This year we celebrate 80 years since the end of the Second World War. It’s a remarkable gift from God that countries that were once in conflict have found a way to not only reconcile their differences but work, trade, cooperate, and live together in peace.
It’s a peace we perhaps have come to take for granted, and, with conflict once again rearing its brutal head in Europe and the Middle East, I fear it is also a fragile peace.
Ironically, the fear that neighbouring conflicts bring is re-energising the toxic populist nationalism that marked pre-war Europe in the last century. Once more immigrants are a convenient scapegoat, as demonstrated by the current tide of opinion that suggests we should simply close our borders to migration. Anti-immigration evangelists are telling us that we don’t want our Judeo-Christian heritage being diluted by all these foreigners coming here from such places as Afghanistan and the Middle East.
Re-examining the call to love the stranger
In 2015, one image of a three-year-old boy washed up on a beach in Turkey changed the way the world …