How much love should we give to which neighbours? Nick Spencer unpacks the use of the Parable of the Good Samaritan in political discourse. 21/04/2026

The topic of what (if any) responsibilities we as a nation owe to others – refugees, immigrants, other nations, etc – is never settled. But, of late, it has been particularly unsettled.

Moreover, it is one that Christians are seriously (and increasingly?) unclear about, opinion being spread wide along a spectrum that stretches from one group of usual suspects who are satisfied by some boilerplate moral universalism backed up by a few airy references to the Good Samaritan, all the way to another, increasingly associated with the phenomenon of Christian Nationalism, who want to preserve the Christian culture of our nation by keeping immigrants out.

It’s not an easy discussion, nor one that is amenable to answers, perhaps even to any answer at all. But it is an important one, that we do ill to shy away from.

The following article is adapted from a talk Nick Spencer gave at a recent symposium which ran under the title of “How much love, to which neighbours? : Our duties within the nation and beyond.”

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About 10 years ago I wrote a book on the different ways in which the Parable of the Good Samaritan had been used in British politics. It turns out that not only has the parable been used a lot but it had been used by a number of very prominent politicians, including Margaret Thatcher, John Smith, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Nicola Sturgeon, Hilary Benn, and Jeremy Corbyn.

Needless to say, they weren’t all using it in the same way.

The recurrent presence of the Samaritan in our political discourse should give some cause for reflection among those who think modern politics is (or should be) a wholly secular affair. You can’t keep a good Samaritan down, it seems.

This is of obvious relevance to the question of what responsibility we have as a nation because the parable has been repeatedly invoked over recent years as a way of justifying a kind of moral universalism, and countering what its critics would call a morally myopic approach to our international responsibilities.

Last year saw a public spat last year between J.D. Vance and Rory Stewart over the Christian approach to the proper ordering of love and loyalty, sometimes known as the Ordo Amoris. The US Vice President had said in an interview on 30 January that he held to “an old school — and … very Christian concept… that you love your family and then you love your neighbour and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world” – an ordering, he went on to say, that had been inverted by the contemporary far left.[1]

This drew a number of responses, not just from Rory Stewart but, more notably, Pope Francis who, in a letter to the American bishops published 11 days later, wrote, with unusual directness:

“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups… The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Lk 10:25–37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”[2]

Here we have, as it were, two theologically–flavoured answers to our presenting question.

On the one hand, there is the Ordo Amoris at least as interpreted by J.D. Vance, which sees love and neighbours extending from the moral agent in question, in a series of concentric and temporally sequential circles: first family, then neighbour, then community, then fellow citizens, then country, and only then after that the rest of the world.

This ordering of love demotes care for those beyond your nation to the lowest possible priority. And given that no nation is ever likely to be free from problems or possessed of a surfeit of resources on which there is no domestic call, it is highly unlikely that any nation will ever be in a position to “focus and prioritize the rest of the world”.

Such an ordering risks legitimising wholly self–interested national policies while entirely ignoring those beyond its borders. Our duties are not beyond the nation, but within it (and they may not even extend that far within it.)

On the other hand, and at the other hand of the spectrum, we have the ordo amoris as filtered through Pope Francis and the Good Samaritan which insists that there are no limits – and certainly no ethnic, religious or national limits – on those who have a claim to my attention and generosity.

By this reckoning, we might end up with a kind of political ethic that the former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell is quoted, by David Goodhart, as having advocated during a conversation at Oxford High Table; namely:

“When I was at the Treasury I argued for the most open door possible to immigration… I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare, not national welfare.”

As an aside, Goodhart goes on to remark that the other person he was sitting next to, Mark Thompson, then Director General of the BBC, agreed with O’Donnell, which led Goodhart to observe that

“Both men’s universalist views are perfectly legitimate and may reflect their moderately devout Catholic upbringings.”

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I can’t vouch for how moderate or devout were the Catholic upbringings of either Gus O’Donnell or Mark Thompson, but I think it’s fair to say, J.D. Vance notwithstanding, the weight of Christian opinion, certainly in the UK, leans towards the universalist end of the spectrum.

There are many reasons for this, some of which are circumstantial. Many Christians see who stands at the other – nationalistic – end of the spectrum. Some Christians are mindful of the highly compromised ecclesiastical stances to nationalism in the early 20th century. And so they position themselves as far down the other end as possible.

But the position is underpinned by principle. We do find in the scriptures and supremely in the life and ministry of Christ, a more or less uncompromising attitude to the extent of our moral responsibilities.

Old Testament Israel was a tiny and vulnerable people, sandwiched between imperial superpowers. It could have been excused for adopted highly exclusionary and isolationist policies, which is more or less what it did for a time when it returned from exile.

But central to its identity – buried in the law – is the self–identification as aliens, which came with a particular responsibility. The Torah famously declares

“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native–born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”[3]

This sets the tone. In a similar vein, however much we might try and attenuate his teaching, the life and words of Christ are uncompromising.

The American scholar Bart Ehrman, who is no orthodox believer (indeed no believer at all), but in a book published this month called Love Thy Stranger, puts it this way:

“Kindness to strangers is not hardwired in our DNA. Nor was it esteemed by the great canon of ancient Western philosophy – the Greeks and Romans prioritised generosity to your friends and family. When Jesus told his followers to give up everything they owned to the poor, he heralded a moral revolution. The needy, the sick, the outcast were to be cared for – even if they were unknown to you. This was a tough pill to swallow for early Christians, and to this day, many insist Jesus didn’t really mean it. Nonetheless Jesus’ most radical commandment transformed the moral conscience of the West: its legacy lives on in public hospitals, the billions given in charity each year and even government welfare.”

