By Tom Cadman

Border Patrol, one of TVNZ’s real life dramas, is also a daily reality we share with our neighbour, Australia. Having recently spent a few weeks in Australia, at a time when the Prime Minister was deposed, his deputy enthroned and an election called, I listened with interest as, along with the economy and who was most competent to govern, the issue of border control became a hot potato on the hustings.

Political adversaries outlined their perception of the problem and how they planned to deal with boat people, new migrants and the consequent effects on the Australian way of life if “the problem was not tackled.” A significant amount of xenophobia helped fuel the debate

Protecting borders is always a live issue as countries, like our own, seek to determine who or what we will allow in and whether those entries will issue in benign or malign results. More often than not the perception is that such border “invasions” will lead to terrorism, overpopulation, distortion of our way of life, or decimation of our agriculture by nasties of various kinds.

Such malignant outcomes head the long list of undesirable imports border patrols are designed to keep out. What is often forgotten is the large and unheralded wave of good and enriching culture-changing influences border migration brings.

No one highlights this better than Lisa Jardine in her study of the so called “Glorious Revolution of 1688,” entitled Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland’s Glory. University Professor Jardine, biographer of Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, recounts the invasion of England by the Dutch. Led by William of Orange, along with 500 ships, 20,0000 soldiers and 20,000 seamen – a force four times larger than the Spanish Armada – the invasion resulted in the capture and exile of the increasingly despised James II.

Despite this huge display of force and a two-year occupation by the invading Dutch, the transition of power was largely peaceable. Today, most of us have forgotten such a revolution took place in English life.

The reason for this cultural melding, says Jardine, is that alongside this 1688 revolution there had been, despite their continuing animosity, long time collaboration between the Dutch and English. Art, music, commerce, science, agriculture and religion crossed backwards and forwards over their boundaries. More important than sash windows, grandfather clocks, turnips and tulips, all of which came from Holland, was the extraordinary cross pollination of cultures that, along with the revolution, helped fashion what we know today as modern Britain’s constitutional monarchy.

It was this form of democratic government the British imported to New Zealand.

That historical experience, says Jardine, highlights the ways in which countries are permeated and their culture altered and shaped by the ideas, skills and attitudes of those they allow in as immigrants.

“If the creative life of a nation is a whirligig or kaleidoscope of colliding influences brought in by newcomers in their cultural knapsacks, might not the newcomers contribute to the cultural mix on an equal basis with the local native practitioner? In which case, to whom does the outcome of that bi-partisan engagement belong?

“Does each country possess a distinctive homogeneous set of tasks, attitudes, and beliefs at any given moment in history, closely contained within its cultural boundaries, to which new arrivals are allowed to contribute only within specific limits whilst all the time conforming to local norms? Or is a national culture a rich mixture of blended and intersecting tastes and styles based on a dialogue amongst those who find themselves mingled at any given point on the globe at any particular time?”

St Paul’s “we are all debtors” and English poet John Donne’s,“No one is an island, alone and entire,” confirm Lisa Jardine’s insights, born out of her study of the Dutch-English revolution. Beyond border patrols to keep out nasties, there is a border openness that mutually enriches, shapes and fashions what and who we are. These benignly good influences we keep out to our detriment.

Nations are not alone in needing to see the rich benefits of opening their borders. Neither churches nor Christians are islands “alone and entire.” It is easy to develop a siege mentality when it comes to what, as Christians and Christian communities, we will allow into our lives.

For all the nasties that might slip into our faith culture there are far greater benefits from opening our borders and allowing the many streams of faith and life circulating in the world to wash through us and around us. When we close our communal or personal borders because of fear of contamination we also shut out “the whirligig or kaleidoscope of colliding influences” brought in by others in their religious and cultural knapsacks!

If we examine closely the borders of our personal life or that of the community of faith to which we belong, we will be surprised how indebted we are to those who have crossed our borders, wittingly or unknowingly, and whose influence, insights and practices have shaped who and what we are, what we believe and how we practice our faith.