Category: Racism

We Can’t Go Back…But We Can Stop Hurting People!

by the Revd Peterson Feital, Founder of The Haven+and Missioner to the Creative Industries for the Diocese of London

I’ve been reflecting recently how movements inspired by the Reformations, The Moravians, and John Wesley have all shaped the history of the ‘Western’ church. Men, women, young, and old, followed the vision for a Church that embodied love, care and community living.

Of course, there were also negative things in these movements, as colonization also happened with devastating effects. However, many missionaries did get things right, keeping the love for God and their neighbour at the heart of everything they did and taught. These people prayed with expectation, fervour and faith, together. They moved the archaic establishments to become kingdom enterprises that impacted the social and the political spheres of society and changed the mission of the ‘Western’ church forever. Missionaries, pastors and evangelists went everywhere, in many capacities: teachers, doctors, and builders etc, to teach the world about the redemptive power of Jesus’ love.

I’m a Brazilian – well I’m actually part native as two of my great-grandfathers were European settlers. Missionaries influenced my life in every way possible. They brought a passion for the Gospel; they brought the visual and performing arts in their delivery of the Gospel; they brought liberation from having to conform to an oppressive political mind-set. They showed me Jesus and taught me spiritual disciplines: how to pray, and how to serve and show love to all, unconditionally. Still, there was sadness about them when they shared that the Western Church was ageing, tired, bungled up in intuitionalism, and that individualism was curtailing their ability to be emotionally and spiritually close. These missionaries invited their spiritual ‘children’ to come to the UK to help the Western churches, and to remind them of their roots. Many, like me, responded to that call.

I came to the UK nearly twenty years ago, looking forward to meeting the British, and my spiritual parents. I had spent my life reading about Spurgeon, Susanna Wesley, John Wesley, to name but a few, and I was hungry to learn more about mission, prayer and discipleship. I was thirsty to drink from the water of wisdom, but what I experienced when I finally reached the UK was that the teachings of these elders seemed to be nearly completely forgotten. It broke my heart, into pieces.

Last Easter, when Archbishop Justin Welby said that after Covid-19 ‘we can’t go back to where we were before’ my heart filled with hope for a renewed future. I realised, however, that we cannot move forward without remembering our Grandparents of Faith. We need to return to the roots of the apostolic mission that Jesus gave his disciples, and which the Reformers adopted, to move forward. I also realised that what is paralysing the church is a lack of courage to be free of power and control. As Paul Tillich puts it, ‘courage can show us what being is, and being can show us what courage is’.[1] Fear produces a culture of uncertainty and confusion, making institution into a disorientating space. God does not want us to be trapped and confined. His Will in Psalm 18:19 is to bring us into ‘a spacious place’, a place of freedom.

You may be asking yourselves what you may have forgotten from our Parents of Faith. I know this is painful for me to say this, but I have tried your ways here in the UK, and it has hurt and damaged me, and some of my brothers and sisters too. So, from my heart to yours what I have learnt here, may give you glimpse as to what has been lost: I have learned cynicism. I have learned that prayer is without the expectation that God can show-up. I have learned to love at arm’s length.

I have learned that growth is numerical, not a growth of character that matches Jesus. I have learned that loving and including individuals, from LGBT to the disabled, the poor, the homeless, the addict, and artists, creatives and mental health individuals are merely peripheral exercises, and not ministries at the heart of who we are and the ministries we do.

I have learned that we spend more time trying to protect Jesus with policies, which are more about control, than facilitation of His redeeming power and truth. Well, I do not believe that Jesus needs protection, and this is what he illustrates when Peter and the other apostles try to stop the heavily bleeding woman from being noticed and recognised (mentioned in three Gospels: Mark, Matthew and Luke).

I want to tell you, for the sake of my grandparents, that whether you do or do not, I will not go back to the way it was before Covid-19. So, I will not let cynicism replace hope any longer. I will pray with faith for Jesus to turn up, and I will love people at close range.

