Out of Many, OnePeople - # 6 - 04/12/20
Welcome. This weekly blog aims to help church leaders develop churches which gather people 'from every nation, tribe, people and language', by means of comments, theology, reviews and news. Do feel free to re-publish anything from this blog. And do feel free to comment, criticise, even commend; but certainly further debate.
Newlyn Road, N17 & Super-diversity.
The downstairs flat next to us is lived in by an elderly Barbadian lady. In the flat above is a Mauritian Indian. Next to them is a four-generation Bulgarian family. On our other side is a Grenadian man, whose uncle moved out not long back. The friendly English window-cleaner who lived beyond them has moved away, sadly. The house opposite to us is owned by a Chinese family; next to them Ugandans, then Ghanaians. In the other direction a new family have moved in - including an older lady with head-covering, and younger men - possibly Bangladeshis, or Syrian refugees? When I go to sleep there are people from four continents and maybe nine countries within fifty yards. Not represented are Turks, the most established ethnic group in the area; or Somalis who fill the cafe where I go when Liverpool are being televised.
The Chinese home owner lectures in Physics at Cambridge, the house bought for his Cambridge graduate daughter working in London. The elderly Gujerati mother and daughter who used to live next door, and brought us sweets every Divali, really didn’t speak a word of English.
The Grenadian uncle, who brought us the evening paper each day, became furious when talking about Caribbean history and slavery. The Ghanaian stood for the Conservative Party in local elections.
Our Barbadian neighbour goes with her daughter’s family to the exclusivist Church of Christ. The Mauritian is a Hindu priest; the Ugandan nurse a Roman Catholic; presumably the head-covered lady is Muslim.
There is a word for this situation: super-diversity; coined by Professor Steven Vertovec to describe a ‘new configuration of ethnic, gendered, legal status, age-differentiated, and labour market positions layered upon pre-existing contexts of diversity” (web-site of Oxford Diversity Project). In other words alongside broad-brushed categories of ‘race’ or ethnicity we need to recognise significant cross-cutting categories of social class and education, gender and age, religion and more fine-tuned distinctions of ethnicity. We live among a diversity of diversities.
So ‘super-diversity’ is not simply a pretentious way of saying that a very diverse society has become very, very diverse; it is saying that the diversity has now become so complex and fragmented that the nature of our society has changed. It is a paradigm shift, so substantial that we have passed a tipping point into a new situation. Typical working class English/working class West Indian parishes, such as where I was a curate fifty years ago, are now instead areas inhabited by (to quote Vertovec) a ‘complexity of social identity’.
Our situation has changed dramatically. Communities that were entirely white twenty years ago, now have significant minority ethnic presence. The Labour Party (and the Democrats) can no longer presume on the ‘ethnic minority vote’. The top driver in the super-rich world of Formula 1 racing is ethnically mixed.
Super-Diversity and Ministry.
A Grove booklet by Tim Harle on ‘Embracing Chaos: Leadership Insights from Complexity Theory’ (Leadership Series 4, 2016) provides a helpful lens to look at what Vertovec calls the ‘radical unpredictability’ of modern societies. Harle characterises the change as from ‘an implicit Newtonian world of cause and effect [where] if we apply enough cause (strategy, vision, technique), the desired effect (growth, changed attitudes, mission) will happen’ (p 6); to a situation where ‘bottom up’, ‘self organising’ responses become important. He quotes from the learning experience an IT company: “For a company used to making things happen, it is very hard to convert to letting them happen.”
The ethnic complexity that super-diversity identifies has important implications for the Church of England; a change from a mechanical to an organic model. If multi-ethnic Britain is conceived as a machine with distinctive, relatively ‘hard surfaced’ ethnic groups interacting with each other, then the leaders job is to oversee the proper functioning of the machine. If the machine is not producing the right results then leaders need to be pressured into pulling levers harder, or pulling other levers. Failure to produce the right results leads to frustration, bitterness and guilt. We assume leaders can control. The Stephen Lawrence follow-up Group of General Synod (2000) argued for a three-fold increase in the number of minority ethnic ordinands in five years, as though the Church of England somehow had the powers of command to make such things happen.
By contrast, Harle’s point is that in complex organisms leaders need to work with and develop what is happening ‘bottom up’. Probably the most remarkable bottom up development of the recent past world-wide has been the rise of Pentecostalism. In just over a century some estimates reckon that it has come to encompass one-eighth of the world’s population; all this without global organisational structure, high-profile leadership, or media advocacy. More locally the Alpha course has proliferated from the pioneering development from one (admittedly large and wealthy) church to being replicated, or imitated, nationally and internationally; without the need for the ‘top’ of the Church of England to set up commissions, reports, policies, budgets and staffing.
