I’m quite a fan of John Rawls and I think of a lot of what
he wrote was completely spot on even if it is challenging to live up to. One of
the things he wrote about was the way in which political conversations should
take place in a liberal society. Although people can have a variety of beliefs
and inner viewpoints, the political discussion has to be conducted in terms
everyone can understand and could possibly come to accept. Whilst I can deal
with quite a few issues in this way, some I struggle to articulate an argument which
isn’t ridden with my Christian values.
The key example for me right now is immigration and more
generally the treatment of foreign citizens. As a Christian the value issues
are pretty straightforward. Jesus said there are two great commandments; Love
God and Love your neighbour. When Jesus is asked who is my neighbour his
response is to tell the story of the Good Samaritan. The answer given in that
story is that your neighbour is the Samaritan who in that context is thought to
be the foreigner and an enemy. To me the story and Jesus’ point is clear, our
neighbour is not defined by our nation or heritage but by our shared humanity. This
puts the immigration debate and questions of asylum in sharp relief. Morally it
is not justifiable to give preferential treatment to those born in our country
to those in need born in another. Every Asylum seeker is my neighbour, even Abu
Qatada is my neighbour. As a Christian this is the goal I believe all policy should
work towards and have in mind. That’s why I was fully in sympathy with SarahTeather in the Beckly lecture earlier this week when she asked for the Churches to talk more about immigration and then on Saturdaywhen she spoke out against the current immigration debate.
But the problem is how to express this in moral and
political principles that are not explicitly Christian. I tend to favour using
the Human Rights narrative that we have inalienable rights and currently these
are being violated. But that argument doesn’t seem to gain much traction with
most of the public and is hard to justify using non Christian statements. There’s
no easy answer to why we have these inalienable rights and why human dignity
should be protected. Another argument I quite like is the drowning childthought experiment from Peter Singer. But lots of people aren't persuaded by that. At the same
time thought experiment isn’t easily amenable to being used in political
debate. The issue of our obligations to those born far away isn’t easily argued
from the liberal viewpoint and plenty of people seem happy to argue for an
extraordinary priority to be given to those closer to us. I can’t find that
morally justifiable but I can’t find a political response either.