Numerical growth will not be more important than discipleship. And – I will hang out with the broken, the disgraced, and the destitute – even if that bothers and makes the institutional church question me, and the ministry God has given me to do.

I can see, now, that there is an intrinsic difference between suffering for an institution and suffering for the Gospel.

Please note the original title was “We Can’t Go Back…But We Can Honour Our Grandparents of the Faith”

[1] Tillich P, The Courage To Be, Yale University Press, 1952. P.4

June 12, 2020
We Can’t Go Back…to Breathlessness

by the Rt Revd Philip North, Bishop of Burnley

‘I can’t breathe.’

Following the lynch-mob style killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police, his dying words have become the cry of dispossessed and impoverished BAME communities first in the States and then across the globe. Long decades in which they have suffered on a daily basis from structural racism, inequality of opportunity and the denial of their personhood has exploded into a mighty welling up of anger which has left the Trump administration floundering and governments around the world struggling to keep up.

‘I can’t breathe.’

That is also the cry of COVID patients, a condition which fills the lungs with fluid such that the breath is forced out of a person. At first we were told this pandemic would be a crisis for everyone. Already it is revealing itself to be a crisis for the poor. Those from urban areas and BAME communities are dying in hugely disproportionate numbers. And as the massive economic impact of lockdown reveals itself, it will inevitably be the poor who pay an unfair share of the cost, for the impact of crisis is always delegated to those who are already deprived.

‘I can’t breathe.’

Unspoken, spoken then hashtagged, this is becoming the cry of all who feel constricted and suffocated by poverty or injustice.

‘I can’t breathe.’

Those are not recorded amongst the last words spoken by Jesus from the cross, but they might have been, for crucifixion, like COVID, works by forcing the air out of a person’s lungs. Every breath becomes such unspeakable agony that eventually the body has to give up trying. On the cross, Jesus identifies himself with all who cry out, ‘I can’t breathe.’

Yet his breathlessness has purpose, ‘It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you,’ Jesus says at the table of the Last Supper (John 16, 7). By undergoing breathlessness, Jesus unleashes for us the irresistible, life-giving breath of the Spirit who renews all creation.

The Spirit’s breath, released at Pentecost, is the gift that Jesus gives to his Church. So in a post-COVID world Christians must be utterly single-minded in breathing that breath over a world that cries out, ‘I can’t breathe.’ Nothing else will matter.

First, over the breathless, we must breathe out the Spirit’s breath of life. During crisis, through generous service and imaginative use of the online environment, we have made contact with a new fringe. What we need now is a new evangelism in which we live and speak the Gospel with joy, an evangelism motivated not by institutional survival but by the passionate desire that people might breathe.

And this new evangelism must begin amongst the poor, because that is the place from where renewal always springs. Dioceses are going to have difficult decisions to make about deployment and pastoral organisation in the years ahead, but such decisions must honour our commitment to inner city, outer estate and post-industrial communities. If now becomes the time when we disproportionately withdraw people or buildings from places of poverty, then God is dishonoured and the Gospel is fatally undermined.

The lesson of history is clear and consistent. An evangelism that prioritises the powerful does not work and cannot last. Instead we need to hear the voice of the breathless. We need to speak good news to the poor. Our best leaders, our richest resources, our finest theologians, our most engaging preachers must be offered to the places where life is hardest. Only then we will re-engage a nation with the person of Jesus.

Next, over the breathless, we must breathe out the Spirit’s breath of justice. The COVID pandemic has laid bare the harsh levels of social and economic inequality which so damage our common life, which deny opportunity, which take away hope and which lead to countless costly social ills from poor health to spiralling prison populations.

The action of local churches in addressing inequality through acts of charity has been heroic in this pandemic. But charity can be a fool without justice. Foodbanks, for example, merely prop up innately unjust structures unless we campaign to change those factors which have rendered them necessary: low pay, unfair benefits, family breakdown. As UK churches, our voice in naming injustice and calling for political and economic reform has for too long been inconsistent and disjointed. We need a united Christian voice: perhaps a new ecumenical body, which can campaign consistently and vigorously.

