“A DISTURBINGLY pervasive culture of denial, silence, a refusal to take heed of the lived experience of others and the avoidance of confronting and acting upon unpalatable truths” characterises the Church of England’s attitude to racial justice, Lord Boateng has warned.
He chairs the Archbishops’ Commission on Racial Justice, and was writing in its sixth and final biannual report, dated December and published on Tuesday morning, shortly before it was presented to the General Synod.
In it, Lord Boateng is very critical of the Church, describing an absence of co-operation in supplying requested information, and a “marked disinclination to have interaction” that has, at times, “engendered tears of grief and frustration on our part”.
The Church is at a kairos moment, he says. It is, the Commission says in its report, “called to supply an alternate vision and to vary the fact of the day-to-day lives of all those it is named to serve. To do this, it must address gaping wounds of racial injustice that afflict it, and reach out and welcome all comers.”
This requires an internal culture change, the Commission says. Priorities include nurturing a worship culture that, Sunday by Sunday, reflects diversity inside communities; a “robust structural governance” that ensures a sustained and adequately resourced give attention to racial justice; and an adequate complaints system.
“Church leaders must move from a defensive stance where complaints are ignored or managed away,” it says.
The C of E, the report suggests, wavers between the idea that “God is an Englishman” and a guilty acknowledgment that “God will not be a White Man.”
“The patterns of thought and imagination that arrange the world in racial ways . . . have a history that’s deeply entangled with that of the Church. The poisoned river of racism has tributaries within the long story of Christian antisemitism and within the violent relations between Christians and Muslims. . .
“It was deepened by the ways during which so many Christians drew upon Scripture and tradition as they taught themselves that the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans was acceptable and even beneficent.”
The report continues: “If it is necessary to recollect those members of the Church of England who worked toward the abolition of slavery, it is not any less essential to recollect how deeply the Church was involved in supporting and benefiting from it.”
The Commission had heard a list of testimonies from individuals who have experienced racism throughout the Church and who’ve, it says, often sought in vain for his or her experiences to be acknowledged and their concerns addressed.
“There are all too many respects during which the Church of England today stays shaped by a theological and ecclesial imagination that allows those that don’t experience racism themselves to downplay the cries of those that do and to disclaim that those cries are symptoms of deep and pervasive problems in our life together.”
The 1920 Lambeth Conference had acknowledged conscious and unconscious racism, while the 1985 Faith within the City report had reported that members of minority-ethnic groups overlooked of mainstream British society felt equally ignored and relegated to the peripheries of church life. Many Black Christians had told the Commission that that they had felt frozen out of the C of E by “patrician attitudes”.
The pace of change that the Commission and the Racial Justice Unit had continued to come across is described as “glacial”. The report highlights the absence of information, the reluctance to share the little data that did exist, and — throughout the National Church Institutions and diocesan authorities — the “secrecy and opaqueness” of their practices and processes. Those described as being on the front line in dioceses and parishes lacked support, it says.
Theological educational institutions (TEIs) must deepen their racial-justice focus to satisfy the long run needs of the Church, the report says. It calls for diversifying and decolonising the theological education curriculum.
“It is striking that, while there have been quite a few GMH bishops appointed within the Church of England lately, there has never been such a frontrunner heading up a TEI, and the variety of GMH people employed full-time in teaching posts throughout the TEIs stays tiny. That needs to vary.”
It identifies “a culture of non-engagement” from TEIs and their leaders, who “tended to be white individuals who didn’t all the time see the necessity to have interaction with antiracism and decolonial discourses. Accordingly, TEIs are perceived to perpetuate institutional and structural racism through a predominantly white curriculum delivered by predominantly white staff.”
Reparation, because it has suggested in previous reports, is “a matter of restorative or reparative justice, not of retribution. That is, it will not be about punishing people for creating or benefitting from the unique evil, but about repairing the breach in the current that it has caused.”
A bit on slavery-linked monuments quotes the chair of the Church Buildings Council, Novelette Aldoni-Stewart: “It is my continued purpose to advocate for many who feel unheard. To make sure that they’re heard, I understand that our scrutiny must look beyond the aesthetic value of historic bricks and mortar, especially if such regard for the tangible is on the expense of others.
“Hearing people also means being receptive to the stories these memorials tell of pain, and disenfranchisement and their legacy in conveying emotional harm.”
Calls to motion on this final report include an acknowledgement in remembrance services of “huge contributions of Africans, Asians and so many other people groups in conflicts which may easily just be seen by way of white and European protagonists”.
Church leaders also needed to make sure that work around Black History Month was not “tokenistic or merely performative ‘virtue signalling’.”
In the report, senior clergy describe their experiences of racism. This is reflective of the report Behind the Stained Glass, published in November, which found evidence that a mix of individual, interpersonal, institutional, and structural aspects created barriers for UK minoritised-ethnic/global majority heritage (UKME/GMH) people within the ministry and leadership of the Church.
The Commission’s latest report suggests that the Church’s failures to maneuver racial justice forward are enabled by “a culture, cascading from the highest down, of deference, subservience, acquiescence and silence”.
Locally and nationally, it says, the Church should make sure that those that are considering raising complaints about racist incidents have well-signposted access to impartial, confidential advice from individuals who know each racism and the Church well. “Where individuals are in a situation of asymmetrical power, they may possibly be concerned that the actual fact of their raising a grievance may very well be used against them.”
The report concludes: “Racial Justice within the Church of England is the classic curate’s egg, but ‘good in parts’ will not be adequate for the Kingdom of God.”
Of the 42 dioceses, 14 were found to have “extensive practice” in racial-justice work, 14 had partially addressed the problem of racial justice, 12 had plans in place to achieve this, and two had done “little or nothing” on racial-justice issues.
Church schools got here out best. The National Society for Education is commended for making significant strides in these areas. “Education’s success in teaching Christianity as a ‘world faith’ leads the best way in a journey which the broader church must make,” it says.
“In the imperial past, the English can have felt that they had the proper to define what Christianity is — however the retreat of the Church inside English society in recent a long time shows that this narrow approach has in reality damaged Christian witness here. The English faith of the long run should be one which is inspired and informed by the wisdom and experience of the world church.”
