How do you best spend £730,00? # 222. 24/02/2026
Out of Many, One People
Welcome. Whilst this blog focusses on London diocese, it raises the wider question of the best way for the Church of England to use her resources. Affirming or dissenting from my approach, it would be helpful to get a sense of what people think.
How do you best spend £730,00?
The diocese of London has been awarded a grant of £730,000 from the Church of England’s Racial Justice Unit to develop its racial justice work over a three year period. This is part of a national strategy of giving grants to address the issue.
In this blog I want to question whether spending money on ‘racial justice’ is the best way for the Church of England to take forward its calling to bring the good news of Jesus to the people of England, notably to a context of ethnic diversity. I am using London diocese as an example to examine the appropriateness of using racial justice as a main focus in that task.
For the reasons given below, I believe this is, in fact, not the best or the wisest way in which £730,000 of the Church of England’s money is best spent.
1. It reverses a relatively successful diocesan emphasis.
The last statistical deep dive into minority ethnic involvement in the Church of England was the 2007 ‘Celebrating Diversity in the Church of England’ survey from the Research and Statistics Department. Here London Diocese had the most positive results. As regards the ratio of a diocese’s overall minority ethnic population set against the ‘core congregation’ of members from ethnic minorities (thus measuring a diocese’s impact on its total minority ethnic population) London had the highest ratio of 100:94. In other words, the proportion of ethnic minority church members was near to reflecting the proportion of ethnic minorities in the diocesan population – particularly impressive given that this included large proportions from other world faith backgrounds (Muslims in Tower Hamlets, Hindus across Harrow, Wembley and Barnet, and of various backgrounds in Southall and Hounslow). The next highest ratios were in Southwark (100:92, shaped partly by the large of concentration of Christian-background West Africans in south-east London), Chelmsford (100:64), Manchester (100:49) and Birmingham (100:46). (Note the often-overlooked major difference between London and the rest of the country – see blog # 150 ‘Is London Exceptional’ 05/03/2024).
It is important to note that Southwark has had a much more intentional racial justice approach, employing at times two specialist officers, commissioning a report on the Diocese by Sir Herman Ouseley of the Community Relations Commission, and with a higher proportion of clergy from minority ethnic backgrounds. By contrast the low participation by London clergy in the research suggested apathy about ministry to ethnic minorities, black clergy have commented that they felt little support from the diocese’s senior leadership at the time, and the diocesan Committee for Minority Ethnic Anglican concerns was fairly ineffective. Why then did London diocese have greater impact on people of ethnic minorities than Southwark?
The issue is explored in detail in Bob Jackson’s chapter on ‘The Diocese of London and the Anglican Church in London 1980 to the Present’ (pp 268-278, in ‘The Desecularisation of the City: London Churches, 1980 to the Present’, edited by David Goodhew and Anthony-Paul Cooper). Jackson identifies the ‘critical moment’ as being in 1981 when Bp David Hope, later followed by Bp Richard Chartres, focussed the diocese’s concern on mission, redeploying staff with that focus, encouraging churches to develop mission action plans, no longer hindering growth by making growing churches immediately pay more to the diocese. The upshot of this growth and missional focus was that in the period 2001-2019 adult weekly attendances in London increased by 2.7%, in every other diocese they declined, ranging from 7.0% (Southwark) down to 39.5%. Whilst there was no particular focus on ministry to ethnic minorities a rising tide raised all boats: ‘That churches have been able to grow as multi-ethnic communities is one of the most positive aspects of all’ (p278).
In summary London diocese focussed on a ‘mission’ emphasis, Southwark on a ‘racial justice’ emphasis. In terms of the stated goal of involving people from ethnic minorities in the ‘core communities’ of churches the mission emphasis was undoubtedly more effective than the racial justice emphasis: both through having a greater impact on its minority ethnic constituency, and by seeing its churches, which included minority ethnic members, grow.
2. It fails to address our serious crisis in pastoral parochial coverage.
A friend from a minority ethnic background was recently appointed as vicar of a strategically important multi-ethnic parish. He has had to commute there from his present home for over an hour each way because of problems paying for the work to bring the vicarage up to reasonable standards. (Am I mis-reading from my limited knowledge, or do minority ethnic clergy more often get the short stick when finances are tight?)
