The Potent Power of Pentecost
And the latest immigration figures
We are born with a desire for connection with other humans from different cultures and to travel. But we also yearn for home. Philip Larkin summed it up when he apparently said:
I wouldn't mind seeing China if I could come back the same day.
So what happens when those other humans from different cultures turn up at your home, en masse on your doorstep?
That’s been the big news this week. The latest official UK immigration figures show an unprecedented number of people who, unlike Philip Larkin, don’t seem keen to get home the same day. In fact, 1.2 million people in the UK arrived last year while 557,000 had had enough and said ‘sayonara’ and emigrated.
Some are alarmed by this dramatic increase from previous levels, not least because, as Matthew Goodwin points out, this is a government that promised to reduce immigration and seem powerless or unwilling to stop it rising exponentially. Others applaud a spirit of openness and multi-culturalism (whilst still condemning the Tories, who have overseen this dramatic rise, as problematic and prejudiced). Which camp are you in?
Nervous?
Reading this article, you’re probably already nervous about what I’m going to say, and are wondering if you should keep reading. Think how I feel about writing it. Talking about immigration, which is implicitly a conversation about race, is difficult in any kind of measured way. The danger is obvious, but you are also in danger of being so careful you don’t say anything at all. So why take the risk at all?
Our political discourse is so divided, and conducted in such bad faith, that any phrase can be ripped out of context and brandished as an example of how awful one’s political opponents are. This was apparent as many people I follow on Twitter lost their minds at a show of conservatism on display at the recent National Conservatism conference, on which Rhys Laverty wrote entertainingly:
You may have seen much of the British press foaming at the mouth this week about the National Conservatism conference (NatCon, for short). Supposedly, the event was a gathering for far-right nutjobs in the Tory party, intent on ushering in an authoritarian dystopia that will look like a cross between The Handmaid’s Tale, a MAGA rally, and a pub lock-in with Nigel Farage.
As an attendee, I can confirm it was, to a hilarious extent, nothing of the sort. If you want a textbook example of how conservatives can understand liberals but liberals can’t understand conservatives, this week has been it.
Here is yet another example of Haidt’s insights in The Righteous Mind about why the Left thinks the Right is evil. Read that book. And the rest of Rhys’ article at The New Albion which is well worth your time.
But before you go off and do that, let me just point to the time of year, and how Christians have the answer to this intractable immigration imbroglia. After all, this Sunday is Pentecost. Or Whitsun if you’re feeling Anglican.
I asked earlier which camp you’re in. If you’re a Christian, you should be in both. And neither. That’s not just classic pat Anglicanism. The reason is this Sunday. It’s Pentecost, the perfect antidote to immigration panic.
And it’s not just Pentecost in the Church of England, or Britain or the Commonwealth, or the Anglican Communion, but in Christian churches all over the world. That should be a clue to the fact that in the Church, we find our heart’s desire: that desire to connect with others from different cultures married to our desire for the familiar and familial home.
Whitsun? What?
Whitsun, or Pentecost, celebrates the dramatic outpouring of the Holy Spirit on God’s people gathered in Jerusalem where people from all over the known world have gathered for the festival of Pentecost. Read all about it in Acts 2.
But why are the disciples given this spiritual power? To performs signs and wonders? Not so much. So that they are equipped to go out and make disciples of all nations, bringing the world under one head, Christ. This is manifested in the miraculous diversity of languages that are heard being spoken.
If you don’t want to see Internationalism, look away now. The gospel is international, intertribal and interlingual. Christians are not citizens of nowhere. We are citizens of everywhere and somewhere else entirely, namely the Kingdom of God. We await the arrival of the heavenly city. Those who yearn for a multicultural society are vindicated.
Demanding The Function without the Organ
This multi-cultural only works if we are gathered around the throne of the Lamb who is the only one qualified and worthy to receive and wield true power. The vicious debate and the brooding resentment over immigration is a result of wanting the blessings of Christianity, but rejecting the gospel itself.
This takes us back to the NatCon at which some were very squeamish about faith and public policy. You can see it on Unherd in Kathleen Stock’s reflection on the convention that was very different from Rhys Laverty’s:
I didn’t anticipate there would be a film of MP Danny Kruger coming across like a slightly sinister vicar, lecturing the British public about what many naively assume are private romantic relationships (“Marriage is not all about you … It’s not just a private arrangement, it’s a public act by which you undertake to live for someone else, for their sake, and the sake of your children, and the sake of wider society!”)…
The anti-euthanasia guy is a ‘slightly sinister vicar’. Wow. She goes on:
And though Cates, Kruger and friends prosecute their arguments in the name of “ordinary British people”, many OBPs are much more liberal than they are. After all, Britain has been a highly liberalised society for decades… We’re intensely relaxed about most things, often to the point of inertia. Equally, whereas Cates and Kruger are both devout Christians, most OBPs lack any religious faith to help underpin the communitarian values being argued for.
Or, to summarise, we want all the blessings of Christianity. But we don’t want Christ, thanks. Kathleen wants the power of Pentecost, but without the content of the miraculous languages.
“Isn’t it great that this person can suddenly speak an obscure tribal language from Papua New Guinea? What a pity that person is determined to talk about Jesus.”
That’s the deal. It’s a package. You can’t have one without the other. And I’m very happy with both.
Happy Pentecost. Have a wail of a Whitsun. (Can we make that a thing?)
More on this next time where we will discover that it was actually Conversative who wiped away Whitsun. In the meantime:
What’s So Amazing About Race?
For an interesting conversation about this area, why not have a listen to the latest Keswick Convention podcast called What’s So Amazing About Race? (I’m quite proud of that title). What’s so amazing about the episode is that it’s full of Biblical language, rather than loaded terminology from the social sciences and political theory.
You might be interested to know about Wycliffe Bible Translators who are doing heroic work making God’s word available to as many tribes and in as many tongues as possible:
Good work, sir.
Spot on as ever Mr Cary, so thank you!