A Racial Justice Pilgrimage: Guest post by Revd Christopher Ramsay. # 135. 24/10/2023.
Out of Many, One People.
Welcome. Many thanks to Christopher Ramsay for the attached reflection. Hopefully it might provide inspiration for similar initiatives in next year’s Black History Month.
A Racial Justice Pilgrimage.
Guest post by Revd Christopher Ramsay, Vicar of St George’s Southall and Willesden Director of Mission.
Pilgrimage and Racial justice don’t often appear in the same sentence. Yet both racial justice and pilgrimage are outward journeys that are signs of potential interior journeys of grace.
On Monday 16th October a diverse group of 70 people were part of a ‘Racial Justice Pilgrimage: a Journey of Lament and Praise ’ marking Black History Month in the London Diocese, with a good number of guests from Southwalk Diocese. Led by The Right Revd Lusa Nsenga-Ngoy, The Bishop of Willesden, I was one of the facilitators of the walk (along with Revd Andrew Corsie, Willesden Director of Ministry, and Robin Whitburn, Lecturer in History Education at the UCL Institute of Education and founder of Justice to History).
Pilgrimage is about the journey not just the destination. Striving for Racial Justice which is one of the priorities of the 2030 Vision of the London Diocese is also an ongoing journey. John Root has been helping us question whether structural racial justice at an institutional level is enough unless it is applied at parish level. For me as a vicar of an intercultural church in Southall for the last 22 years, the journey towards greater equity, recognition and valuing of difference is something which I feel I’ve never completed because it is an inner journey of the transformation of my mind and heart.
In our pilgrimage, we may have walked 8 miles, (from the Windrush Memorial at Waterloo station through to celebrating the founders of Notting Hill Carnival and hearing about the Grenfell Tower tragedy at St. Clements Ladbroke Grove), but the real journey was one of new realisations about ourselves and our British history, in companionship with others along the way.
I’ve often contemplated Jesus‘ walk on the road to Emmaus with the disciples who did not recognise him, and have discovered myself that walking aids talking, reflection and therefore recognition. The provocation of sites, both remembering 18th century Sons of Africa, such as Otobah Cugoano with the new art works at St James Piccadilly, through to the murder of Kelso Cochrane in 1959, brought home that there is much in our own history we do not recognise through lack of intentional engagement caused by cultural blindness.
What struck me about Otobah Cugoano (of who I knew nothing previously) was that the way his baptism and his Christian faith shaped his campaign against slavery. He authored ‘Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species‘. To stand at the font he was baptised in and to note the unusual carving of the Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit was to acknowledge how racism and overcoming it impact is part of our metanarrative of salvation as Christians.
Pausing on our pilgrimage at the very pavement site of Kelso Cochrane’s racist murder, it was appropriate that we walked in silence to out next station. Yet there were also times of joy on our walk, such as noticing the determined forward stance of Mary Seacole in her statue at St Thomas Hospital or acknowledging the founders of the Notting HIll Carnival.
Bishop Lusa Nsenga-Ngoy wrote in our introduction the day:
‘A pilgrim, they say, is a wanderer with a purpose. This pilgrimage for Racial Justice is not a nostalgic quest, nor is it a historic tour. Instead, it is an invitation to walk the way of the cross that leads us to become witnesses, signposts to a transformed way of being. Fundamentally, it is the place of reorientation, re-centering our lives towards God. In biblical language, re-orientation and re-centering are captured in the Greek notion of metanoia, often rendered as repentance or conversion. Metanoia, as an antithesis to paranoia (besides one’s mind), is an invitation to re-orientate one’s life, one’s mind to its rightful centre. In that place, we are freed from the temptation of escape and from the tyranny of fragmentation, and inducted into a liturgy of interdependence and solidarity, fully anchored into Jesus and enabled to be encountered by the other as neighbour, as siblings. As we commit to walk together, we need to name the asymmetry in our experiences and aspirations. Though we walk together, some of our companions journey in shoes that are unbearably uncomfortable. The route we intend to follow is likely to offer both familiarity and novelty. However, the journey is likely to lead us to an unexpected destination. As a matter of fact, even tried and tested routes always deliver the pilgrim to a new destination. The one hope I hold, is that this walking together compels us to look and journey
in the direction Christ.’
Even though I have been shaped by leading a church for over two decades which is at most 10% white, I have found myself particularly convicted in the last couple of years that I need to own my responsibility as a white man to read and educate myself about the experience of others and make a concerted effort not to leave the ambition of a forming a racially just church to a mental footnote, in the midst of the gospel priorities of deepening discipleship and enabling church growth. If anything, the lament of my heart that day was there were less white clergy there than those of UKME/GMH background. I believe that without ongoing intentionality, my own lack of recognition, due to my white privilege and formation, will limit my church’s growth in depth, numbers and impact.
The pilgrimage was therefore not just a journey, but part of my journey.
Tips for those thinking of organising a similar pilgrimage:
· Get a historian involved, it adds depth
· Expect that the walk will be at 2 miles per hour in the morning and at 1.5 miles in the afternoon
· Make it max 7 miles in length
· Invite specifically those who you want to be there to make it part of their journey
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Add On.
Is Making the Sign of the Cross spreading?
Two of Liverpool’s substitutes last Saturday – Harvey Elliot and Joe Gomez, both English – crossed themselves as they prepared to come on the pitch. According to my memory, thirty years ago it was extremely rare for players in the Premier League to make the sign of the cross. Since then, an influx of players from the global south has made it much more common. Now the English are doing it as well.
So, is this an instance of the western secular mentality becoming eroded by reverse mission?