"All that is required for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing"

My dear friends,

As your Vicar, and after much prayer, I feel compelled to write to you today.

Like many of you, I have been horrified to watch the news coming out of Minneapolis in recent days. Long, long ago, in a previous millennium, my first degree was in history from Cambridge, and it certainly does seem to be that history has to carry on repeating itself, because we refuse to listen to its voice first, second or even third time around.

Fascism doesn’t start with people being shot at point blank range in the street by state agents.

It doesn’t start with groups of masked men trying to set light to hotels housing asylum seekers.

It doesn’t even start with flags being flown out of nationalism rather than patriotism.

It starts with finger pointing, with language and words that divide.

It starts with a decision to choose a group, or groups, of people against whom anger can be misdirected.

The anger and frustration people may feel with a government or an economic situation is misdirected towards a group which has no control over government policy, but which is easy to target.

That group might be Jews, Muslims, gay people, black people, trans people, immigrants, women; it doesn’t really matter which group you choose. You just need to choose a group to focus anger and hatred upon.

And then, by introducing measures to "control" or "eliminate" them, you can be licensed to do whatever you like. Removing their rights as “the thin end of the wedge” you can dismantle democracy, you can dismantle civil rights, you can dismantle the right to protest, across the board.

You can undermine even the most fundamental human rights, and do all this with impunity because you have persuaded people that the “enemy” is less human than they are.

German fascists used the word “untermenschen”- which translates as “below people” or “sub human”.

We can see all this as plainly as the day in the United States in the use of the language “illegal aliens”; and the language used routinely in this country is not far behind that.

One of the horrible things about this situation is that many are using the pretext of Christian nationalism as a justification for all that is unfolding.

That also has been the pretext in this country for the flying of flags, the abuse of asylum seekers, and the huge increase in racially motivated hate crime. In the last two weeks I have spoken to representatives of both the Muslim and Sikh communities in Worcester, born and raised in this country, who are now afraid for the safety of their families. This promotion of hatred is not happening "far away". It is happening on our doorsteps, here and now.

As Christians, we cannot be neutral in this situation. We cannot say that our faith is divorced from politics.

Jesus himself was crucified after a mock trial on false evidence to satisfy the baying of a mob.

We might think that what is going on in the United States could never happen here. But five years ago we would probably have thought it could never happen there either.

Anything can happen anywhere if people of good conscience turn their faces away from what is unpleasant or frightening. 

So, this morning, I am asking you to make a commitment to oppose hatred actively, wherever you see it, and whenever you hear it.

If you hear it over the dinner table with friends, expressing views that make you uncomfortable. If you hear it in the supermarket queue, if you see it and your local paper.

Speak out calmly, peacefully, and constantly against the lies which invite us to hate those whom our Lord loves, and for whom he died.

Speak out, write, educate yourselves, and above all, pray for the courage and steadfastness of Jesus in the face of evil.

Blessings

Kalantha