A NEW report identifies “good practice” on racial justice within the Church of England — however it also identifies a case of “bad practice”, during which a curate felt forced out by his training incumbent.
The fifth report by the Archbishops’ Commission on Racial Justice was published last Friday.
A piece of the report details “good practice” on racial justice which is going down across the Church.
It includes testimony from the Bishop of Dudley, the Rt Revd Martin Gorick, about his “racial justice journey”. In the diocese of Worcester, during which he’s a suffragan bishop, there was “modest but tangible” progress, he says.
Another example of fine practice is identified within the diocese of London’s efforts to gather data on diversity amongst clergy. Only 20 per cent of clerics had declared their ethnicity within the management system, and the diocese had launched a campaign to extend this, in order to collect more accurate data which could possibly be used to watch changes over time.
“Nothing is more undermining to progress than the proper rhetoric with no improvement of the impact to which we aspire,” this section warns.
In his introduction to the report, Lord Boateng, who chairs the Commission, describes legislative proposals to the General Synod on data collection as a “crucial spur to motion”. He suggests that this laws “will remove any supposed obstacles to the gathering of the crucial data”.
Amid the examples of fine practice, spanning several dioceses in addition to Theological Training Institutions and cathedrals, the report also identifies an example of “bad practice”.
With names anonymised, it describes a curate, X, who was “let down” by “the system”. His training incumbent, Y, was alleged to have put multiple barriers in the way in which of X’s ministry, a few of which related to X’s attempts to do multicultural outreach work.
The diocese involved shouldn’t be named, however the report says that this diocese “now recognises as flawed” the events that took place, and the way the allegations were handled, and that it “wishes to share in order that other dioceses can review their very own practices in the sunshine of this instance”.
Among other aspects, the report identifies an influence imbalance between paid incumbent clergy, who’re “disproportionately from white backgrounds”, and unpaid assistant clergy “who’re disproportionally UKME”.
The report describes X as “UKME/GMH” — a formulation used extensively within the Church of England — which stands for “UK Minoritised Ethnic/Global Majority Heritage”. The ethnicity of the training incumbent shouldn’t be stated.
In a letter introducing the report back to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Lord Boateng suggests that some “unwanted headlines” might have been avoided “by taking care to not unwittingly reinforce division”.
Lord Boateng refers back to the furore with which the diocese of Birmingham’s commercial for an “Anti-Racism Practice Officer (Deconstructing Whiteness)” was met (News, 28 March).
At the time, Archbishop Welby suggested that the term “deconstructing whiteness” — which is utilized in academia and arose within the US context — was unhelpful. “Can we please do this stuff in English?” he said.
Lord Boateng echoes this view in his letter, writing that “terms imported into the discourse around race that arose primarily in a North American context” were “often deeply divisive and counterproductive”.
“I avoid them and would urge great care of their deployment,” he writes.
The Commission’s final report is anticipated in November.
The latest report details the commission’s work because the start of the yr, which included supporting a motion debated at February’s meeting of the General Synod (News, 26 February).
The report details a gathering in May, at which the members of the commission discussed the reception of the Church Commissioners’ decision to launch a £100-million impact investment fund for the good thing about communities affected by the legacy of slavery, with an ambition to grow the fund to £1 billion through partnerships and further investment (News, 4 March).
In May, members “agreed that there’s a definite effort being made to create another narrative to that affirmed by the Church Commissioners — for instance, by downplaying the worth of the slave trade to British trade and economic development. Commission members agreed to supply short ‘rebuttal’ pieces in response.”
The Commission’s work will proceed into next yr, and a conference is being organised which focuses on “truth-telling” about “the legacies of slavery, colonialism and the Church’s complicity in racism”.
The report also calls for the work of the Racial Justice Unit, which was originally envisaged as a five-year process, to be prolonged for an extra five years, and, pending a review, that it’s “embedded throughout the administrative structure” of the C of E.
In response to the report, Archbishop Welby said: “Lord Boateng is true in saying that this report comprises the great, the bad, and the ugly. While there’s much to rejoice in our pursuit of racial justice within the Church over the past few years, we must also give attention to those features where we could possibly be doing higher.”