But if we are to address injustice nationally we must name it within our own structures. The vast wealth disparities between dioceses cannot be acceptable in the future as some dioceses go to the wall whilst others fall back on eye-watering levels of historic wealth. Harder still will be naming and addressing the deep-seated racism that still exists within our own common life and which prevents so many BAME Christians from breathing. We have no authority to name injustice nationally if we are so wantonly failing to put our own house in order.

And third, over the breathless, we must breathe out the Spirit’s breath of peace. The fallout of this crisis is likely to be deep and sustained economic depression with concomitant pressures on relationships at every level. The church, filled with the Spirit, is called to model the new humanity. We are challenged to live differently under the bonds of love, valuing every human person as a child of God. That is the peace that the Spirit breathes.

If we are to do that effectively, we urgently need to do better at living with difference. We must find ways to conduct debates such that they do not destroy relationships and leave us too exhausted to engage with the world. A nation that is crying out for breath cannot afford the luxury of a divided and quarrelsome church, obsessed only with its own internal wrangles. Those who look to us seeking the breath life should find a community of peace. Without that all our words and prayers will be hollow hypocrisy.

‘I can’t breathe.’

It is the ultimate cry of despair. As those filled with the Spirit’s breath, if we can hear and respond, then perhaps this terrible crisis can be the dawn of a new age of faith.

June 7, 2020
General Synod: The Highs & Lows

by the Rt Revd David Walker, Bishop of Manchester

The General Synod of the Church of England, which I’ve been attending most of this last week, is a body that attracts its fair share of criticism. Its internal debates can seem far away from the reality of normal church life, let alone the lives we live in our neighbourhoods and communities. And when it turns its hand to commenting on matters of public concern, the queue of members lining up to repeat exactly the same points that several previous speakers have made, but simply with their own personal anecdotes, soon becomes woefully tedious. However, it can also be a place where decisions are made that provide both a moral underpinning and a structured framework for the mission and ministry to which we believe God has called us.

In those respects, this Synod was like most synods.

The draft Cathedrals Measure may not sound the most exciting piece of business ever thought of, and the details of what we agreed at its Revision Stage need not detain us, rather it was an example of what a good legislative process looks like. A complex and interconnected series of recommendations, given a fair wind by Synod last year, had been subject to thorough scrutiny, involving all the major stakeholder groups, and only then brought back for us to revise. The care with which the work had been done outside the chamber, and not only in the formal meetings of the Revision Committee, made our task far more straightforward. Voices had clearly been heard, and there had been none of the preciousness that can lead to a proposed change being rejected simply because it stands at variance with the original proposals. Cathedrals are a vital part of our life, showcasing what the Church of England can do, and working closely with the cities in which they stand. A good legal framework will help then to flourish and serve us in the years ahead.

We also had a good and important debate about Safeguarding. Not only were we able to show the progress being made against the five specific recommendations put to us so far by IICSA, we also got to see the incoming lead bishop in action, presenting an overwhelmingly supported amendment that commits us to a deeper engagement with survivors, and to backing up our words with action. As with cathedrals, the key to doing well will be working together, with all parties fully involved both within and beyond formal meetings. I look forward to taking part in something that won’t be without pain and struggle but which can get us all to a better place. We will do the work before deciding the results.

And then the careful work, led and presented by the former Bishop of London, into where exactly the Channel Islands fitinto our structures, showed equal diligence in spending time and effort, over several years, in bringing all the interested parties to a common and agreed mind. What could have been a messy piece of legislation, with all its stages required over four consecutive days, passed smoothly on its way.

