The term “Asylum Seeker” should be dropped.  Don’t use it.  I argued this in an article for the Methodist Recorder in April 2001.  It is better to recognise instead that there are people seeking or taking Sanctuary.  There is an urgent need for a new and alternative vocabulary in the whole Immigration debate which will [...]

On 18th June 2007, during Refugee Week, the Lord Mayor of Sheffield pronounced from the steps of the City Town Hall that Sheffield City Council had declared support for Sheffield as a City of Sanctuary.
On 18th September, Sheffield’s City of Sanctuary Committee organised a Press Conference in Sheffield Town Hall to spread the news.
There were [...]

Biblical Roots and Christian History
The roots of Sanctuary are thousands of years old, and have their basis in such diverse cultures as ancient Egyptian, Hebrew and Greek. The Hebrew tradition enshrined the experience of a formerly oppressed people into the legal code of their new society when 6 towns of refuge/Sanctuary were established according to [...]