‘The Priest from Pakistan’ by Amelia Jacob – a Review. # 112. 21/03/2023.
Out of Many, One People.
‘The Priest from Pakistan’ by Amelia Jacob – a Review
Welcome. I am delighted to publish this review of Amelia's book. Since Amelia is a friend of mine and was a colleague for twenty years, I am grateful to Rev Robin Thomson, of South Asian Concern for agreeing to review it.
Lessons for cross-cultural living? ‘The Priest from Pakistan - a journey of Grace’ by Amelia Jacob, Instant Apostle, 2023. https://instantapostle.com/books/the-priest-from-pakistan/
Migration is reshaping our world today. I in 30 people can be considered a migrant – from people huddled in small boats to transnational millionaires to international students to Russians escaping military service to settled third generation families…. People are on the move, all over the world.
Every migration story is different. Amelia Jacob’s story looks ordinary at first sight but is actually remarkable. Brought up in 50s and 60s Pakistan, she travelled to the UK to join the husband she had only met for a few days, settled into life as a housewife and then became the first Pakistani women to be ordained in the Church of England. Through it all her culture both changed and did not change, and she experienced God in the very ordinary details of life.
Amelia Jacob was brought up in a traditional family living in small towns in a very different Pakistan from today. Three generations lived together in a joint family with siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles all closely linked. Time was spent in cooking, cleaning, gardening, and caring for their buffalo. Her own mother died when she was six years old and her grandparents played an important role in her upbringing.
Faith was simple: children were ‘trained to join in with our family’s religious practices and rituals’. They knew they were ‘part of a Christian family living in a Muslim-majority country’. There was no difficulty – the communities lived together without friction at that time. Faith grew, ‘slowly but surely’, based on ‘God’s love shown to the world through Jesus’ and his death on the cross. Also through family prayer times and the experience of prayer for healing or for help with exams.
Her grandfather, Dada Chunilal, was her great role model. He had come from a high caste Hindu family and turned to Christ as a young man. His baptism cut him off from his family – a sad experience that both showed the cost of having come from that background and perhaps ways of handling that situation that could have been different. He felt called to train for ministry in the church, serving as a pastor for nearly 40 years. Her beloved Dada’s example of prayer and service was a great influence all through her life.
While Amelia was a student, aged 21, her father received a proposal of marriage for her, through her aunt. She was still studying: how should she respond? ‘I was speechless and waited for my father’s decision.’ The young man, Stanley, was in the UK. It was agreed that they could become engaged and write to each other. Nine months later he arrived back in Pakistan and they were married. After three weeks he returned to the UK and she waited another fifteen months before she could get permission to join him there, two days before her 23rd birthday. ‘I was leaving home for the first time to go thousands of miles away to meet a man I hardly knew, but still I was looking forward to experiencing this new life that God was laying before me.’
Amelia’s acceptance of her situation was a combination of the fact that this was not unusual for a young woman in that culture at that time, and her simple trust that God was guiding her and would care for her. Arriving in 70s Britain, she was warned that she would face racism (it was a few years after Enoch Powell’s speeches) but seems to have settled without experiencing it, either at her work or in the church. She found great support from extended family members, from her willingness to ‘fit into this new society where I found myself’, and from her inner conviction that ‘I knew all people were equal in the sight of God.’
With this attitude she and Stanley made their new life together, working hard, developing his business, buying a house in Alperton, and having their first child. During this time their commitment to reading the Bible and attending church faded away, until they heard about a Pakistani fellowship meeting at St Mary’s Church, Islington. They became regular attenders, built up good friendships with other Pakistani Christians and enjoyed worshipping in Punjabi and Urdu (Amelia more than Stanley). Families came from all across London to share in fellowship and community.
This experience of an Asian church was immensely valuable for that first generation of immigrants. But later she reflected on its limitations for the next generation: they don’t need it in the same way and can fall away as a result. So she concluded that it was important for new arrivals to seek to be part of their local churches and encourage their children to be part of them too.
This does not mean there is no place for Asian churches and fellowships but they need to be seen in their wider context. Some effective models include: an Asian language group attached to a local church; a fellowship that provides English language opportunities for its young people; a genuinely multi-cultural Asian church that uses both English and Asian languages. Some Asian churches consciously use their more cultural gatherings, such as annual conventions, as a place for maintaining their culture and for young people to find life partners within that culture.
Despite the encouragement of the Asian church, Amelia found herself stuck spiritually and their marriage was in difficulty: the typical problems of being too busy and tired with work and caring for small children. At this time she went through a profound experience, realising her need for repentance and the reality of forgiveness through the death of Jesus for her sins. It was a ‘personal encounter with the living Christ and his forgiveness’.
This spiritual experience was clearly very important. How did it relate to the years of simple, ingrained family and cultural faith? That seems to have been more than nominal, but it needed this spark of a living, personal relationship – probably true for many others brought up like her.
Her experience led to a new commitment to reading the Bible, and a year or two later to offering to serve in the Asian church, whose vicar had just died. That led eventually to study at Oakhill Theological College and on to being ordained as a part time Non Stipendiary Minister. Two years later she joined the staff of St James Alperton, their local church that they had never attended in the fourteen years they had lived there. She served there for 28 years until retirement, during which she was also in the first group of women to be ordained priest at St Paul’s Cathedral.
