'Racial Justice in the Church of England': Report to Synod. # 63. 06/02/2022
Out of Many, One People
Welcome to Out of Many, One People, which has come out two days early this week. I only discovered a few days ago, thanks to me mixing up my Church Times subscription, that this Report had come out and was being presented to Synod this Tuesday, so I thought I would publish the blog early. If you have friends and contacts on Synod please do forward it to them. May God bless the Synod.
‘Racial Justice in the Church of England’: Report to Synod
This coming Tuesday, 8th February, General Synod will be discussing ‘racial justice’, including a presentation from Lord Paul Boateng, the chair of the Archbishops’ Commission on Racial Justice. The General Synod document (GS 2243) ‘Racial Justice in the Church of England’ summarises the developments following the reaction to the death of George Floyd (broadly pages1 to 6), and then looks in detail at the actions taken following last year’s ‘From Lament to Action’ report - (pages 7 to 21, hereafter FLtA).
In the following I want to look at issues that I think the report raises, both in its initial report and its evaluation of responses so far to FLtA.
1. What is ‘Race’?
The Report starts by referring to the reaction to the death of George Floyd by ‘people of Global Majority Heritage (GMH) in the USA and beyond’. In fact, the large East Asian population in the United States, and other ‘GMH’ groups were little involved. Whilst only a detail in itself, this approach of bulking up all ethnic minorities under the UKME/GMH (aka BAME) label is a mark of both the Report and FLtA; one which obscures and confuses significant differences and issues between ethnicities. It is good news that out of the eight minority ethnic bishops in the Church of England two are Malayalee men (to declare an interest: my wife is Malayalee), though there are very few Malayalees in Britain. By contrast almost three-quarters of a century after Windrush there is still not one African Caribbean background man as Bishop, that is the demographic with whom we are most seriously failing. The Report gives no tools for identifying our very uneven impact on different ethnicities. Nor does it draw attention to the disturbing fact that all eight bishops were nurtured in their faith overseas and not here in the Church of England.
The wooden use of ‘UKME/GMH’ means that such realities are neither noted nor responded to, and ‘race’ becomes seriously over-simpilified to a white/others binary. The ‘Theological Foundations’ set out in paragraphs 6 to 10 continue this limited and misleading perspective, working from the banal statement that ‘there is one race, the human race’. This is a half truth, but theology only becomes challenging when seeking to conceptualise the remaining half: how does theology help us characterise the significant differences between racial and ethnic groups within the ‘one race’? Some pointer in a rather obscure section is given by the phrase ‘moral orientation’ in relation to persisting racial injustice, which I take to be an oblique reference to the damaging impact of sin, notably racism.
Saying that the report has an undeveloped and imprecise understanding of race is not an academic quibble. It means inevitably that our understanding of racism, and then on to racial justice – the topic central to the Report and to the Commission – will be similarly imprecise and undeveloped.
2. What is racial (in)justice?
How does racism in all its forms account for differences in outcome in both church and society? The phrase ‘racial (in)justice’ appears constantly but it is never defined, but implied is the working assumption that sufficient evidence for racial injustice is indicated by discoveries of ‘inequality of outcome’, and that furthermore these are the consequence of racism, notably institutional/structural/systemic racism, in the way the Church of England operates.
Behind this assumption, which admittedly is taken as normative in most discussions of ‘race’ today, lies the further, but patently absurd albeit largely unquestioned assumption that races are virtually identical with each other, apart from the labels we have given to them and the way power has been exercised over them by others. So we are expected to believe the nonsense that the differences between different cultures don’t make any difference. Racial injustice is thought to be only about what is done to ethnic groups; nothing whatever to do with the choices, priorities, values, mind-sets or behavioural patterns within those groups. Both the Cabinet and the England football team have impressively high levels of minority ethnic participation; the former with several South Asians, but no one of African Caribbean background; the later with many African Caribbean people, no South Asians. Cultures make very different choices.
In reality both in this country and around the world we see important inequalities of outcome which are not affected solely by the way the group is treated. No ethnic group has been subjected to such outrageous brutality and injustice over the past century as the Jews, yet in important areas of education, business, arts, income, Nobel prizes and the like Jews have outperformed other groups. Malaysian society is heavily weighted in favour of the Malay majority, yet in most indices they are out-performed by the Chinese minority. In Britain educational achievement between ethnic groups varies considerably, including between black people of African and Caribbean background, between whom visibly many white people would not be able to make distinction. The issue of school exclusions (p 14, Action 5) becomes unhelpfully jumbled if ethnic distinctives are not recognised. The very fact that the Church of England works so largely with the clumsy and imprecise UKME/GMH label yet sees marked differences in outcome in terms of race (especially when combined with gender) of those who become leaders at different levels means that other factors, especially cultural traits, are clearly at work. (Last year’s controversy between the Sewell Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparity, and its criticism by the Runnymede Trust report highlighted the strong difference of opinion between the two approaches; see my Blogs 25 and 40).
Differences of outcome, and the fact that some ethnic groups (including white English) and social classes fare better than others can not be blamed without qualification on the way the Church of England is. The Commission’s work would be much simpler if all adverse differences for ethnic minorities could be ascribed to ‘racial injustice’. But that is not the case. Racial injustice is certainly a factor, but not the only one. The result is that determining both the Church’s responsibility and appropriate next steps as regards overcoming racial injustice is a complex and subtle exercise. It needs close observation and thoughtful questioning leading to the identification of several possible factors that could be of importance in working against or towards greater equity rather than a simple desire to be with the angels on the right side of history.
