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The Church of England, Race, and the ‘Second Error’.
Edward Norman is a high Tory Cambridge history don. In 1976 he aroused interest with his book ‘Church and Society 1770-1970’, looking at the Church of England’s approach to social issues (what would be ‘social justice’ today). Contrary to the widespread assumption that the Church of England had been unconcerned with issues of social justice, Norman produced a massive bibliography of primary sources indicating that this was not the case. What required explanation was not the lack of concern by the Church, but rather why such concern had so little impact or left so little lasting memory.
Norman identified a cyclical pattern. The cycle begins with church leaders confessing that they have paid too little attention to social issues, and determining to do better in future. As a consequence, books were written and proposals put forward. The church’s background thinking tended to be what had become fashionable and was popularised in the wider society in the recent past. But it was already becoming dated. The upshot was that what had once seemed bold or forward-looking initiatives rather rapidly disappeared without trace. They had become so unexceptional that they had little impact nor were they remembered for very long. Thus it came about that soon it began to appear again that the church was neglecting social issues, and the cycle kicked in once more, with the church again repenting, determining to do better and producing a further round of comments and proposals. In summary, it is not true to say that the Church of England had neglected social issues, but the overall impact was meagre. It simply failed to bite. Norman summarises the pattern observed over the two centuries as follows: “Each generation of churchmen has appeared to imagine that it is the first to espouse social policies, the first to be concerned with the condition of the working classes. . . (T)he assumption that social policies, which were later rejected as unsatisfactory, were not really policies at all.” (p 4). As regards the underlying problem for this lack of impact, Norman argued: “This points to another general conclusion of the present study: that the social attitudes of the church have derived from the surrounding intellectual and political culture and not, as churchmen always seem to assume, from theological learning. The theologians have always managed to interpret their sources in ways which have somehow made their version of Christianity correspond almost exactly to the values of their class and generation.”
The church over these two centuries, then, committed two errors – if the first was neglect of social issues, it was followed by what I term the ‘second error’, that is to draw its responses from the surrounding intellectual climate whilst insufficiently grounded in Christian faith and practice. It becomes pertinent to ask, then, does the disappointing cycle that Norman claims to identify help both illuminate and challenge the history of the Church of England’s approach to ‘race’ over the past seventy years?
How has the Church of England responded to questions of ‘race’?
* Archbishop Michael Ramsay was the first chair of the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants (NCCI) from 1965-8, set up following the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which was the first time Parliament set limits on migration into this country, designed in such a way as to limit the entry of non-white. Ramsey himself spoke against it in the Lords: ‘this lamentable Bill, this Bill introduced with repugnance, this Bill which is indeed deplorable’. The NCCI itself was dismissed as too establishment, both from the left that saw it as sanitising an implicitly racist policy, and from the right for the protections it gave to immigrants, such that in 1968 Ramsay was heckled by National Front members and needed police protection. Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech that year implicitly attacked Ramsay: ‘Archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately, with the bedclothes pulled right up over their heads’ were exactly and diametrically wrong’. (Mervyn Stockwood, the flamboyant Bishop of Southwark, aroused outrage in some quarters by describing Powell’s speech as a ‘fart’).
In 1968 the NCCI was replaced by the Community Relations Commission in the wake of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, sections of which he criticised as unjust. Behind all these debates Ramsay identified the theological issue of ‘basic Christian beliefs in the equality of man’ and throughout his time in office continued to advocate for racial justice both in Britain and the wider Commonwealth and Anglican Communion. Overall Owen Chadwick’s biography of Ramsay notes the high regard in which he was held for his work with the NCCI.
* In 1980 Rev Kenneth Leech was appointed to be the first Race Relations Officer for the Church of England’s Board for Social Responsibility, a post he held until 1987. In this position, he developed a wide-ranging group of contacts across the dioceses, and organised conferences that brought together practitioners to share insights and gain mutual support. Leech was strongly Marxist influenced, whilst during this period the Church of England through membership of the British Council of Churches supported the Marxist Race Today Collective.
