Reading Eric Kaufmann’s ‘Taboo’ in the Church of England. # 170. 30/07/2024.

Out of Many, One People

Welcome, to the last blog before my summer break. The next one will go out on Sept 17th. Meanwhile, for me, may the hot weather last. I hope you are not finding it too difficult and can enjoy it,

Reading Eric Kaufmann’s ‘Taboo’ in the Church of England.

‘Taboo’ (reviewed last week) is centrally about the damaging slippage in Anglophone culture from ‘cultural liberalism’ (such as equality of opportunity) to ‘cultural socialism’ (such as equality of outcome); a process that requires cancelling the expression of resistant ideas, inflated concern about the dangers of ‘harm’, and an increased level of institutional activism as over Diversity, Inclusion and Equality programmes. It is fairly evident that the Church of England is a culturally liberal organisation. What might be the indications that it is sliding towards cultural socialism?

Following national trends.

Kaufmann reports an analysis of newspaper articles which shows that references to racism/racists/white supremacy suddenly shot up from around 2010, tracking earlier attention in academic literature (p 93). An analysis of the Church of England would show a similar spike in attention, for example indicated by a Synod motion repenting for past racist behaviour by the church, the From Lament to Action report, concern over how we respond to past involvement in enslavement, articles in the Church Times, or the appointment of ethnic minority people to senior posts. Obviously there is nothing wrong with the church tracking concerns in the wider society, though it should chasten the hubris of claiming we are being ‘prophetic’. In an earlier blog on ‘The Church of England, Race and the Second Error’ (# 81, 27/06/2022) I drew attention to the historic pattern of the Church of England following after secular concerns about social justice, whilst trying to give a theological veneer to conventional established opinion. What is sad that this attention has come too late in the day – we should have been more prophetic in the 70s and 80s when those of us who wanted to draw attention to these matters were largely ignored.

What is ironic is that this increased attentiveness has happened alongside a widely recognised decline in the salience of racism in national life, and growth of much more positive attitudes. Thus increasingly costly measures, such as the West Midlands dioceses project on overcoming white privilege, are being focused on a problem which has declined, and which is likely to continue to decline of its own momentum.

Lack of guardrails for liberalism.

Central to Kaufmann’s argument is that liberalism has a problem guarding its leftward flank. Once reasonable moral stances are taken - such as that ‘racism is a sin’ - then liberals can find it difficult to resist extensions of that claim since to do so invites the shameful allegation of being a racist. A clear case is accepting moral responsibility for the Church of England’s involvement in slavery. Though the extent, and especially the benefit, if any, of financial investment has become increasingly disputed, nonetheless for two centuries much of the Church of England accepted, and indeed, certainly as individual members benefitted from enslavement. Thus a fund of £100m was set up to aid projects that would benefit descendants of the enslaved. Whereupon the Oversight Group of the ‘Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice’ has subsequently recommended an enlarged Fund of £1 billion, drawn from a wider variety of sources but with a very much wider remit beyond the Caribbean. (See my review of their report in blog # 151, 12/03/2024). How can such a claim, made by a very largely black committee, be resisted? Regardless of any attempt to discuss the logic or justice of such a claim, rejecting it would immediately raise the charge of racism, as well as disregard for the hurt and offense felt by black people (which of course is beyond the possibility of any serious objective assessment). The anti-racist juggernaut is beyond containment.

A mark of Kaufmann’s approach (he has called himself a ‘conservative liberal’) is the recognition that every policy brings collateral damage. (A better National Health Service really will mean higher taxes). A just and reasonable response to past collusion with slavery will consider the weight of inter-generational responsibility, the relevance of past contributions and the limit of future ones, and the problem of discerning to whom reparation is justly payable – all set against the requirements of other demands on the church’s money. Liberals will undertake the difficult task of weighing up an ‘optimum’ (a favourite word of Kaufmann) outcome. Cultural socialists can always simply claim that ‘any amount lower than mine is racist’.