Harle refers to Jesus reference in John 3 to the Spirit blowing where he wills. Leaders in multi-cultural areas usually recognise that they are powerless simply to decide policies and implement them; it is much more an often slow process of letting things happen as they arise and then working with them.
Ways forward.
Positives:
Close attentiveness. The super-diverse complexity of modern Britain requires the church to be closely in touch with what is happening at ‘the bottom’; that is, in the parishes. Why are we so ineffective amongst African Caribbean men? Do we know whether the problem is primarily racism, or our cultural disconnect with working class men generally? Why are Iranian Muslims becoming Christians, but not Mirpuri Muslims; or Tamil Hindus, but not Gujerati Hindus? It is only by long-term, close attention to our shifting multi-cultural landscape that we will learn.
Loving Relationships. In urging the ‘hermeneutics of love’, N T Wright writes of ‘the insistence on respecting and admiring the ‘other’ for and as itself’. It is as we relate in the variegated patterns of life in our society that love develops, producing responses of respect and admiration. Sharing pain and anger, and the working towards justice is part of that response, but so is joy, delight and learning. It is significant that the word ‘conviviality’ often crops up in ‘super-diversity literature.
Prepared Leadership. A major weakness of the Church of England is its lack of energy and thoughtfulness in equipping and training its leaders at all levels to be at home amidst the complex diversity and variety of our society. The result is clumsiness, lack of zeal and of confidence in responding. We are still not serious about providing opportunities for focused training. Approaches such as ‘Cultural Intelligence’ can be developed as a positive way forward.
And a few negatives:
Statistical surveys are very rarely subtle enough to helpfully capture the living complexity of situations. As a vicar I could see there were a lot of Indians in the parish. But, importantly, were they mostly from East Africa or directly from India. No census could tell me.
Quotas also lack subtlety. The Metropolitan Police want to increase their BAME recruitment from 15% to 40% by 2022; but even if achieved how would they know if they are mirroring the complex social characteristics of the society they serve? Quotas are too crude to capture complexity.
In a fragmented society ‘Community’ is a word that entices to deceive. An example of misuse was Professor Paul Collier’s reference in his book ‘Exodus’ describing the ‘Afro-Caribbean community’ immediately rushing to Tottenham police station to demonstrate after the death of Mark Duggan, and so making him a ‘community hero’. In reality the demonstration happened days later and Duggan had very little local sympathy.
Likewise ‘community leader’ is a term that can have little meaning when ethnic groups lack meaningful boundaries, and mostly refers to people for whom reporters have phone numbers.
‘Super-diversity’ presents us with a society whose complexities are too rich for us to control, let alone fully understand. So there is no bullet-point list of things to do that will guarantee success. But by relating, enjoying, observing, receiving, serving we can begin to find our place, and so help nurture communities formed by love, grace, respect and forgiveness; and then see how the Holy Spirit may want to take us forward.
Add Ons
Quote of the week: ‘Our mistakes can be one of the greatest ways to grow in cultural intelligence . . . Cross cultural conflict is inevitable’ David Livermore in ‘Cultural Intelligence’, p35 (2010).
Anton Ferdinand - Football, Racism and Me on BBC1 on Monday 30th Nov at 9 pm. If you missed it, it is well worth catching up on. Moving portrayal of the emotional trauma of experiencing racist abuse, especially in full media coverage; and the clumsiness of the white authority’s response.
Building Multi-Racial Churches. Reprint of my 1994 Latimer Trust booklet, available from administrator@latimertrust.org for £4. (What else has gone up by only 100% in 26 years?)
As a vicar in a super diverse area I’ve always found it hard to put my finger on any one or even a few things, when people ask me for an opinion about race, building a multi ethnic congregation, or reaching a multi religious area. I’m normally a clear and concise thinker but when it comes to describing my ministry I prefer to tell stories than summarise in bullet points. Your comments John help to explain why. Perhaps it is also a western cultural trait to try and create a linear structured response or plan. A circular and more narrative approach sits less easily with our way of thinking. But the gospel works precisely because God has chosen to express his love for his people through a story not a set of bullet points. It’s good to be reminded that the church is not an institution or organisation, in which managers pull levers of change, but rather an organic, living vessel of the Spirit.