* 1985 saw the publication of the ground-breaking ‘Faith in the City – the Report of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas, Recommendation 8 called for a Commission on Black Anglican Concerns.
* The Committee for Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns was set up in response to Faith in the City ‘to enable the Church to make a more effective response to racial discrimination and disadvantage’. Since then it has continued to monitor the Church’s response, producing both regular reports and occasional discussion documents such as Seeds of Hope.
* The Simon of Cyrene Theological Institute (SOCTI) was opened in 1989. It was intended to offer pre-theological college training for ordinands and lay workers notably from minority ethnic backgrounds, and also provide placements and pastoral studies units for those in training. More widely the Institute was intended to be a centre ‘for the studyof the black religious experience’ (‘An Amazing Journey’ by Glynne Gordon-Carter, 2003, p 34). However the Institute found that the expected flow of black candidates did not materialise, and closed in the mid-1990s.
Thuse have seen a variety of responses: Archbishop Michael Ramsay reflecting the One Nation conservatism of the 1950s to Kenneth Leech reflecting the New Left radicalism of the 1970s; from the ongoing organisational focus of CMEAC to the specific attempt to develop black identity through SOCTI.
All the above does not suggest that the Church of England has been unconcerned about issues of race and racism, and yet the sense that these mostly sporadic attempts by the Church of England to address the issues has been ineffective is palpable, notably in last year’s Panorama tv programme Is the Church Racist?, as though, to quote Edward Norman ‘that social policies, which were later rejected as unsatisfactory, were not really policies at all’.
So although Glynne Gordon-Carter’s 2003 autobiographical account of her time as Secretary of CMEAC from 1987-2001 is sub-titled ‘The Church of England’s response to institutional racism’, nonetheless eighteen years later at General Synod in 2019 the Archbishop of Canterbury confessed that the Church of England was ‘institutionally racist’ - as though this was a recent discovery.
What’s gone wrong? Is it the case, to make use of Norman again, “that the social [here read ‘racial] attitudes of the church have derived from the surrounding intellectual and political culture and not, as churchmen always seem to assume, from theological learning. The theologians have always managed to interpret their sources in ways which have somehow made their version of Christianity correspond almost exactly to the values of their class and generation.”
In other words, although we have frequently recognised the first error of ineffectiveness in a multi-ethnic society, our proper desire to respond has failed to have substantive impact. We have made the sort of ‘second error’ that Edward Norman identified - of making the wrong response. In particular, have we as it were taken off the shelf the most accessible, as well as widespread, moralistic and dramatic secular approach to a multi-racial society, and not thought more carefully about what responses are more congruent with our actual faith and practice?
What are ‘the values of their class and generation’ (Norman) that apply to us?
Last Saturday in the Times in an article on ‘Britain’s new elite’ the journalist Douglas Murray set out to tell us:
‘The new establishment . . . are in control of the universities, museums and oversight bodies. They are in charge of the BBC, quangos and all the major charities that receive money from government while also lobbying the government. . . (They are) people who talk about ‘diversity’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘sustainability’. They are the people who hold lockstep views on Brexit, LGBT issues and gender fluidity. . . . And while they are not of one political party, the people in charge of nearly all such bodies in Britain today are people who have signed up to the exact same set of approved orthodoxies. To step outside these orthodoxies would be to commit a type of heresy.’
Murray’s right-wing assessment bears similarities to the identification by the left-wing French economist Thomas Piketty of a ‘Brahmin Left’ and ‘Merchant Right’. Whilst the merchants control the economy our cultural values, our ‘orthodoxy’, is formed by the Brahmin Left. Charles Taylor, the Canadian Catholic sociologist, makes a similar identification. The political theorist Eric Kaufmann has charted the near total dominance of ‘the new elite’ in universities.