A parish just inside the North Circular Road consisting of two churches, almost a mile apart, with one an excellent redevelopment on a visible major road site, has been in vacancy. According to the very useful Church of England Census and Deprivation Dashboard the parish population is 27,647 (not including a possibly significant number who didn’t fill in the census return). Of this about 40% are ‘white’, so including the substantial number of Poles, Romanians, Greeks and other non-English whites who live in the area. This gives a non-white population in the parish of at least 17,417 people. This desperately thin parochial coverage inevitably questions the diocese’s bold statement: ‘Our vision for every Londoner to encounter God’s love is the work of racial justice’. Our position as a national church offering pastoral care to the whole nation through the parish system is becoming meaningless when our pastoral coverage of vast areas of north London is so thin as to be effectively invisible to Londoners of all ethnic backgrounds.
Of course, £730,000 is too small a sum of itself to make a major dent in that problem; but it could, say, provide for four curates in multi-ethnic parishes for three years. Given the increasing weight of administration for incumbents in parishes it is difficult for them to do more than just keep their church simply surviving, especially in communities where few people have administrative capacities. Here, able additional pastoral help can make all the difference between stagnation and growth. Using funding in this way would likely in the short term increase the actual number of minority ethnic people worshipping in our churches – the essential basis for our real-world effectiveness; and in the longer term it would ease our present bottleneck in finding appropriately experienced candidates to appoint to incumbencies in core minority ethnic areas. Also, it would fit with the Archbishop’s Commission on Racial Justice’s Vision to be a ‘simpler’ church, since used in this way little or nothing of the funding would be spent on a further layer of administrative costs.
3. It comes from leadership low in relevant experience.
This comment is in no way a criticism of the ability, intelligence or spirituality of the diocese’s leadership, but it is to say that it has been very thin in terms of experience of urban, multi-ethnic London. In 2024 the Bishop of London and the four area bishops had between them around seventeen years of incumbency, only in one case in a substantially multi-ethnic parish. The two bishops of minority ethnic backgrounds did not grow up nor were trained in multi-ethnic Britain, and both come from atypical ethnic backgrounds. Whilst they share the painful and important experience of receiving racism and being regarded as ‘other’ by white people, and thus an important affinity with everyone from an ethnic minority background, there is not the sort of close cultural bonding that comes from growing up with and sharing identity within one of the main ethnic sub-groups in the country. Whilst fully recognising that the bishops are gifted in a variety of ways, the lack of immersive experience of parochial ministry in multi-ethnic communities is a serious deficiency.
Nationally the resultant danger is of policy being formed by leaders who share a common identity amongst well-educated, middle-class people, but which is too easily formed by abstract and fashionable theories rather than on the ground realities. Whilst ‘elite bashing’ can be crass, Professor Doug Stokes identification (in ‘Against Decolonisation’ – see blog # 131) of a Professional Managerial Class (PMC) that ‘has emerged under globalisation that secures hegemony through advancing a politics of vulnerability and the bureaucratic corralling of moralising coalitions around identity issues’ (p 14) sounds a little too familiar to the road the Church is going down.
It is too easy to dismiss questioning the usefulness of spending money on ‘racial justice’ as ‘racist’. Rather the question has to be asked as to whether racial justice is the most effective way to develop minority ethnic participation and, in the longer term, home-grown multi-ethnic leadership.
4. It wrongly prioritises theory over evidence.
The Church of England has a long history of being seduced by impressive-sounding policies with little realism about outcomes. Industrial chaplaincies and team ministries were touted as being theologically imaginative and institutionally creative. But they never actually delivered what was claimed for them. (Even a decisive step like the ordination of women - I am not an opponent - was taken on the base of abstract, theoretical, and contradictory, claims about what ordained women would bring to the church but with no serious research whatsoever in looking the actual outcomes of such decisions for Lutheran churches in Europe or free churches in England).
