Matthew Parris is wrong – the gospels do help us respond to the migrant crisis

‘I know our Lord told us to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves,’ muttered a colleague after a waspish College meeting; ‘but, being busy men, some of us find it advisable to specialise.’ I detected that approach in Matthew Parris’s contention, in The Spectator last week, that Christianity, particularly the Gospels, cannot help us prioritise when faced with the vast, terrible refugee crisis. We all want to help, he said, but the teachings of Jesus don’t tell us how to do it.

All right: much popular reaction, Christian included, has been little more than anguished arm-waving. But soundbites are not the real clue. What counts is action. To look no further than my own church, the Anglican chaplaincies in Budapest and Athens have been working with tireless generosity. The Canterbury diocese, close to Calais, has been going the second mile, then the third and fourth. It’s risky to say, ‘Look what we Christians do’; history is littered with our follies and failures.