As regards ‘race’, the new elite/Brahmin Left understanding is clear. Disparities between ethnic groups in our society are the product of white racism. When the direct and explicit expression of racism is insufficient explanation then more complex explanations are brought into play, with increasing emphasis on racism perpetrated through institutional procedures; and then, with decreasing clarity of definition, by systemic racism. Paradoxically as racism becomes less explicit in our society, and measures to eradicate it rightly become stronger, so resort is taken to increasingly arcane sociological theories to explain how it is that disparities can still continue. The black American academic, John McWhorter, has dismissively characterised such attempts as a ‘religion’ – a cult of theories and practices increasingly immune to evidence or disproof (in ‘Woke Religion – how a new religion has betrayed Black America).
New elite orthodoxy resists any attempt to accept any other possible explanations for disparity other than racist practices by white society and last year’s Runnymede Report was a clear expression of such orthodoxy. Thus we have the increasing proliferation of officers and programmes to promote diversity and inclusion on the basis that there must be policies and procedures that can be found that will totally eliminate disparities.
How does such a ‘faith’ shape up against the realities of modern British society?
Recent Department of Education figures give us scores of attainment by different ethnic and social groups in state-funded mainstream schools, with some intriguing evidence:
* Chinese pupils had significantly higher attainment scores than all other ethnicities. Remarkably Chinese pupils on free school meals attained better than all pupils of other ethnicities, whether or not on free school meals.
* Indian pupils were next higher, then followed by Black African, Other and Mixed pupils with fairly similar scores. Slightly behind were White and Black Other cohorts as regards girls, but Black Other boys had significantly lower attainments. Black Caribbean pupils were lowest of all by a substantial margin and again with boys faring much less well than girls.
* Black Africans attain higher than Black Other and Black Caribbean pupils, most especially in the case of boys, such that ‘anti-black racism’ is clearly an insufficient explanation alone for low attainment.
* Those on free school meals had lower attainment levels. The gap was markedly greatest amongst the large group of White pupils, presumably because this reflects that they are a group with substantial numbers living both in poverty and in financial security and so producing a very wide range of outcomes.
The overall upshot of this survey is clear. Britain is not a society with an identifiable and discriminated against ‘BAME’ cohort all alike suffering from disparities imposed by a white racist society. This is not to say racism doesn’t exist, or that it is not serious. But it is to say that other factors must be in play that explain the major differences between Chinese and Black Caribbean pupils.
In other words, the orthodoxy of new elite organisations such as the Runnymede Trust fails to come to terms with this very broad range of different outcomes for ethnic minorities. Account must be taken of the concept of ‘Superdiversity’ – that is that British society is characterized by a wide variety of differences caused by factors such as social class and educational attainment, gender, specific area of origin, migrational history, and age. Outlooks that believe only the thinking and acting of white people is formative are in fact an expression of white hubris. Broad-brushed policies about diversity and inclusion simply fail to come to terms with this uncontainable complexity. As it is different ethnic groups can be very high performing in our society: during Covid tv interviews with healthcare academics have revealed a notably high number from South Asian backgrounds, the remarkable growth rates of West African churches such as the Redeemed Christian Church of God have countered the narrative of inevitable secularization.
So what might be an authentically Christian response to ethnic disparities in modern Britain?
A first response might be to recognize that superdiversity means that expecting similar outcomes from different ethnic groups is both impossible and undesirable. Setting quotas is at best a helpful way to focus attention on an issue; any aspiration to expect it to be successful, or a cause for blame if not attained, founders on the rock of the very varied aspirations arising within a fragmented super-diverse society.
An interesting pre-Glastonbury discussion here was the response of Ziggy Marley (son of Bob) to Lenny Henry’s statement on ‘the lack of black and brown faces at festivals. I think “Wow, that’s still very much a dominant culture thing”’. Marley said he had ‘stopped looking at skin colour. . . I don’t really focus on that any more. We look at humanity. We’re all human beings’. Whilst Glastonbury festival’s official response was a perfect sample of the new elite’s lifeless, box-ticking vacuity: ‘Black Lives Matter movement has had a profound impact on us’. Henry’s lament raises expectations of what might constitute reasonable representation. Black people form only 5% of the British population (whereas the public’s estimate is of 20%, and research in the USA suggests black people over-estimate the size of their cohort as much as white people do). Further, delighting in open-air camping is a somewhat Aryan tendency, with little hold on black popular culture. So amongst the now very wide menu of preferred popular music genres how do you quantify a fair representation of ‘black and brown faces’?
