In Depth:  John Cooper

Dear Sir,

In the last couple of years we have had two foreigners who have had problems because they found faith in Britain. One was from Iran and the other from Pakistan. In both cases the families in their home countries were making murderous threats against them. When they applied for political asylum the Home Office was far from sympathetic. They were asking strange questions to test how genuine their new-found faith in Christ was. In any case, since when has a secular organisation been able to judge a person’s faith? The Church of England is the established church in England and its authority (for good or bad) resides with the bishops. Our local bishop told me that the issue of new converts being refused asylum is quite a common one.