Are the clergy naive?

The churches are coming in for a lot of media stick at present, with clergy being accused of being naive by accepting that an asylum seeker is converting to Christianity in order for them to claim refugee status more easily, on the grounds that being a Christian would mean that they would be subject to persecution in their own country.

We’ve been caught up in this ourselves. I don’t think most clergy are naive. Many of us are deeply sceptical when someone out of the blue claims conversion, and we know full well that this will oil the wheels for them with our sticky Home Office. It’s the same when confronted with British families who suddenly start coming to church, on the grounds that they will then be eligible for sending their children to the church school they want. They mainly disappear from church life once the children leave.

Lies, deception. How can we deal with it? It’s really not easy at all. We can’t see into the human heart and mind: we have to deal with what’s presented to us.

When an African woman started coming to our church in Birmingham, claiming to have been trafficked and wanting Right to Remain, as it was called then, we did all the checks and balances we could think of. We contacted the church in her country which she claimed to belong to. It was true – the pastor remembered her. We checked the location and name of the village she was from: all true. We took her to a pro bono lawyer, hugely experienced in asylum claims. He had no hesitation about taking her on. We got in touch with her previous church: all true. It was only at the end of her life, sadly just a few years later, that we discovered that the trafficking story was untrue. She had sustained it consistently for years, even with a psychologist at the Maudsley.

When we first arrived in Birmingham (Hub was the vicar), a priest who had lived there for a long time said ‘I need to talk to you about weddings. They are unlike weddings anywhere else.’ He warned us that there were numerous attempted wedding scams by couples where one partner was wanting to stay in the country, aided by lawyers working illegally.

Hub consequently decided never to read Banns for a wedding (part of the legal process for clergy) – he sent everyone to the diocesan Registrar to swear an affidavit. That way, he was not responsible if the story turned out to be false.

One day the Registrar phoned him and asked him if he’d checked one bridegroom’s story, and of course Hub had indeed done so. ’It turns out he has 8 different aliases’, she said.

We clergy are doing our best. We’re also aware that we answer to God for our decisions. We pray not only for love, but also for wisdom and discernment.

But not naivete.