Weekly Blog 

Here our minister shares a weekly reflection: 

Sunday, 31 August 2025 - Refugees: Speaking Out

We’ve had a few weeks now of increasing tensions flaring up regarding the use of hotels to provide accommodation for asylum seekers. This week, more Union Jacks and English flags have been flown or graffitied on to white surfaces across the country in a campaign organised by far-right agitators, and Nigel Farage chose to announce Reform’s immigrant deportation policy in Oxfordshire.
 
It is therefore very fitting that our scripture readings in the lectionary this week speak of hospitality, welcome, and sharing a table with those who have nothing to give. Whereas we often have a tendency to only give our money, time, and energy to those who will be able to repay us or give us something in return, Luke’s gospel encourages us to be open-hearted and gracious to those in the greatest need.
 
In a nation that seems ever more divided, with many using their political platform to incite suspicion, fear, and fundamentally racist responses to asylum seekers and refugees, it is easy for us to be overwhelmed by the task before us. So, I wanted to point to some positive responses to the current levels of toxicity that have been taken in the past few days.
 

• Steven Croft, Bishop of Oxford, has written an open letter to Nigel Farage which can be found here.
• Asylum Welcome has written an open letter that calls for unity and compassion in Oxfordshire. It has been signed by over 2000 people so far, and you too can read & sign the letter here.
• I came across a blog that tells of how a church in Hodge Hill, Birmingham, responded to a protest outside a hotel housing asylum seekers by sharing cakes and flowers. It’s encouraging to see people inspired by their faith speaking out in defence of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

I’m going to close by sharing a poem I came across by Brian Bilston that flips hateful rhetoric against refugees on its head:
 
Refugees by Brian Bilston
 
They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way

(now read from bottom to top)
 
Arrest of James Grote on Bonn Square
 
On Sunday afternoon, following our service, James Grote was arrested on Bonn Square for protesting against the genocide in Gaza and in support of the proscribed group Palestine Action. James has since let us know that he was treated well in custody at Abingdon Police Station, before being released on unconditional bail. He gives thanks to those who have reached out in concern to him over the few days offering their care and love. 

I have worked with the Baptist Union in preparing the following statement on behalf of the church. It is also available on the church website under latest news:
 
On Sunday August 24th, one of our church members, James Grote, was arrested outside the front of the church for protesting in support of the proscribed group ‘Palestine Action’. You can find an account of what happened here, published by the Oxford Mail.
 
James is a retired Baptist minister, and now regularly attends New Road Baptist Church. On Sunday, James independently sat on Bonn Square in peaceful protest, before being forcibly removed by the police, and taken into custody.  
 
As a church community, we are rooted in the Baptist tradition of dissent and are supportive of the right to engage in non-violent protest. Like James, we too are appalled by the genocidal actions that we witness on a daily basis in Gaza. As such, we fully affirm the statement released by the Baptists Together in July 2025 concerning Gaza, Israel, The West Bank and East Jerusalem, which is available here.
  
I have been advised to remind church members and others at New Road that to publicly support Palestine Action is an illegal act that may have serious consequences for you as an individual and for the church as a whole. Therefore, words in support of James need to be chosen carefully, and if anyone approaches you with queries about James the recommended course of action would be to point them to the church statement, to our minister Jon Keyworth, or directly to James Grote.
 
We continue to offer our prayers and love to James. We continue to long for an end to the senseless acts of genocide that are being carried out in Gaza and seek after a just and lasting peace.


Sunday, 17 & 24 August 2025 - Reading the Signs of the Times by Rev Professor Paul Fiddes

This has been a week of very hot weather, the second heatwave of the summer, and some of us have found it difficult to cope and get on with our usual daily activities. Our weather forecasters on television have done their best to keep us informed, and to explain why temperatures have become so much higher. Weather records show the most extreme weather ever recorded in the United Kingdom, including temperature, wind speed, and rainfall. But, if past experience is anything to go by, our forecasters and weather experts will have been receiving a heap of abusive emails and hostile ‘trolling’ on social media such as X. It isn’t that people blame the forecasters for the sweltering heat, but they receive regular complaints when they dare to suggest this is due to global warming, and that there are signs of an emergency here with action needing to be taken urgently.
 
The complainers are happy for forecasters to forecast the weather. They want to know when it’s best to go to the seaside or whether they could have tea in the garden. But they don’t want to be told that there are signs of something wrong in human behaviour, and that we will all have to accept sacrifices in our standard of living if there is to be any decrease in global warning. They don’t want to know that they need to use less petrol, or give up foreign air trips, or that more wind-farms should be built in the countryside around them. In short, they don’t want to do what Jesus in our Gospel reading set for Sunday calls ‘interpreting the present time’ (Luke 12:56), or in a parallel passage in Matthew, ‘the signs of the times’ (Matthew 16:4).* 
 
In Jesus’ day, weather forecasts were essential for sailors and farmers. In Sunday’s Gospel reading, Jesus gives an example of interpreting the skies: ‘if a cloud rises in the west, you say at once “a shower of rain is coming”, and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say “it will be hot”, and it happens.’ So,  the west wind from the sea brings rain; the desert wind from the south brings heat. The physical signs aren’t infallible, but they generally work quite well. Now, Jesus’ point to his hearers is that they aren’t half as good at interpreting the human world around them. And when we look at our world around, not only at the climate crisis, but at people starving in war zones and at people’s homes and families being destroyed by drones and missiles, Jesus still asks us: “Can’t you interpret the present time? Can’t you see what’s happening? Can’t you read the signs of the time?” People criticizing the weather experts obviously can’t. But what of us?
 
The Gospel reading set this Sunday follows on from the one we heard last week, in which Jesus told a parable about servants who need to be on the watch for their master to return home, at whatever time of day or night (Luke 12:35–38). Putting the two readings together, Jesus is saying that if we interpret the present time properly, we will be expecting Christ to come to us. This does not mean, I believe, the coming of Christ at the end of the ages. It means a coming of Christ in the everyday crises and emergencies here and now. It means that if we interpret the time aright, we will expect Christ to come to us—each of us—with a request, a demand, even a command. It may be about the way we treat our neighbour who is an immigrant or asylum seeker; it may be about moderating our lifestyle and reducing consumption where we can; it may be about joining a movement to protest against some injustice; it may be just about watching our words, being kind and sympathetic to others when we speak.
 If we interpret the signs of the times properly, we will discover Christ coming to us in unlikely persons and places. He will be calling us to act not when we feel like it, but in God’s time, which is always now.