U.K. Home Office Takes a Second Look at Iranian Christian Man’s Application for Asylum After Tweets Expose Anti-Christian Bias
(Worthy News) – The U.K. Home Office has decided to take another look at an Iranian Christian man’s application for asylum, which it initially rejected based on his claim that Christianity was a “peaceful” religion.
The man’s caseworker, Nathan Stephens, cited “a much wider problem to be addressed here,” publishing on his Twitter account several similar rejection letters from the office that derided Christian applicants for not having the faith to believe Jesus would save them from the regimes they fled.
The rejection sent to the Iranian man, moreover, cited violence in the Bible which it called “inconsistent” with his claim that he had converted from a violent religion, Islam, to a peaceful religion, Christianity.
Paul Butler, Bishop of Durham, upbraided the Home Office for marshaling decontextualized verses from Matthew, Leviticus, Exodus, and Revelation to smear Christianity, saying he was “extremely concerned that a Government department could determine the future of another human being based on such a profound misunderstanding of the texts.”
The bureaucratic harassment of the Iranian convert follows a trend of Western nations and organizations being loath to address the issue of Christian persecution.
Testimony before Congress last month by the director of Jubilee campaign found that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Thailand placed a higher burden of proof on Christian Pakistanis seeking refugee status, while last week the Idaho House of Representatives shot down a resolution condemning the global persecution of Christians.