St James had a mixture of white and black members but few Asians, although it was in a strongly Asian area. The vicar, John Root, was keen to develop a truly multicultural church and Amelia received great support from him and the curate. She ran the parent-toddler group for several years, as well as the church’s after school club. In 2001, after nine years, they started the Hindi/Urdu service, with support from Ajay More, an Indian church member. Later other language speakers joined, though not yet from the Gujarati speaking majority in the area. The service met a real need, though combining different Asian languages was a challenge; eventually they renamed it ‘Christ for All Nations Fellowship’.
Their daughter’s marriage was not arranged: she met a South African Asian and they wanted to get married. The wedding at St James was a joyful affair, combining Asian and western traditions. But Amelia felt the need to find a wife for her son and began the process, leading over the next two years to his marriage. Amelia and Stanley welcomed their son and new daughter-in-law to live with them as a joint family, soon of three generations. The circle was closed; during years of successfully ‘fitting into’ UK society they had also maintained the traditions of Pakistani culture.
This is not a book of strategies for multi-cultural ministry. But as the story of one person working things out and experiencing God in the ordinary details of life, it is full of wholesome and practical insight. Reflecting on the many challenges of life and then ministry in the UK, she says ‘I had no great assumptions about my future life in London, but I always had peace that God was with me and that He would guide me’. She shares a number of lessons for daily life: accepting what God gives in life, learning to forgive, not reacting to grudges, living in an on-going relationship with Jesus. These are spelled out in two summaries near the end (p 148-9 and 171-2). There is also particular advice for women seeking to minister in cross-cultural situations.
It all looks simple – maybe there are no special lessons for cross-cultural ministry? Or is that the place where we need these basics all the more, because so many familiar supports are missing?
Robin Thomson.
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Add Ons.
A teacher’s story: Katharine Birbalsingh interviewed by Elizabeth Oldfield 21/02/2023 – on the Theos website for March. The whole interview is well worth listening to/reading.
‘And so I became a teacher. I was very much a lefty teacher. I believed all the stuff around “the reason why black kids are underachieving is because of white racist teachers, because the system is racist.” All this kind of stuff. And then, I just started watching and looking and learning. And I’d see these white teachers working really, really hard for their kids. And I’d think, “I don’t think they’re being racist. I think some of the kids have been rude to them, and they’re trying to deal with it.” And I think some of the behaviour is really poor that I’m seeing, and not necessarily just from black kids, just from all kids. And I just started questioning all of the truths – so called ‘truth’ – that I had been told. I would go along to these events that were set up by Diane Abbott at the time, called “Raising Black Achievement” and it would be a Saturday conference. And various people would talk about raising Black achievement. I remember taking along a friend of mine, well, a colleague of mine – white guy who had been a PE teacher . . .I suppose it was 20 years, a long time. He was in his 50s. And there he was giving up his Saturday to go along and hear about raising black achievement, because I asked him to go. And he would sit there being told by all of these presenters that white teachers are racist, and that the reason why some of his black boys were failing was because of him. And I was so embarrassed. I was just mortified. Because I was thinking, “This guy, his kids, and countless kids from… You know, we worked in a boys school. It was in the inner city in South London, we were doing extraordinary things for the kids. And he in particular, because he was an excellent teacher. I mean, he was fantastic. And the kids loved him. I mean, loved him. And sometimes, I remember once we were in the car driving through Brixton, and the riots started happening. There were some riots that were happening, and there were a couple of his old kids who he once taught were there, and he had them jump in the car, because you want to get them away from this dangerous situation. Like, this is the kind of guy he was. And I was so embarrassed to have taken him there. And I just thought, “This is all so wrong.” We’re accusing all these white teachers, and it’s just not true. I mean, truth, remember what I said. You know, it’s not true. And so I started to change my mind about what works in education. And I started to realise that all the progressive nonsense that we’ve been told about Rousseau – as you mentioned earlier, all this ‘goodness inside’, they already think you just need to draw it out of the child, instead of putting it into the child – is just wrong. . .
And so, I started noticing this, I changed my teaching methods. And I started to change my mind about my politics. I started listening a little bit more to what the Labour Party had to say about education and what the Conservatives had to say about education. . .
And then slowly, over years, I came to realise that I just didn’t think like any of these lefties on there. That they would come on and make all these excuses for the kids, they would say, “It’s because they’re poor. Poor people can’t behave, so that’s why the kids are misbehaving. You’re expecting too much of them. I’m being too harsh.” The conservatives would come on and hold my values. And then I thought, “Well, I suppose I’m a conservative.”’
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‘Don’t allow multi-lingual, multi-cultural annoyances to separate the church’ is a helpful blog on the challenge of being a very diverse but united congregation, on the ‘Building Jerusalem’ website of Steve Kneale of Oldham Bethel Church. (Any blog with an article on ‘Why you don’t have to turn the tv off when the pastor visits’ is worth looking up).