The 1981 Act already ended the old automatic jus soli. What follows is not a party programme. It is an account of what the statute still leaves open, of what has changed around it in the last three years, of how a restrictionist reading of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 13 and the Fathers tries to close those openings, and of why that reading is contested inside the tradition it claims. The argument is offered in the conviction that a Christian may hold a hard view of membership without pretending that Scripture dictates it, and may hold a generous one without pretending that the magistrate has no office.‍

There is a sentence at the head of Paul’s angriest letter that ought to have settled the whole quarrel about apostolic succession before it was fairly begun, and which has instead been tiptoed past for the better part of two thousand years. The apostle is introducing himself to the Galatians, and he does it by naming, with some heat, everyone from whom he did not receive his office:‍ ‍

Paul, an apostle — not from men, nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.‍ ‍