PASSIONS ran high in Tuesday morning’s General Synod debate on the ultimate report and suggestions from the Archbishops’ Commission on Racial Justice, which has accomplished the work it was mandated to do in 2020, following the Windrush debate.
Its chair, Lord Boateng, suspected that there have been Synod members who would breathe a sigh of relief at that, “because for them it couldn’t come a moment too soon. They didn’t want it in the primary place and there was some recrimination, resistance, anger, and occasional criticism.”
But the Commission had also found engagement, co-operation, real motion, and alter along the best way, he said, “for which much thanks. . . Ethnicity will not be a marginal concern. It isn’t a genuflection to worldly political correctness. It is, slightly, to reaffirm the entire basis of our relationship with God the Father.”
The Church now needed to create space wherein to construct on what all of the research and diverse reports had demonstrated, he said. “Too often the Church of England takes refuge and even pride in its conversations, though those conversations don’t all the time involve listening, particularly to the affected or afflicted.
“There have been occasions throughout the lifetime of this Commission in your highest councils when people of color have been invited to input into a gathering and having served this purpose, have then literally been sent out of the room where discussions and decisions directly affecting them happen.”
Geoff Crawford/Church TimesMichelle Obende (Chelmsford)
Structural anomalies that might be intolerable in another institution had been compounded by “a culture that’s unwilling to share information and guards it with a fierce protectiveness that defies any explanation aside from blatant self-interest. . . Synod, it is a matter for you to handle in your legislative role. Because when you don’t, it can be forced upon you by external forces and statutory agencies. The alternative is yours.”
The Bishop of Dover, the Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, spoke from a lifetime of experience. “Our lack of know-how about our competing histories, our inability to recognise each other as made within the image of God and subsequently a part of the entire human race, mean that we overlook the unifying bonds that may hold us together,” she said. “All we’re left with are the cries of those that are still attempting to separate us from each other, often for political gains.”
She continued: “Racial justice can’t be seen as responding to sheer political pressure. It needs to be integrated into the life and fabric of the Church and the nation. It needs to be woven into its governance seamlessly and it should be appropriately resourced. Otherwise, it can go nowhere, and a few 10 or 20 years down the road we’ll simply see history repeating itself.
“And then we’re wringing our hands and saying we’re sorry. Let’s not be sorry. Let’s just get on with what we’d like to do.”
Michelle Obende (Chelmsford) urged the Synod to recognise that racism didn’t exist in isolation throughout the Church: its struggles overlapped with others around age, disability, and gender. “One journey shouldn’t trump one other. The journeys are entwined,” she said. “I even have been ‘othered’. I’ve been dismissed by some and belittled by others, all the best way as much as here in Synod. I sadly can say I do know what it looks like to be the change you must see.”
The Revd Andrew Mumby (Southwark) described slavery as “a genocidal holocaust”. He was fiercely against money from the Queen Anne’s Bounty “supporting our thriving parish, without reparatory justice”, referring to “the blood money of my enslaved great-great-grandparents in Jamaica”. He invited Synod members to rise up, hand on heart, to support the decision for reparatory justice, which many then did.
Peter Adams (St Albans) desired to see racism called out each time it was seen. Coming from Luton, where 70 per cent of the people were “non-British ethnic”, he told the Synod: “What we saw in Southport in the summertime was pure racism. As Christians, you possibly can haven’t any truck with it. There can also be no place for us to toy with white supremacy rhetoric. This will not be about me being ‘woke’ but me responding to continuing pain.”
Prebendary Amatu Christian-Iwuagwu (London) described the Church’s history of complicity within the slave trade as dehumanising. “As someone who grew up in Africa and is now serving as clergy within the Church of England, the injuries of the past proceed to shape lives today. We cannot afford to let the momentum slide.”
Although the theological colleges were strongly criticised within the report, and castigated again by Lord Boateng as “monocultural”, the Principal of the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, the Rt Revd Anne Hollinghurst (Southern Suffragans), spoke powerfully of the Foundation’s long history of encouraging diversity and of the continuing work amongst her counterparts in other institutions.
“I even have real hope for the longer term, especially once you take a look at the brand new and younger leaders coming through who will shape and reshape the theology and faith of our churches present and future,” she said.
Synod voted overwhelmingly for the motion — 311 in favour, one against, with six abstentions — which affirms the necessity for further efforts towards racial justice and commits the Church to resourcing a recent governance framework, including a Racial Justice Unit and the appointment of a Lead Bishop on the problem.