3. How do we overcome racial injustice in the Church of England?
FLtA deserves our thanks for its hard work and creativity in making several potentially fruitful recommendations to achieve greater racial justice in the Church of England, which this Report notes.
Amongst these are:
* the provision of a study course on racial justice within Christian discipleship (p 15, Action 9, ‘significant progress’); (though avoiding simplified understandings of racial justice as discussed above);
* Archbishops host provincial events for minority ethnic clergy and ordinands (p12, Action 15) (hopefully they will soon be too cumbersomely big and need dividing up);
* promoting intercultural placements in ministerial training (p 13, Action 3, ‘some progress’);
* production of liturgical material with greater cultural diversity (p15, Action 10, significant progress);
* minority ethnic clergy (and now suffragan bishops) to be participant observers at the House of Bishops (p 7,Action 2, ‘in progress’);
* ‘reverse mentoring’ for each bishop by a minority ethnic person (p 16, Action 1);
* mandatory learning programme for those involved in ministry selection (p 16, Action 3, some progress but dependent on resources to complete);
* prioritising minority ethnic youth work in Strategic Investment Board bids (p 19, Action 4, ‘significant and continued progress’).
However there are also ways in which a poor understanding of ‘race’ and what is or is not racially just lead FLtA into unfeasible proposals:
The curse of quotas.
At various points FLtA proposed percentage quotas, thus 15%minority ethnic participation at all levels of governance by 2030; 15% membership of Bishops’ Councils in areas with above average minority ethnic populations; 30% of the 60 or so members of the Strategic Leadership Development Programme (SLDP). Why these figures? They seem to be taken out of thin air rather than from estimates of the actual strength and potential of minority ethnic members of the Church of England, especially with the very high SLDP quota. The figure of 15% may well reflect the current percentage of non-white ethnic minorities in the country; but this ignores the fact that 10% are of South Asian origin, of whom the majority are from other major world faith backgrounds, so the figure is not a realistic translation of the proportions we ought to expect in leadership in the Church of England, other things being equal (which they are not).
Similarly wooden are the proposals for including people from ethnic minorities in appointment shortlists, Non-Residentiary Canons or Cathedral Chapters. At times that may bring to the fore capable minority ethnic people who might well have been overlooked, in other cases they simply cause expenditure of effort for little purpose. Awakening the imaginations of those responsible for appointments is beneficial, imposing strict policies is over-bureaucratic.
Creating new jobs.
This is a significant emphasis of FLtA. The proposal for a Racial Justice Officer for every diocese was rightly rejected by the Archbishops’ Council, but as well as being too costly it also threatened to unhelpfully draw good people away from the crucial front line of parish ministry. Having minority ethnic staff in theological colleges is a positive aspiration, but without evidence that there is a strong pool of candidates risks turning a good aspiration into an inappropriate burden. So many of the actions identified in the Report to Synod mention ‘requires funding’, hopefully covered by a bid to the Triennium Funding Working Group (para. 24).
Conclusion.
One consequence of the mistaken assumption, derived from Critical Theory, that race is essentially about power relations, with the major differences between cultures totally side-lined, is that it gives rise to measures which are ultimately destined to be incomplete and frustrating, since significant factors of cultural difference have been excluded. At this point one option is to demand more of the same – more ambitious ‘racial justice’ initiatives, a bigger budget, more staff.
The Church of England has been on that road. In the 1980s the Simon of Cyrene Theological Institute was set up at considerable cost to train minority ethnic ordination candidates; a trophy won by the lobbying of the Association of Black Clergy. It failed because in reality the hoped-for black candidates in reality never existed. As too often in the Church of England, failure was simply walked away from, lessons never learned. So today, alongside its wise, modest well-founded proposals, one senses that FLtA may also have eyes on achieving a legacy of trophies, especially in grand staffing and expenditure terms, that again simply fail to correlate with our basic need for a Church of countless joyfully worshipping multi-ethnic congregations, led by clergy with the Cultural Intelligence to help them grow into greater ethnic diversity. FLtA’s emphasis on colleges teaching Majority World theologies is valuable but there needs to be much more specific prescription that both initial and in-service training give much greater attention to developing the aptitude for leading in multi ethnic communities, which by mid century could be the context for the majority of Church of England parishes.
The reasons that previous initiatives and reports have been held to be ineffective and innumerable proposals left dormant are not just because of institutional timidity or inertia, but because of misplaced focus, the fact that cultural differentia mean that complete equity will never be achieved, nor inclusion at senior levels be proportionately distributed across ethnic groups. Human material is too diverse, too specific, too unmalleable to form neat symmetrical patterns. Ethnicities rule.
A heart-warming vignette pointing to ways ahead is the CMEAC sponsored networking event for Farsi-speaking ministry. This was a reflection of the extraordinary church growth within Iran spilling over into the diaspora, and so was a response to a bottom-up movement inspired by the Holy Spirit not a top-down initiative. In the highly complex, ethnic super-diversity of modern England ultimately it is loving, improvised, creative responses to such developments on the ground rather than high level and resource-costly prescriptions that are the way ahead.