A similar ‘progressive’ drift of meaning is held within the word ‘inclusive’. In one sense the word is irresistible. Churches are called to show the welcoming love of God that we see in Jesus Christ. Can any church be unwelcoming? But clearly the word also has the coded meaning of implying that same sex activity is to be affirmed rather than condemned. Here too the question of guardrails arises. Are there limits to inclusive affirmation? It has become likely that transexual procedures will also be affirmed. But are adulterers, who are also deserving of God’s love, to be positively included? Is there any point at which inclusivists would say ‘enough!’ Would they, for example, say that the baptism of Russell Brand was an inclusion too far? When faced with such words of Jesus as ‘Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it’ (Matt 7:13) do inclusivists simply turn away, or recognise that morality causes us to bear in mind several factors, not just one word slogans.

Taboos.

A central concern for Kaufmann is that ‘cultural socialism’ inhibits academic freedom, not just by obvious cancelling, but also by putting taboos on what might be said, including self-censorship. Can we question whether appointing a minority ethnic person to a senior post – in business, politics, academia and including the church – was simply responding to pressure for ‘diversity’ rather than because the person’s qualities obviously made them the best person for the job? Or is the disproportionate exclusion of African Caribbean children from school a problem caused by racism in the system, or is it taboo to ask if it is because they are disproportionately badly behaved; and then correlating that with the absence of fathers in the home.

So, in the church some things become unsayable. In a generally well-balanced chapter on ‘Octavius Hadfield: Nineteenth-century Goodie or twenty-first century Baddie? Learnings from the Complexities of Mission and Empire’ (in ‘Deconstructing Whiteness, Empire and Mission’, edited by Anthony G Reddie & Carol Troupe) James Butler and Cathy Ross pay tribute to the commendable aspects of Bishop Hadfield’s work, but nonetheless raise disapproving eyebrows at his description of the Maori’s as ‘a formerly barbaric race’ (p 83). But Maoris did practice cannibalism, surely a barbaric practice. (As well as slavery and tribal warfare, which of course Europeans also practiced). Sensitivity to our easy mis-readings of cultural hierarchy ought not to rule out the need to make negative judgements.

Kaufmann notes that 60% of Americans now believe that the indigenous ‘First Nation’ peoples lived in harmony before the arrival of Europeans. Taboos against mentioning the prevalence of evils before the arrival of Europeans and/or missionaries give us a distorted and ultimately patronising understanding.

Building resilience.

Kaufmann describes a survey where respondents were asked to choose between two ‘ideal societies’:

‘A) Minorities have grown so confident that racially offensive remarks no longer affect them.

B) The price for being racist is so high that no one makes racially offensive remarks anymore.’

Black and white conservatives both supported A by 62/63%. Amongst black liberals the support was 47%, and white liberals 29%. In other words, for progressively minded whites taking strong steps to prevent harm is a priority, whilst progressive blacks are divided between the two goals. Conservatives of both races mostly saw building resilience in the black population as the more important(p 318).

So should the Church of England be focused mainly on opposing racism as a way of promulgating ‘social justice’ (for example in the West Midlands dioceses project to dismantle ‘white privilege’, as well as focussing on such issues as reparations for slavery or contentious memorials) or should it be focussing on building up the confidence and size of its black membership? Kaufmann’s posing of alternative ‘ideal societies’ has a similar shape to a question posed to the Church of England in 1985 by the black American James H Evans Jr in ‘Inheritors Together: Black People in the Church of England’: ‘Whether or not the appropriate strategy for black people in the church is to get black representatives into positions of authority or to concentrate on building black base communities within the church’ (p 67). Over the past forty years clearly the aim of both CMEAC and the Church of England generally has been the former strategy. Reading Kaufmann’s research suggests the latter.

The Church needs reminding here that the overwhelming bulk of black Christianity in Britain focuses on ‘ideal society’ A, whilst the strength of black majority, especially African, and diaspora churches vastly outweighs participation in the Church of England. Rev Dr Stephen Laird’s survey of the African Christian groups at the University of Kent, where they were the strongest Christian presence at the university (see Blog # 72 ‘Black Majority Christian Groups at University’, 12/04/2022) indicated that their separate existence was not due to racism in the Church, but a desire to maintain their own traditions, worship style, ethical teaching and commitment to direct evangelism – that is, they were developing the ‘resilience’ not the ‘racial justice’ agenda. When therefore the Church’s policy is increasingly to move minority ethnic clergy into special posts in dioceses, training bodies – that is into offices, and away from parish leadership – then arguably we are reducing our strength amongst minority ethnic populations, and so long term undermining racial justice.

