew Firth was at the home affairs committee. He described Iranians and Syrians arriving in ‘batches’ at his former church in Darlington, Co Durham, demanding conversion. They were brought by a chap later described as ‘a fixer’. Always they had just been refused asylum.
If you’re appealing against a Home Office asylum refusal and can say you’ve just converted to Christianity, it helps.
The Rev Firth thought ‘hang on, there’s something going on here’ so ‘pressed a pause button’ on these baptisms. He didn’t last long after that.
Dog- collared and in the black garb of your more traditional sort of priest, he had been told by a friend that ‘people might try to get you’ if he spoke too openly at this hearing. MPs praised him for being ‘brave’. Good grief, I initially thought, they’re overdoing the jeopardy. Surely the C of E is more tolerant than the Vatican in Galileo’s day. Or is it?
We heard that the Rev Firth, once spoken of as an Anglican high-flyer, had since left his job. After going public with claims that the C of E was turning a blind eye to bogus baptisms, he was roughed up by the then Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler, who called the claims ‘an imaginative range of allegations’. That’s a fancy way of saying ‘Firth’s a stinking liar’. Bishop Butler took part in the Coronation. He was one of Archbishop Welby’s trusties. Boot-boy in a mitre.
The committee is arguably Westminster’s best. Its MPs could have had some sport cross-examining the Rt Rev Butler. Instead it had to settle for the Bishop of Chelmsford, one Guli Francis-Dehqani. She had all the charisma of a civil servant, exuding bland lack of interest in the scandalous idea the Church colluded in fake conversions.
Despite saying vicars must be trusted, she sided with Butler in discrediting Mr Firth. She was a total politician: cautious, cliched, eyes sliding from side to side. She spoke of ‘stakeholders’. We heard a lot of ‘appropriates’. ‘I don’t recognise that’ she said. ‘We want to be part of the conversation going forwards’. Her sermons must be corkers.
MPs asked about a Church asylum-guidance document that sounded stinkingly political. Inevitably, it was sniffy about the EU referendum. ‘I can’t comment on Brexit,’ said the Essex bishop, almost crossing herself at the B-word.
Where Mr Firth was open-faced and possibly a touch over-talkative by the end of his session, the Rt Rev Francis-Dehqani embodied tight-lipped, careerist opacity and consensual indifference. I know which of these two priests I’d prefer at my death bed.
A Baptist minister spoke rather movingly about a small congregation in Weymouth that had been bruised by criticisms that its members were naive about asylum seekers. A Catholic described how the Church of Rome made steeper demands of would-be converts. They had to endure nine months of mystagogical catechesis. Sounds as painful as circumcision.
Initiation rites in some parts of the C of E, meanwhile, seem to have been little more than humming Shine Jesus Shine, giving a moony smile and agreeing to run the church fete’s tombola.
Conservative MPs would once have been respectful. Not now. Civilised James Daly ( Bury North), twisting in his seat as he sought to be reasonable, noted that after some of Archbishop Welby’s recent antics it was hard to see the C of E as impartial.
‘If any of your parishioners had the temerity to support the Rwanda legislation, would they be welcome in their parish?’ Bishop Francis-Dehqani: ‘Yeah, we represent the breadth of the Church of England.’ No they blooming well don’t!
She also denied bishops were taking a unified ‘political position’ on asylum. It’s a wonder she wasn’t harpooned there and then by a thunderbolt.