The Divided Brain, Church and Race: on reading Jonathan Kimber’s ‘Fullness of Vision, Fulness of Life’. # 214. 28/10/2025

Out of Many, One People

Welcome, to a blog that draws together several themes my critique of the Church’s policies over race. I hope you find it helpful - and are moved to read Jonathan Kimber’s fascinating book.

The Divided Brain, Church and Race: on reading Jonathan Kimber’s ‘Fullness of Vision, Fulness of Life’.

‘We never think about race except when we think about race’ is the way I have often characterised the church’s response to race. Race periodically crops up as issue, something ‘out there’, and with increased frequency with the ‘racial reckoning’ since the death of George Floyd. But other times it is off the radar, as a predominantly white and middle class church we carry on with business as normal. Race is not part of who we are, not in our heart or in our guts.

Jonathan Kimber’s excellent book has a drawing of a chaffinch on the cover. The chaffinch has an intense specific focus on looking for worms to eat. It also has a more general, contextual awareness that dangerous predators could be hovering in its environment. The illustration refers to the leitmotif of Ian McGilchrist’s highly influential study of the divided brain – the left brain focussing on the immediate, concrete, specific, eating the worms; the right brain is aware of contexts, experiences, environments, threats and opportunities. Kimber’s book, subtitled ‘The divided brain, improvisation and leadership in the Church’, agrees with McGilchrist’s conviction that our society has become unduly shaped by the Left Brain – we are overly functional and technocratic. He applies this to the church – managerialism dominates (to the diminution of a wide-ranging awareness of our humanity and spirituality) evidenced in the mindset of policies, conferences and (mainly evangelical) books shaped by what Kimber refers to as the Strategic Leadership Discourse (SLD). This approach he refers to as ‘Clear-cut’, whilst he characterises the values and processes shaped by the Right Brain as ‘Holistic’.

In this blog I want to extend Kimber’s stimulating assessment, with McGilchrist’s wisdom behind it, to how the Church of England has responded to issues of ‘race’, first looking at the contributions and pitfalls of a left brain Clear-cut approach, and then the importance and value of giving much more scope to a right brain Holistic approach.

Exploring the Clear Cut focus.

Maps are simplified, diagrammatic concise representations of a much bigger, wider, richer reality. They can package reality in understandable terms; help us begin to find our way through an otherwise confusing, meaningless morass of information. Race in Britain involves an extremely wide range of people and cultures inter-acting in an equally wide range of activities – as neighbours, fellow-workers, family members, worshippers, political actors, social group members and so on. Therefore information communicated through statistical tables and charts, social analyses, specific or broad brush labels is helpful. We need some ways of simplifying and making manageable the otherwise overwhelming complexity of the surrounding situation.

Being well-informed enables easier and more open engagement with people of other ethnic backgrounds. It is an indication of cultural openness. Church documents such as From Lament to Action have been helpful in encouraging listening to minority ethnic voices, especially at senior level, though such learning needs to be displayed sparingly or people of minority backgrounds experience being regarded as a ‘project’. I always value the words of a black youth worker that there are some things that you need to know and then forget.

The damage of Clear-cut thinking – Progressive Race Discourse (PRD).

Discourse, in Kimber’s use, is not just a gathering together of thoughts and ideas, but also a consolidation of them so that some understandings can be taken for granted and unsaid, with others being unsayable since they don’t fit within the Discourse. So, whilst the need to package complexity into manageable shapes is necessary, the simplification becomes damaging if it is not recognised as just that, and the more so if the map produced is not only so simplified as to be misleading but is also distorting. I am arguing that serious national debate, including in the Church of England, is marked and distorted by this narrowly focused left brainapproach to race, which can make Progressive Race Discourse at times seem, falsely, incontestable. ‘The clarity and linear logic of the [left brain], combined with its sense of certainty, can easily seem superior to the breadth and subtlety of the [right brain].’ (p 55)

* ‘people are conceptualised rather than experienced’ p 34.

The villain here is the use of BAME (subsequently replaced by the equally damaging UKME/GMH) as an agglomerating term for the very diverse range of ethnic minorities in Britain. Whilst the simplification is of use in some contexts, overall the continuing conceptualising of people in this way obscures profound differences between ethnic groups and hinders experiencing the reality of actual people. As Trevor Phillips has said ‘I have never met a BAME’; or as Kimber writes ‘any two members of the same category can be treated as equivalent, and therefore interchangeable’ (p 48). Elsewhere he writes of the importance of imaginative engagement with the ‘backstory’ (p 85) of people and groups. ‘BAME’ takes away a person’s backstory.

