Persecution of Christians

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Ms Butler, and to be in a Chamber with so many of my favourite colleagues. I look around and am genuinely so inspired, pleased and gratified to be among this group of parliamentarians of all parties. I do not know what it is that binds us together. Well, I do—we are mostly believers. I pay tribute to everybody here, particularly to the hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith); I welcome him to and congratulate him on his very significant appointment. Congratulations too to the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones), on her championing of this agenda over many years and on calling this debate.

I think it is necessary to acknowledge at the outset—in slight contradiction to the hon. Member for North Northumberland, although I hope that this will not be taken as too Christo-chauvinist a perspective, nor as a sort of Christian supremacist principle—the reason that we in this country defend the liberties we do on behalf of all religions and belief systems around the world, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. It is because of the Christian foundation to our politics. All our liberties, and the principle of political liberty that this country has sporadically, with some success and some failures, helped to export around the world, derive fundamentally from the Christian foundations of our political institutions and political philosophy. What we think of as the intrinsic value of every human being comes only from one place: the Bible. All our laws and what we now call human rights have that origin. Indeed, the very concept of the secular space, in which people are free to believe anything or nothing, derives ultimately from the Christian principle that everybody has value, and that it is not right to pry into the souls of other men or women.

I do not agree with the hon. Member for North Northumberland that we derive our legitimacy to speak in this space because of our past sins, as a country or as a civilisation. I recognise those sins, but I think we are speaking on this topic because we are the heirs to a tradition that fundamentally recognises the value of Christianity. His regional patriotism for Northumberland is understandable—think of St Cuthbert and the great saints of those days—but I bring him King Alfred, who defended Wessex, including what is now Wiltshire, against the Vikings, pushed back the tide of paganism, restored Christianity to England and ultimately helped to export it to the world. I think it appropriate to be proud of the Christian basis of our politics in this debate.

[Jim Shannon]

The issues of human rights abuse and persecution cannot be divorced. If there is persecution, there is human rights abuse; and if there is human rights abuse, there is persecution. Does the hon. Member agree that that is the central focus for us, as Christians? We stand up for everybody: those with religious faith, with no faith, and with different faiths.

[Danny Kruger]

I absolutely agree. It is of course not just Christians who think that, but it is right that in our country we proudly stand on that ground, and defend the right of everybody to absolute freedom of belief. As I said, I think we do that, ultimately, because the foundation of our politics is Christian.

I will refer quickly to the Holy Land, as other hon. Members have. I have become chair of the APPG on Christianity in the Holy Land, which was instigated by our former colleague David Linden, who is a sad loss to the House—at least on this topic, not on others. He encouraged me to take up the role, so I have been having a number of very powerful and moving conversations with Palestinian Christians about the state of the Church in the Holy Land. In fact, I visited many years ago, in the early 2000s during the second intifada, with Canon Andrew White, who was the Church of England’s representative to the Holy Land in those days and a very great man. We visited Bethlehem, and I saw how absolutely desperate the plight of the Church was at that time. As the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) acknowledged, the situation has got worse and the state of the Church in the Holy Land is now very dire. I acknowledge that that is the consequence of Israeli Government activity. I recognise that and, as a strong supporter of Israel, I recognise how hard it is for Christians in the west bank to worship.

On a different trip at around the same time, I visited Iraq with Andrew White, just after the invasion. At that point, we could wander around quite freely. There was a sense that there would be a new flourishing of religious freedom in Iraq. We visited St George’s church, for a service to mark its reopening after the war. It was a wonderful moment, with Iraqi Christians, as well as lots of American and British soldiers, present. It felt like the dawning of something wonderful in Iraq. Of course, within months that church was closed, and many of the Christians we had met were dead. The tragedy of the American-led invasion was that Christianity in Iraq has been severely repressed ever since, and we know about the similar phenomena in Syria and elsewhere since. The tragedy of nation-building in the middle east, often led by Christians, has not been good for the Church.

The principal enemy of Christianity globally is not misapplied western liberalism; it is alternative religions and ideologies, in particular Marxism in China, radical Hinduism in India and, of course, radical Islam all over the world. My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) mentioned Nigeria. The situation there is absolutely appalling: 3,000 people a year killed in recent years, and getting on for a quarter of a million people displaced. That is, I think, around half the total global number of those killed and displaced. In Algeria, as the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn mentioned, I want to draw particular attention to the Kabyle people, a Berber community in the north of the country who have been resisting the Islamist ideology of the Algerian Government for many years and who have suffered severe persecution. They are attempting self-determination and their slogan is, “In the name of all beliefs”. I want to acknowledge that—going back to my original point—when we defend Christianity, we are defending everybody, and I pay tribute to that campaign.

I want to finish by asserting this point. Christianity is established in the west and therefore we think of it as the dominant philosophy, even though in many ways in our country I do not feel it is anymore. It is the shield of minorities everywhere, and I think we need a stronger promotion of the value of Christianity in every society. We should not simply be defensive in debates like this about defending the status quo and defending Christians; we should be supporting those who promote Christianity, sympathetically of course and always peacefully. The promotion of Christianity is a moral good, because wherever Christianity is, life is better. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I could not put it better than he did: in an absolute sense, Christianity is good for people.

I pay tribute to Fiona Bruce, the hon. Member for North Northumberland’s predecessor as special envoy—a great friend to many of us and a pioneer in this space in the previous Parliament and over many years for her work promoting religious freedom and belief in this country and around the world. It is a great shame that the Bill she was championing fell before the general election. I do not know whether the hon. Member for North Northumberland would have welcomed it, or if the Government have any intention of reviving the measures proposed in it, which were to establish the position of the envoy on a statutory footing, properly resourced, rather than being something that, as it were, exists at the whim of the Government. I regret that the Bill fell, but I pay tribute to her. I pay tribute particularly to the hon. Member for North Northumberland. It is a tremendous thing that he is now in post; he has a great and important role to do.

Lastly, to end on a note of hope, there are great things happening in the world. Christianity is not oppressed, downtrodden or downcast. We are seeing very positive signs of growth and revival. In China, the house church movement has won many millions of converts. Here in the UK, I am encouraged. There was a report from the Bible Society and Theos recently called, “The Quiet Revival” which demonstrates that, quietly, we are seeing new growth in our faith in the UK. On that basis, I have confidence in the future.

[Dawn Butler (in the Chair)]

I would like to get everybody in for this important debate. We are looking to get to the Minister at around 10.28 am, so you have about four minutes per speech, please.