It is impossible to understand our approach to matters of immigration and asylum except through the lens of political theology. We are in the grip of a politicised and secularised obsession with redemption. The asylum-seeker comes to our shores and, wherever he is from, whatever his background, and whatever he has done or might in future do, we stand ready to wash him clean and welcome him in as chosen of God. That the people who are most in thrall to this vision are almost invariably atheists is precisely the point: “All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularised theological concepts.” It is through the death of God, the killing indeed of God, that the state – and hence, man – is made the vehicle of redemption.