* ‘a complex domain is “nonengineerable”’

The desire to propose and carry through change is understandable but Kimber points to the optimistic tone of Strategic Leadership Discourse. This comes through in discussions of race – an entirely unrealistic assumption that the Church of England has it in its power to determine outcomes. Some years back the proposal was made for a fivefold increase in minority ethnic ordinands over a certain period – as though we have the power over people in ethnic minorities to make this happen. A broader implication of this false assumption runs through the flagship ‘From Lament to Action’ report which is full of % signs indicating intended minority ethnic participation, usually 15% as the then estimated proportion of minority ethnic people in the country. Such hubris misleadingly agglomerates the population – perhaps two-thirds of that cohort are from other world faith backgrounds and so unlikely any time soon to be found in the ranks of Anglican clergy; and then assumes an unwarranted degree of control to make things happen. Such proposals suggest a Report completely divorced from the on-the-ground reality of life in multi-ethnic England.

One consequence of agglomerating people into an interchangeable category is the damage it does to making appointments. An eye on percentage representation weights the focus onto choosing to up the ‘UKME/GMH’ proportion – ‘we must have a . . .’ The consequence can be lack of fit – well-educated members of untypical minorities are thought to be responses to very different communities of concern, such as alienated African-Caribbean men, or Mirpuri Moslems. Further square pegs get forced into round holes. I know of at least two able people from ethnic minorities whose ministry has been disastrously damaged by giving difficult roles that did not fit their skill or experience.

The above use of ‘nonengineerable’ (taken from the sociologist Hartmut Rosa) parallels the phrase coming from the study of ‘Superdiversity’, that of ‘radical unpredictability’. Behind them is the reality that Kimber emphasises, namely that a consequence of ‘complexity’ is that precise Clear-cut proposals are simply ineffective. The frustration expressed in ‘From Lament to Action’ that the Recommendations of previous reports have not been carried through reflects not so much inertia as the fact that the Report itself and its predecessors all reflect a similar left-brain Clear-cut failure of understanding by seeing issues of race – a very complex area of human beings relating to each other – as amenable to bureaucratic prescriptions. It reflects what Kimber, referring to the SLD, calls ‘unfounded and counter-productive assumptions regarding our capacity to predict and control’ (p 127). Such false optimism of how we can achieve change sets ourselves up to fail. The outcome, therefore, is to blame the church.

* The ‘tendency to view the church itself as a problem to be solved’ (p 127).

As a result actual parishes, and the clergy responsible for them, get very little attention in Anglican PRD. Clergy with immersive experience of multi-ethnic ministry were conspicuous by their absence in drawing up ‘From Lament to Action’, as though the blood, sweat and tears of actual parish life were alien to left brain activity. Nor has there been any attempt to scrutinise what happens in local congregations and what sort of mutual learning there might be, perhaps because the elusive complexity of ethnically diverse congregations is unappealing to the Clear-cut desire to make specific proposals.

A further way that the Clear-cut focus on race is damaging is its simplification, what has been described as ‘univariate social analysis’ – that is, it is so focussed on just this one issue, race, that all other factors are excluded from attention. The chaffinch is only attending to the seeds it wants to eat. One consequence is that for PRD race becomes the only explanation from disparities. Across a wide range of metrics where the outcome for a minority group falls below a national average then racism becomes the explanation. Even a slightly more holistic mindset would recognise that social class is a significant cross-cutting factor. More unthinkable for the Discourse is to recognise the volume of evidence that whether or not a child grows up in a stable two-parent family does powerfully affects their future outcomes, and that this correlates to advantage or disadvantage for the wide variety of parenting patterns amongst ethnic groups.

Exploring the Holistic Focus.

* ‘With improvisation, we let go of any pretence at full control or substantial foreknowledge, but retain plentiful scope for wise influence, and prudent anticipation’ (p 153).

Improvisation (derived from the Latin ‘unforseen’) is a major theme of Kimber’s book, drawing much from the work of the theologian/musician Jeremy Begbie. It is a particularly important emphasis for leaders in a multi-ethnic society, given that ‘you have not passed this way before’ (Joshua 3:4). Those of us with strong left brain inclinations (I have to own up, I valued reading some of the SLD books) might like to have a book with a clear outline plan of how to lead multi-ethnic congregations, but it won’t happen. If I ever did write a book on multi-ethnic churches it would have to begin with an epigraph from Ian McGilchrist: ‘a book . . . is a selective, organized, re-presented, static, revisitable, boundaried, ‘frozen’ extract of life. It has taken something infinitely complex, endlessly interrelated, fluent, evolving, uncertain, never to be repeated, embodied and fleeting (because alive) and produced something very different that we can use to understand it’ (‘The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World’, p 196).