These views offer us an uncompromising answer to our question. You are to love everyone – friends, neighbours, even enemies – and your neighbour is emphatically not limited to those with whom you share physical space or family loyalty. Try as we might to domesticate the teaching of Christ, it will not be tamed.

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However, a direct translation from the pages of scripture to a Government White Paper is never a great idea. Those states that have tried to realise eschatology through the statute book and to legislate for Christian morality have ended not as New Jerusalems but as oppressive and dystopian nightmares. The possession sharing of the early Church in Acts has been successfully imitated in many small, committed, volitional communities through the ages, most famously monasteries. But it didn’t work out so well when ruled out acorss entire societies in the 20th century.

For those who claim to follow Christ, his words have a direct authority that we should heed – albeit we usually don’t. Archbishop William Temple once remarked that the church is the only organisation that exists for the benefits of its non–members, and though there may be more than a bit of idealism in this, the principle is right. The church should have a centre but no borders and should seek to extend love and responsibilities as far as possible.

But there are two reasons why this doesn’t translate into a straightforward universalist political ethic such as Gus O’Donnell might advocate.

First, humans are temporal, located, embodied, relational, dependent beings. We exist in certain times and places. And we show love by helping one another in those times and places. And so we form communities, groups, networks and the like, in and through which we collectively seek mutual goods. To serve our universalist aspirations we must take account for our actual neighbours.

A few years ago, the journalist Jenny Kleeman wrote a book looking at how much value we put on a life in different social contexts. She went to San Francisco and visited the headquarters of the effective altruism movement, which pours huge amounts of money into poverty reduction schemes abroad, the effectiveness of which has been relentlessly and rationally calculated. But the streets around their offices were littered with the homeless and drug addicts.

“I appreciate that it takes a certain kind of moral courage to be dispassionate enough to have these convictions,” she wrote. “[But] is it a good kind of courage? Can you save more of humanity if you’re prepared to have [such convictions]? Or does this way of thinking require you to deny your own humanity”

As embodied and located human beings, we do not consider the person who lets their child starve in order to feed others abroad as a moral hero. The “telescopic philanthropy” of Mrs Jellyby in Dickens’ Hard Times comes to mind.

The second point is that the nation–state is not the church. The nation–state is not beholden to the same Christ–like ethic of welcome and boundless generosity as is the church. That does not necessarily mean we are bound to default to the kind of concentric, sequential loyalties that JD Vance outlined. I think you can still make the case for more and wider, rather than less and narrower, love and responsibility – but you have to make it within the space of actual public views.

You can make the case that international development aid, assuming it is well–targeted and effective, is the right thing to do; a moral duty. I think we should. You can make the case that we have a moral responsibility to welcome refugees. You can make the case for a national responsibility for those in society who are least able to provide care for themselves or through their own family and community networks. You can make a case for trade relations and immigration policy that are more than a blunt assertion of my country first.

But you have to do so cognizant of the fact that the nation is not the church, and operates by a complex, shifting, plural set of moral visions, and if you do want to make that case, you are going to have to persuade people who care not two hoots for Christian ethics, moral universalism or the parable of the Good Samaritan.

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Let me end by returning to the Good Samaritan and saying one more thing about what principles we might draw on to navigate the universalist challenge it, and the gospel, places before a nation state.

Like all good stories this parable has been interpreted in different ways. Beyond the politicians I mentioned earlier, Christian ethicists have read it as underlining the message that our ethical responsibility should extend to those whose needs you become aware of. In this vein, as Luke Bretherton said recently in the FT, the parable may be interpreted as saying that although people do have primary responsibility to their close circles, these may be superseded by the urgent needs of strangers.

The implicit ‘moral universalism’ of the Samaritan story (and indeed the gospel) tells us that there should be no arbitrary limitations to our love. But that still leaves open the practical question of who should be loved, when and how. The principle of “becoming aware of their need” is an important one and should be included in the mix. But the problem today is that in a hyperconnected, always–on world, we are constantly aware of the genuinely desperate needs of many people across the world.

So I would argue that this cognizance of need should be tempered by the principle outlined in CST of subsidiarity, namely that that decisions and responsibilities should be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized competent authority, with higher authorities intervening only when necessary to support or coordinate those efforts.

I suspect this was what JD Vance was trying to get at in his interview – at least that would be a generous interpretation of his words. But as a principle – just as our cognizance of need today needs to be tempered by a commitment to subsidiarity – because otherwise we might end up becoming like the people Jenny Kleeman visited in San Francisco…

… so our commitment to subsidiarity needs to be tempered by a cognisance of need – because otherwise we will end up ignoring the needs of those a long way away who happen to have no competent national government or effective civil society to help them in their need.

The question of our national moral responsibilities is an inherently agonistic one and not amenable to any final answer. In one respect it is good that we are having these kinds of debates openly in society today. But it will have escaped nobody that the mood music of our current political moment is to retreat, to downgrade the needs of the distant and to slip into the logic of a global zero–sum game. And I think that would be a profound mistake.

Nick Spencer is Senior Fellow at Theos and the author of The Political Samaritan: how power hijacked a parable.

I would like to thank Jonathan Chaplin, Hannah Rich and Esmé Partridge of their helpful comments on an earlier draft.