A horrific crime has led to claims that the Church of England is a “conveyor belt” using baptisms as a ticket for asylum seekers to stay in Great Britain.
Police say Abdul Ezedi attacked his former partner and their two children in a chemical attack that injured 12 people and left the woman with “life-changing” damage, according to Sky News. He has since disappeared and police believe he jumped into the Thames River.
An investigation revealed that the Afghanistan native was allowed in the country on his third attempt to gain asylum, in part, because he had converted to Christianity, according to the Guardian. However, as reported by The Telegraph, his friends knew Ezedi as “a good Muslim.”
That spark lit a fire under Rev. Matthew Firth, who has told The Telegraph that baptisms to aid asylum seekers are a “conveyor belt and veritable industry of asylum baptisms.”
Firth, a former Church of England priest in the north of England who is now a clergyman with the Free Church of England, said he dealt with about 20 cases personally of asylum seekers asking for a baptism to avoid deportation, He estimated there are at least hundreds and perhaps thousands of asylum baptisms performed.
Firth accused the Church of England of giving support to “people who do not have pure motives.”
“It is not direct wrongdoing from the Church but it is complicity, which is not right,” he said.
He said he baptized some asylum seekers when he first came to St. Cuthbert’s Church in Darlington in January 2018, but eventually put his foot down and required six months of attendance prior to baptism. Antagonism followed, he said, as he was “cold-shouldered” by senior clergy members and some people in his congregation.
Church leaders did not blow the whistle on what he believes was a scam because “it is wonderful when you have lots of people who are adults who have been baptized,” he said.
Is the Church of England facilitating fake conversions?
“It’s a combination of being naive but also turning a blind eye to what is going on. We have to be discerning,” he said. “All I’m choosing is not to be complicit in dishonesty. Choosing not to be complicit in what is quite a serious situation in terms of security matters but also undermining of culture.”
Paul Butler, the bishop of Durham, has said Firth’s claims were “imaginative” and “some distance from reality,” according to the Guardian.
Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, issued a statement saying there had been a “mischaracterization of the role of churches and faith groups in the asylum system.”
“It is the job of the Government to protect our borders and of the courts to judge asylum cases. The Church is called to love mercy and do justice,” he said.
It’s worth remembering that this comes not long after it was revealed that the Church of England helped Abdul Ezedi, the London acid attacker, gain asylum by supporting his claim to have “converted” to Christianity in 2020. The C of E also supported the asylum application of Emad… https://t.co/uKExkXPR7L
— RAW EGG NATIONALIST (@Babygravy9) February 10, 2024
But in an Op-Ed in the Telegraph, former Home Secretary Suella Braverman likened the process of obtaining asylum to “racketeering” and said churches have been “facilitating industrial-scale bogus asylum claims.”
“They are well-known within the migrant communities and, upon arrival in the UK, migrants are directed to these churches as a one-stop shop to bolster their asylum case,” she wrote.
“Attend Mass once a week for a few months, befriend the vicar, get your baptism date in the diary and, bingo, you’ll be signed off by a member of the clergy that you’re now a God-fearing Christian who will face certain persecution if removed to your Islamic country of origin,” she wrote.
