Joe Aldred: ‘Flourishing in Babylon’ – a Review. # 168. 16/07/2024.

Out of Many, One People

Welcome. Following last week’s Review of Glenn Loury, a book by Joe Aldred also ‘thinking outside the box’, to use the title of an earlier book of his, which provides a lot of food for thought.

Joe Aldred: ‘Flourishing in Babylon’ – a Review.

Diasporas always need to position themselves in relation to the majority society. Joe Aldred came to Britain from Jamaica as a sixteen year old. Became a leader in the Church of God of Prophecy which had nurtured him, and then went on to take an important role on the interface between the black majority and the traditional churches in Britain, notably with the (then) British Council of Churches.

‘Flourishing in Babylon’ is a lengthy exposition of Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon found in chapter 29, where the prophet encourages them to settle for the long haul, and to seek and to pray for the welfare of their city of exile. Aldred draws from Jeremiah’s exhortation a rich and thoughtful range of connections and responses for the Black community in Britain, even whilst recognising distinctions such as Jeremiah’s apparently uncritical response to the brutality and violence of Babylon. He also draws from and makes good use of an impressively wide and long bibliography.

His basic thesis.

Aldred warms to the sense of agency implied in Jeremiah’s letter – they are to build, live, plant, eat, marry, parent, pray. Behind this lies the theologically central theme of the book – like the exiles, Black people have the imago dei, the divinely given dignity and worth to stand tall in any situation, fully aware of the value of their identity regardless of the treatment meted out to them. The consequent attributes of ‘agency and self-determination’ (p 165), lead to the book titles’ emphasis on ‘flourishing’. The outcome of Jeremiah’s call of ‘looking to and depending upon the God-empowered strength’ translates into the context of Black people today in Babylon, ‘making the self strong, and from a position of stake-holding strength, brokering mutuality and interdependence with the imperial power’ (p 26). One consequence of such valuation of sturdiness is his call, shared by several of his contemporaries, of valuing the risk-taking boldness of the earliest migrants, so that ‘Black British people should now ‘seek realignment with their parents’ original entrepreneurial and self-interested vision’ (p 13).

Inadequate responses.

In making this emphasis central to the Black diasporas’ response to their British context Aldred sets himself against two major streams of Black Christian theology and practice. It is rare, and positive, to see a Black theologian take a critical rather than a simply identity-asserting stance.

Firstly, despite his own background, he often takes issue with the default beliefs and spirituality found in black majority churches. Primarily that means pushing back against a passive supernaturalism that stresses ‘waiting on God’ and sees prayer as the ‘answer’ and so avoids the need for energy and initiative in response to injustices, rather than faith in a God who accompanies us in our struggles. He asserts that ‘A deep clean of the black liturgical content is needed in prayers, songs, scripture and other readings, reflecting a God who accompanies, giving power to those who appropriate it to live triumphantly even in the valley of the shadow of death’ (p 184). More specifically he is critical of emphasis on prayer for healing and the possibility of the ‘negative attitudes it breeds towards healthy lifestyles’ (p102), along with the abuse of power by those thought to have special capacities in this area. (Interesting that as a white Christian I have a slightly more ‘supernaturalist’ approach to prayer!)

A second and contrasting area where Aldred sees Black people being led away from a proper sense of agency is in what is broadly termed ‘liberation theology’ He observes cuttingly: ‘African American theologians and subsequently others especially in the global south have adopted this approach without much, if any, evidence that the liberation of the oppressed is advanced by the theology. Surely the understanding that ‘Christian theology is a site of struggle’ should be accompanied by an assessment of success in the liberative strategy before accepting and advancing an ideology (p 159). Using the word ‘oppressed’ as a primary descriptor of Black people by both black and white theologians alike seems to him a false starting point which places the prime responsibility for change in the hands of the white unoppressed. In this area, he is loyal to his Pentecostal roots, preferring the positive emphasis on ‘power’ from the Azusa Street revival onwards.

A further area that comes in for criticism at the level of secular agencies is of those ‘made leaders of the community by the mainstream, and superimposed upon the black British community as their representatives . . . with little or to no black community approval and acclaim’ (p 209).

The outcome of his thesis.

Aldred’s goal is that arising from this deeply internalised awareness of one’s imago Dei is that Black British people should, as a heading in the last chapter on ‘Flourishing’ puts it, have ‘Power: spiritual, social, economic and political’. He notes that ‘Black churches in Britain . . . have often sought to improve the area they worship in by being a place of incubation for the talent and skills inherent in its members, especially young people who utilise leadership and public speaking as well as scientific skills within the Church before broadening their involvement in society. I have seen churches develop their areas by acquiring derelict land and buildings and bringing them into use’ (p 117). It is at this on-the-ground level of mobilisation and development of potential that the power of Pentecostal churches is seen; as also in setting up supplementary schools or credit unions.

Expressions of the sense of agency that come from a strong sense of God-created dignity are likely to be local and small-scale, even individual, rather than head-line grabbing or the subject of books. Having more specific case studies or stories would have enriched the book, but possibly its approach does not invite that sort of detail. As with other churches, so with Black churches their strength lies in the local and personal, and the flourishing of ‘macro’ power that Aldred seeks is largely the accumulation of multitudes building, planting, promoting welfare and praying.