Improvisation is a response to the reality of life (especially inter-cultural life) that McGilchrist describes. In our case it involves the interplay between a church and its leaders and the parishes or society they operate in. I like the picture of a minister’s role that David Anderson gives in ‘Multicultural Ministry’: that of a DJ who pumps up or mellows the music according to what best suits the dance floor at the time. As Kimber (via Begbie) recognises this requires understanding and trust in the other, a confidence to explore and create. An important element in leadership is the ability to create an assurance that the church is able to respond to, relate with and indeed love the complex environment in which it is situated.

Rather than prescriptive programmes, ‘Good improvisation is immensely helped by the sensitivity and skill with which we are able to read our context’ (p 164). Improvisers, Begbie observes, whilst not tied to prescriptions, do work at developing a ‘repetoire of options’ (p 166). Such skill enables intuitive responses to ministry in very varied multi-ethnic parishes. So, whilst ‘to do lists are a no-no’, learning from other practitioners is an important support for improvising. The Anglican Network for Intercultural Churches has provided an important forum in this respect, and it is to be hoped that it will continue to do so. There is a need for case studies, and I intend to present some on this blog. The recent report of the Archbishops’ Commission contained three studies, but none of them of ‘typical’ parishes.

Despite the reports and commissions the one aching gap in the Church’s provision for ministry in a multi-ethnic society still remains – training its clergy to minister cross-culturally. Certainly this is elusive. There needs to be a central core of left-brain information and understanding, but equally there need to be ways – through interaction with students and ideally staff of other backgrounds, placements, use of music, novels and films, which give potential clergy the capacity to improvise appropriate responses to the varied contexts they will minister in.

* ‘It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note - it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong’ (Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, quoted on p 137).

Church leaders in multi-ethnic societies will play many wrong notes – racist or too guilt-ridden, over or under compensating for ethnic differences, making jokes that land badly; but it’s the next note that matters. Will it show that desire for communion, that interest in the person, that love, that makes the wrong note just part of our human fallibility. A strong emphasis in writers on Cultural Intelligence such as David Livermore is the readiness to learn from our mistakes. A danger of our heightened concern about race and racism is that it makes any word or action that smacks of racism being an unforgivable sin. The result can be a stultifying inhibition in people engaging closely with inter-racial situations - the very enemy of improvisation.

* ‘Once the Clear-cut [left brain] has committed to an understanding, its default is to resist any apparent anomalies, and to try and explain them away. . . [Left Brain] ‘stickiness’ makes it reluctant even to consider an alternative understanding’ (p 124).

The wide scan of the Holistic right brain enables it see factors that discourses suppress or ignore. I sometimes read or hear of racist behaviour or attitudes which the PRD rightly insists we should take seriously and see as an indication of Britain’s inherent racism. But stepping back also indicates the anomalies that qualify this reading: the educational successes and career achievements of minorities, and the growth of social interaction and intermarriage. On Britain’s racial landscape anomalies abound.

* ‘For McGilchrist, tension is not only positive, but necessary’ (p 145)

Kimber uses the illuminating physiological term ‘opponent processors’, and that navigating tensions is important in life and ministry, thus also in a multi-ethnic society. We can only be one colour, one ethnicity, have one set of unique personal experiences. It is ethically right that the experiences of the oppressed, muted and suffering are given particular attention. But not to the extent that the tension between opposing takes is lost. PRD’s tendency to count disagreement, such as the sort of criticisms I have raised above, as racism may at times be correct, but we will only get closer to an understanding by the open expression of disagreement and discussion. Are some of my views ‘anti-black’? I need to be aware of the possibility but also not inhibited into silence.

* Fullness of Vision is ‘realistic about the degree of knowledge or certainty we can have about the future, and is comfortable holding open multiple possible futures. (p 160).

Urgency is a common feature of Clear-cut approaches, warning of impending doom if not obeyed. Professor Doug Stokes has warned of the ‘perma-crisis of catastrophisation’ that is a staple of claims for greater DEI activity and PRD generally. We aren’t in control. We have to wait and see what presents itself to us. But the reality is that we are in a situation which is novel (though decreasingly so) and complex, so that assured outcomes can no be determined. The future is open and will be affected both by what we do, but also by future events that we can not predict, even as at this moment we live in unusually disturbed times.

This does not mean that the issues that Progressive Race Discourse has raised are non-existent, that the issue of racism has been solved and that we can all go home. I know too many ethnic minority clergy who are finding their experience in the Church of England painful for me to think problems have gone away. But the discussion of the respective contributions of left brain and right brain ways of thinking underlines that the left brain emphasis lying behind the proposals and claims of Progressive Race Discourse are unhelpful. Instead we should be imaginatively nurturing an Holistic approach which empathises with people’s experience of microaggressions or racism, which allows for the wide diversity of responses and outcomes for ethnic minorities, which gladly receives the gifts that diverse ethnicities bring, that seeks for relationships across cultural differences, that accepts and forgives, and above all loves both the stranger and the familiar neighbour, and lays the situation before a loving and creative God.