The broad picture is summarised by Kaufmann: ‘When institutions and activists focus on weakening the strong by attacking ‘oppressors’ rather than strengthening the weak by working to build up their capacities, the costs are considerable’ (p 303). So he notes the ‘sins of omission’ stemming from cultural socialism – its policies actually disadvantage black people. He describes a survey where black Americans’ confidence that ‘When I make plans, I am almost certain that I can make them work’ was notably lower amongst those who had been given to read ‘a passage from the CRT firebrand Ta-Nehisi Coates’. Thus Critical Race Theory’s ‘widespread pessimism . . . is a recipe for collective disempowerment’ (p 313).

Concept creep.

Inflating the meaning of the word ‘harm’ is a woke strategy according to Kaufmann. When invoked by what have been called ‘expansion’ or ‘opprobrium entrepreneurs’ (p 71) on behalf of ‘fragile’ groups (ethnic and sexual minorities, women) then opponents have to flee. In responding to the Alliance’s criticism of the Church’s liberalising approach to same sex relationships, the Bishop of Oxford countered by pointing to the ‘harm’ it caused to homosexuals. The Alliance responded in kind  by pointing to the ‘harm’ that Synod’s policies were doing to the church in Africa. When extended from the body to our feelings ‘harm’ becomes immeasurable, with no possibility of external evaluation. It turns choices of conviction into acts of aggression – in that sense, my vote in the recent election can be deemed to ‘harm’ all the candidates on the ballot sheet that I didn’t vote for.

Mercifully no Christians sought to cancel Richard Dawkins on the grounds that he was causing them ‘harm’ or ‘trauma’, despite the aggressive edge he showed at times, and even though down the past two centuries until today there are many who can testify to the very acute pain caused by ‘losing my religion’. Rather it has been necessary as a ‘conceptual minority’, like any other minority, to develop the resilience to live with the misunderstandings and injustices that are bound up with minority status.

Of particular relevance here is Kaufmann’s noting than men and women are different. A project over whether people are more concerned about free speech or emotional safety, found that amongst the group that had read a passage about the importance of protecting minority groups from harmful speech ‘Reading about harmful speech . . had a much bigger impact on young women than young men, shifting women fourteen points towards emotional safety compared to a mere two points among men’ (p 241). More generally he notes that ‘Younger and female respondents are consistently more pro-PC than middle-aged or older people, even after taking ideology into account’ (p136). The Church of England may not be young, but it is widely recognised that it is increasingly ‘feminised’, which means that concern to protect the vulnerable from harm may increasingly take precedence over open, free and controversial debate. Pastoral sensitivity to individual needs then takes precedence over clear theological analysis, for example in the current debate over same-sex relationships.

Similarly, Kaufmann notes: ‘A consequence of the shift from full-spectrum cultural flourishing to cultural socialism is that society has become margin- rather than median-focused’ (p 375). Once more, surely bells ring for the Church of England. Clearly concern for the marginalised in our society is an important aspect of the church’s ministry, but arguably a culturally socialist mentality has pulled that concern into the centre. Often our apologia in the public space is to present our ministry to the marginalised, rather than claiming we have a message of good news for all people, whilst an exegetical sleight of hand means that we focus largely on Jesus ministry to social outcasts rather than noting that ‘the common people heard him gladly’ Mark 12:37, AV) The massive missional problem of the church of England today is its failure to connect with ‘mainstream’ ordinary people, of all ethnicities and notably men, rather than with possibly sentimentalised ‘marginal’ people.

Kaufmann’s bracing assault on the taboos that cultural socialism has proliferated in our society may make uncomfortable reading for cultural liberals – surely the default position for most of us in the Church of England – but time and again he calls us to see the harms that develop when that liberalism drifts leftwards without the moral and intellectual guardrails to prevent it.