How much scrutiny has there been of the effectiveness of policies for ‘racial justice’? We lack serious study of ethnically diverse parishes, and of what important distinguishing characteristics of leaders and congregations might lead to effectiveness. There has been a substantial increase in the number of minority ethnic ordinands in London diocese over the past few years – usually running to at least 20-25%. Surely analysing what has encouraged such positives ought to precede the Key Funding Objective of ‘removing practical barriers for Global Majority Heritage (GMH) individuals’? How much do we still need to create ‘accessible pathways into leadership’?
As often, the question needs asking as to whether we are like an army that is preparing to fight the last war. Undoubtedly there are shameful examples in the past of racist exclusion of individuals, failure to orientate towards the strengths and needs of ethnic minorities, of unwillingness to hear expressions of grievance, to recognise the multiple ways racist assumptions of white superiority can manifest themselves. Nor have these sins completely disappeared. But are these at the root of the challenges we face today; or is it not rather the simple failure of evangelistic and pastoral impact in parishes, not least with ethnic minority people who have grown up here, especially those who can be loosely characterised as working class?
It has long been argued that the surest way to overcome racism is ‘equal status contact’. Churches can be fruitful sources of racial justice as their leaders and congregations grow in that unplanned and unconscious sharing of our common life in Christ. Why does it flourish so much more in some churches than in others? It is a vital, practical and very consequential question but the Church of England, and London diocese, has never thought to ask it.
5. How might we progress?
As regards racial justice, the London Key Funding Objectives focus on three primary areas:
* Education and Training, especially on anti-racism and cultural competency for clergy and church councils, and a school curriculum regarding links to transatlantic slavery.
* Leadership and Representation, both creating accessible pathways into leadership, and removing practical barriers for Global Majority Heritage people.
* Community Advocacy to work with others to address issues such as youth safety, health inequalities and immigration.
How far do these take forward ‘Our vision for every Londoner to encounter God’s love is the work of racial justice’?
* The need for thorough clergy training is certainly vital and essential to develop that vision. But we already have a clergy training department so why should this training not simply have a much higher profile in that remit? It is certainly one area where we need a much more energetic approach.
Are there not schools’ curricula on transatlantic slavery without the church having to re-invent the wheel on this?
* How great are the barriers to leadership for Global Majority Heritage people, given the increasing numbers coming into leadership? The ‘Behind the Stained Glass’ report was an extremely poor investigation of the issue (see analysis at blog # 185). No doubt there are still racist weeds blemishing the garden but these are eradicated by honest personal interaction, not by setting up further procedures.
* ‘Working with others on addressing issues’ is Professional Managerial Class speak. Existing church members are involved in such issues. Would a new layer of bureaucracy justify itself.
‘Racial justice’ does present us with ongoing challenges, not least for more effective clergy and then congregational formation, and for ongoing vigilance in detecting and countering racism at all levels of church life.
But the question remains: would £730,000 for increasing the involvement of people from ethnic minorities in London diocese be better spent on a) often undefined and elusive racial justice goals, or b) strengthening the church’s parochial ministry and experience of ethnically diverse areas. I think the answer is clearly b).
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Unpacking the Theology of Christian Nationalism with Revd Dr Helen Paynter
Monday March 16th, online from 5–6.30pm. Organised by London diocese.
Unpacking the theology of Christian Nationalism Tickets, Mon 16 Mar 2026 at 17:00 | Eventbrite
Reflecting on Scripture.
Exodus 23:9 (RSV): ‘You shall not oppress a stranger; you know the heart of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’.
Any encounters with people of another ethnicity involves an attitude of ‘imaginative contextualisation’ – seeking to feel how their heart feels in this context. Moses here recognises that his people have personal experience to work from – they were once strangers. If we are white and English we may have less personal memories to work from, though we can probably all recall some situations where we felt ‘out of place’ (like possibly being the only white person in a situation). We need to build beyond that to try to imagine what it is like to be in this particular person’s context. Partly from imaginative involvement in music, films or literature, but more especially from over time simply listening and observing so that to some degree we feel at home in another’s context.
Seeking to ‘know the heart’ of someone with a different culture and experience of life is a central task in an ethnically varied society.