So, one Christian response, well exemplified in places in the Bible Society journal that I reviewed last week, is to make the strongly Christian assertion of our common humanity, especially as it can be exemplified in the love and unity of local conregations.
More specifically, despite the diversity of British society, the educational attainment figures above suggest one common theme in under-achievement: the absence of stable father figures. The attainment scores correspond very closely with the prevalence of marriage amongst different groups. This is not primarily a racial or ethnic characteristic. Amongst the population generally the Marriage Foundation has noted the correspondence of marriage and wealth. The areas with the highest marriage rates were the wealthiest. But they failed to notice an outlier: Harrow is not overall a particularly wealthy area, but has a very high marriage rate, almost certainly because of its high Indian population. (Interestingly Harrow was also an (Indian shaped?) outlier in the May local authority elections, switching against the run of play from Labour to Conservative control).
The lowest attainment scores were amongst Whites on free school meals, Black Other and Black Caribbean – all groups with a high proportion of households without a resident father.
The impact of such homes, particularly on boys, comes out not only on educational attainment but also matters such as mental health or imprisonment rates. Correlation, of course, does not prove causation, and these are also homes marked by poverty. Financial pressures are often cited as a cause of marital breakdown. However the fact of poverty, as indicated by being in receipt of free school meals, did not prevent Indian, and especially Chinese pupils from succeeding, suggesting that it is not poverty but family structure that powerfully affects children’s capacity for educational attainment.
In particular, it is boys who are affected. Whilst the attainment gap between boys and girls for Chinese pupils is only 4.3, for White, Black Caribbean and Black Other groups it is over 7.5 – with a massive 9.7 for the latter. It is a matter then of racial, social and gender injustice; with black, non-African boys suffering on all three counts. The Church of England’s clumsy focus on bulked up ‘UKME/GMH’ statistics rather than on specific categories means we persistently fail to identify that we have one particular chronic area of failure: working class black young men.
Therefore, a church that is intensely serious about overcoming racial and social disadvantage, and which seeks to avoid simply forming its responses from the recently prevailing outlook of secular elites will make addressing the instability of family relationships its major focus. Whilst the ‘orthodox’ Runnymede Trust showed its moral and intellectual vacuity by ignoring the issue, the ‘heretical’ and elite-maligned Government (‘Merchant Right’?) Sewell Report recognised the problem. It is disappointing that the Government’s Response to Sewell, which made substantive responses over health and employment issues, was so anodyne in its recommendations as regards families.
Addressing the need to strengthen a child’s right to be brought up in the home of their two biological parents is not a specifically racial issue, but – as Sewell recognised – it is policies that address all disadvantaged groups that will counter the disparities seen particularly amongst minority ethnic groups.
What then of Edward Norman’s rebuke that ‘the social attitudes of the church have derived from the surrounding intellectual and political culture and not . . from theological learning’?
In this light, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s criticism of the Government’s policy of transporting migrants to Ruanda, whilst morally correct, nonetheless it can not be called ‘prophetic’ or counter-cultural. In fact it is safely well within the moral parameters of the new elite (though none the worse for that). But by contrast if the Church of England’s leaders were to argue for both a cultural mind-set and for national policies that are rooted in Scripture’s very strong assertion of the responsibility of parents, including fathers, to provide a loving, secure environment for their children then that would be genuinely counter cultural, and – to the extent that it brings change – lead to significantly improved outcomes for inter alia disadvantaged ethnic minorities.
The fact that this is what the Church has traditionally argued for doesn’t devalue its crucial salience in our present context of strongly different outcomes for different ethnic groups. This is what is held dear by minority ethnic Christian groups; we should join with them in vigorously, publicly asserting and working for the importance of stable marriages and committed fathering across our society.