My hopes for the Living in Love and Faith process, for which we received a short update on progress and a slightly oddly structured Q&A session, lie chiefly in that unlike previous expeditions into the territory of relationships, identity and sexuality, there has been a deep involvement, both formally and informally, with the rich diversity of scholarship, science and human experience contained within our Church. However, the nature of the exercise has meant that whilst consultation has ranged very widely, draft texts have not been circulated for comment beyond the group itself and the bishops. That inevitably means that there are levels of both fear and suspicion among Synod members, lest the published document be judged slanted in either a conservative or liberal direction. Hence, I believe that the big challenge, for both the team writing the LLF document and those of us in the House of Bishops who will see the next draft in March, is to affirm our diversity in words that will allow all us in the Church to see that we are being offered space to live and flourish, alongside those with whom we disagree deeply, in one body. The book won’t mandate a particular change programme, but it must resource and support us in forming the change proposals we will need, within a fixed time frame. And that process will need to be open and transparent.

The less satisfactory aspects of Synod were where we departed from that methodology of doing careful and inclusive work beforehand, seeking to find and build the best consensus, before then presenting matters to Synod.

I’d hoped theEnvironment debatewould be a highlight, and in some ways it was. We heard passionate pleas for the Church to work to eliminate its carbon footprint. My one speech in the chamber this time was to support an amendment from the chair of the Finance Committee to set up the structures we will need to produce robust intermediate targets, identify specific solutions and oversee the work well. The crucial issue of selecting the year by which all this will be achieved was moved from a perhaps under-ambitious 2045 to a date of 2030. Whatever ones views on the urgency of the climate crisis, it felt unsatisfactory that this was achieved through an amendment which was decided after less than ten minutes debate, by a majority of 15, with a turnout that meant fewer than a third of Synod members voted in favour of it. Many, I suspect, were caught in the tea room, not having expected a close vote. 2030 maybe the right year, but the process felt flawed. Something that is too often the case with matters we decide at a single sitting.

Finally, to Question Time. At its best this is a highlight of Synod, and the move to having initial answers written has given space for more questions to be asked and more supplementaries to be put. It should be where chairs of committees and councils, who are often senior bishops, are held to account for the work the bodies they lead are doing. Sadly (indeed, I’d go further and say shamefully) it seems of late to be evolving into more of a blood sport. The aim of some questioners is at best to score partisan points and at worst to inflict maximum damage on the person put up to answer. We need accountability from our leaders, but we need to hold ourselves accountable for the way in which we exercise that accountability. Unless the minority who are presently abusing Question Time can curb their behaviour, it must be in doubt as to whether it can survive in its current form. That will be a pity, but better to have a pity than to let it degenerate into an unedifying and embarrassing circus.

I fear I’ve laboured the theme, but it matters.

What makes for a good Synod item is not simply the force of the arguments, the passion in the room, or the eloquence of the speakers on the day. It’s that whatever is brought to us has been properly discussed, and even better co-designed and co-produced, with all those who hold a significant stake in its outcome, so that everyone can fully own and exercise their part in the process.

February 14, 2020
Wellbeing, Leadership and ‘The Other’

by the Revd Canon Simon Butler, Prolocutor for the Province of Canterbury

How well are the clergy you know? If they weren’t at their best, would they feel able to tell you?

During the past two years, I’ve been involved in the Working Group which produced The Covenant for Clergy Care and Wellbeing. We’ve been at pains to point out that addressing clergy wellbeing is not a case of special pleading, but that when clergy are well congregations tend to be healthier.

In the past week this work has been added to by the publication of the latest longitudinal survey in the Living Ministry Project of the Church of England, and the focus of this research has been on Ministerial Effectiveness and Wellbeing. The survey shows pretty high levels of wellbeing among clergy, although there is a dip when clergy move from curacy into incumbency. The Project Report bears careful study, although there should be one word of warning: it is heavily weighted to younger clergy and the period when clergy experience their lowest sense of being well is in their early fifties (something I appreciate in myself). Things may not be quite as rosy as they appear to be…

