This blog is not primarily a place for this vicar to express his personal opinions. As a proud husband and father in a mixed-race family, you might already imagine how I feel about the things the leader of the British National Party said during a recent televised debate. So I intend to say little about what has been widely reported elsewhere.But as a church leader in a multi-cultural, multi-faith town, I cannot allow one of his specific claims to go unopposed.
During the Question Time broadcast, Nick Griffin suggested that the views of the BNP are consistent with Christianity. They are not.
The era in which the New Testament was written was as culturally complex as our own. The first Christians were Jews, who might have naturally thought that other people had no part in the church. They quickly learned that the Christian faith is open to all people, regardless of their ethnicity or how "indigenous" they might be.
In Colossians 3.11, we read, there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!
Amen to that!