Loose ends in Aldred’s thesis.

‘Flourishing in Babylon’ is both inventive and securely grounded, creative and yet loyal to the heart and spirit of Jeremiah’s exhortation. Its theological emphasis on agency and positive self-image inspired by the Holy Spirit posits a constructive way forward for the Black British community. Here I want to raise two areas where for his thesis to have traction I think his definitions need greater clarity.

He writes of ‘Blackness’ that ‘Given their common historic roots, it is unwise to view African and Caribbean identities in Britain as separate’ (p 16). This fits with his concern that the concept of ‘Blackness’ is not exhausted by referring solely to oppression and the period of enslavement with its downstream consequences, but rather needs to incorporate both pre-slavery life and also future Black flourishing. But Aldred’s own background has been Jamaican and his church life within an African Caribbean denomination. I think enslavement was such a powerful and formative historical period that the differences of the cultures between, say, Jamaicans and Nigerians are not easily elided. As Tomiwa Owolade has written ‘We are barely a we’.

This is made more complex by the growing number of people of mixed backgrounds, such that 60% of African Caribbean women have children with fathers from a different ethnic background. He writes ‘Particularly in diverse exilic spaces, minority ethnic people should know their ethnic type, believe it to be God-given equal to all, unequal to none’ (p 58). Whilst this is true for many, the number of people with no clear ‘ethnic type’ is growing rapidly and represents a cosmopolitanism that I think is to be welcomed. The England football squad at the Euros provides an apt illustration: there is a specific ‘Africanness’ about several players, such as Bukayo Saka, whilst both Alexander-Arnold and Bellingham are strongly influenced by having white fathers, and can not be neatly classified as ‘Black’.

(At some other time it would also be good to think around his basic assumption that the very fact of ‘Black’ churches being a positive and valuable base for building identity, rather than that Christian identity for people of all ethnicities should be formed in multi-ethnic koinonia as in Colossians 3:11).

As regards ‘Babylon’, again the definition is elusive. At several places he refers to the historic injustices of the slave trade, chattel slavery, colonialism, and racism, and sees them as part of the ‘Babylon system’ – ‘a system imbued seemingly irredeemably, with anti-African sentiments’ (p 15). Aldred arrived in a Britain where overt racial discrimination and direct racist abuse were common. Yet alongside this he notes that confident Black British people can ‘also discover that many white and other British allies who adopt a pragmatism that makes neighbourliness possible’ (p 218), whilst he sees the possibility that ‘the descendants of formerly enslaved and oppressed African people engage in respectful partnership with white people’(p 35).

Perhaps in this sense Aldred reflects a tension that replicates the British situation. He speaks of racism ‘permanently etched’ into our society, and not only he but also his descendants will experience it, but weathered by passing years perhaps the etching is less deep, and particularly recently, as black people become more visible in positions of leadership in many areas including politics, as inter-racial relationships multiply, as the experience of racial diversity is a given in the life most people. He is rightly sceptical of overblown aspirations to ‘get rid of racism’ but are we nearing a point when ‘Babylon’ is too over-powering a figure to use about our society? ‘Anti-African sentiments’ are not sufficient to stop an African woman being tipped as the most likely leader of the Conservative party.

The future.

So as the diaspora build and plant, marry and parent – bolstered by a sense of their God-given agency and potential, what will the future bring? Aldred has no grand schema. Perhaps it will be like the Jews in Babylon – doing routine tasks well, raising securely cared for children, upward social mobility, increased parliamentary representation. Still bitten with discomforting micro-aggressions, all the while accompanied with a living faith in God that resists both the deceptions of naïve faith and the corrosion of secular unbelief. In that journey they will be strengthened by Aldred’s pastorally seasoned wisdom, his shrewd discernment of empty options, and above all his robust trust in what can be accomplished when we walk with the God whose image we bear.

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Some quotes from ‘Flourishing in Babylon’:

‘To call for justice requires clarity concerning what justice looks like, otherwise we end up with a scenario where white people cannot deliver it and Black British people cannot take it, because no one knows what ‘it’ is. It seems that much of today's liberation discourse amounts to an appeal to too oppressive ‘white’ people's sense of guilt concerning specific evils of the past and less specific evils of the present, though, with the onus on ‘white’ people to deliver ‘black’ liberation’ (p 12).

‘I believe the Jewish exilic situation resonates with and can inform that the diasporic one of black British people; and that the complexities of exile, the relationship between home and away, the role of God in empire, the hope of return and more all contributed to navigating one's way home from home. Above all, a sense of lived transcendence is conveyed in Jeremiah's text, so that while one cannot undo the past, they can certainly transcend the past’s present effects and not in the shadow of evil but out of the depth of self-realization (pp 39/40).

‘I believe that all Christians can take a lead in evidencing deep belief in and understanding of the validity of imago Dei as it applies to Black British people so that our actions demonstrate our theological understanding (p 61).

‘To pursue religious flourishing- I speak as a Christian- Black British people should consider resisting the Western trend towards secularisation or humanism, where this displaces or supersedes religious faith that has been the cornerstone of Black life for centuries. However, religious faith must serve practical purposes if they are to be credible aspects of black British people's lives’ (p 205).