At the same time as reading this report I’ve also been watching a brilliant documentary series – referenced just last week in Via Media by Peterson Feital – called Why We Hate. It should be compulsory viewing: it shows how physiologically, psychologically and sociologically we learn to hate. We are not born to hate, we are taught to hate, and we can be taught not to hate too. I was particularly struck by a famous psychological experiment called the Stanford Prison Experimentof 1973. In it, a group of volunteer students were divided into prisoners and guards and, over the period of days which the experiment ran, the guards slowly treated the prisoners in increasingly dehumanising ways and with increasing cruelty. The BBC attempted to repeat the experiment about 18 years ago, but curiously the guards proved very reluctant to act with cruelty. The researchers tried to explain this difference, and recent archival discovery of some of the supervision tapes of the original experiment show that, in fact, the maltreatment only began when one of the psychologists involved began to encourage and lead the ‘guard’ students into treating the ‘prisoner’ students more harshly and with less care. From that moment the experiment deteriorated into abusive and dehumanising chaos, which only stopped when the girlfriend of the lead researcher arrived and brought everyone – including the psychologists themselves – out of their nightmarish attraction to what was happening in front of their eyes.

The experiment has become famous as an example of how leadership is crucial to the encouragement or discouragement of good treatment. Whatever your politics, and whatever the outcome of the election, the subtle or not-so-subtle scapegoating of groups by those in leadership in the country – Jews, Muslims, refugees – without doubt leads to the gradual dehumanising of attitudes towards ‘the other’.

We’re not immune from this in the Church of course. Many of us have been the victim of it at some stage in our lives. Women, LGBTI people, minority ethnic members all report such treatment, subtle or sometimes extreme. I would also caution about the scapegoating of Conservative Evangelicals too, who are among progressive Christians often singled out in an unhealthy way. The evidence shows that compassionate engagement works far better than scapegoating. Megan Phelps-Roper of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church has spoken movingly about how attitudes change when we engage with compassion.

To do such demanding work, and to bear with patience, requires a degree of personal security and wellbeing. Our ordained (and lay) leaders have a responsibility to avoid the temptation to allow such objectifying and scapegoating to be normalised. Encouraging healthy living in our physical and mental selves, practising good habits of work, rest and recreation, being aware of the shadow side of our nature – all the things that make us well and contribute to our wellbeing – these are indispensable factors in ensuring that our inner struggles are not projected out onto others, even if, maybe especially if, we disagree profoundly with them. Improved wellbeing leads to better attitudes to those who are different.

To those who are clergy, looking after yourself is an inclusive and necessary virtue; to those who are senior clergy (without scapegoating you!), we need to see you looking after yourselves too. We don’t always see you doing that well. How do the people you serve see you doing this?

Being well and leading well are two sides of the same coin. Ask your clergy friends how they are doing after Christmas – it might be even better a Christmas gift than the bottle of something nice that you usually give.

December 12, 2019
Does the Church have a Problem with Institutional Racism?

by the Revd Peterson Feital, Founder of The Haven+ and Missioner to the Creative Industries for the Diocese of London (aka the ‘Showbiz Rev’)

I was thrilled when Prince Harry announced his engagement to Meghan Markle. However, I was not prepared for the undercurrent of racism in British society that would soon become a tsunami, nor the torrent of racial abuse that Meghan was about to endure.

These tsunamis – created by the media – more often than not severely damage a person’s reputation and when it comes to race, Meghan is sadly an obvious target. Whats more, the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Brexit does not help any immigrant to feel safe – even if you are a royal. Indeed, many of us from different ethnic and religious backgrounds are now feeling a tangible and palpable fear.

Whilst this sense of not belonging in the UK is not new, especially for BAME individuals, it now seems that the issue of racism can no longer be avoided. However, what is terrifying is that the media is re-enforcing behaviour and language that is unfortunately prevalent in society at large. It is normalising racist bullying against individuals and communities throughout the UK and is affecting our view of “the other”.

Since the 1970’s, sociologists, media psychologists and other researchers have been looking at ways of measuring the impact of the media opinion on public attitudes, especially with regards to race. One of the most influential research studies in this field was conducted by The European Research Centre on Migration, and is entitled “Ethnic Relations, ‘Racism and Cultural Diversity in the Mass Media”. The research investigated how narratives regarding race were presented, and then measured the rise in levels of racism instigated afterwards in the public and in large institutions. In Britain, it looked particularly at how institutions deal mostly negatively with race and fail in securing inclusion.

Last October Steven Spielberg released a documentary, “Why We Hate” in which he explores with scientists, sociologists and historians how the media creates destructive narratives that feed on people’s fear of ‘the other’, leading to devastating consequences. It raised for me the question: “who holds the media accountable?” and led me to conclude that institutional and public racism has not been challenged nearly enough.

Unfortunately, not all of us have the letter of solidarity that Meghan had from seventy-two female MP’s supporting her in her suing of British tabloids for their misleading news and colonial undertone. This support for her is reassuring for us, but most of us are just anonymous faces in the crowd and so more needs to be done – we need to start calling out on racism ourselves, in our own communities and workplaces.

The truth is that we foreigners are easily treated as a commodity.

It feels as though we are a visible ‘good thing’ when institutions choose to display our faces for the purpose of displaying ‘diversity’. But, this is the issue: “diversity” only means “one can have a seat at the table”, whereas “belonging,” means “one who has a voice that is listened to and respected”. Belonging means being allowed to be who we are individually and being respected with our differences.

I have come to realise that people think that diversity and inclusion are the same. I saw this drawing on social media, illustrating what diversity (here marked ‘integration’) and inclusion look like. I think, at best, most people believe that integration is the same as inclusion, which it clearly is not:

This narrative that “Britain will be overrun by migrants” who are “ready to steal jobs, drain the system, and stretch the waiting time for doctor’s appointments” needs to challenged. The truth looks very different. A simple search on the Global Citizen website gives some facts on immigration and migrants. We each have different stories, journey and scars. It isn’t true to say that every foreigner is draining UK’s resources. It would seem that individuals, organisations and institutions need to learn how to listen without bias.

I for example, failed to listen to the Bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson–Wilkin, to whom I owe an apology. In 2016, Rose went on record in an interview for the BBC reporting institutional racism in the Church of England; I refuted that on twitter saying that I did not agree. I am ashamed of myself for doing this. I now realise I was in denial because I had never experienced racism until I moved to Britain. It took me time to realise that what I was experiencing was in fact institutional racism.

I did not want to believe that the country that gave William Wilberforce to the world, whose faith was the catalyst to set many slaves free, had forgotten his legacy.

So, what are the media and the Church institutions doing about such instances of racism? For the Church of England’s part, when I spoke to senior leaders and managers I was told to just “keep my head down”, and reminded that I did not want to get on the “wrong side of those who would ultimately write a report that would impact my future”.

I appreciate that to report racism when you are talking about it in the form of a one-to-one scenario with your boss is hard to quantify. But what is not right is that after disclosing this information through the appropriate channels, no one seemed to care. In common with other victims of abuse I was led to believe that it was my fault, and that it was a personality issue, which to this day I believe was unfair and biased. The structure and safeguarding for people like me need to change because by not having someone to report to and to dialogue with just caused me even more pain.

In a pastoral and theological sense, the Bible is very clear what the treatment of the “foreigner” is to be like. I could not put this in better words than the Associate Professor Jarvis J. Williams, who asserts in an article written for Christian Today entitled “Jesus, Deliver Us from this Racist Evil Age” that:

‘We believe in a Savior who redeems, a Spirit who reconciles, and a gospel that is the antithesis of white supremacy.”

The article articulates that in Christ, every human has value, everyone is called to belong, and racism must be fought against.

The power to fight racism lies in the Christian community being able to model and shape acceptance and inclusion. Christ’s example is clear; Jesus never placed institutions above people. He confronted and challenged religious structures that didn’t offer a place for people to belong, regardless of their race. Therefore, this must be our measurement.

We must be a Church that operates like a family who welcomes, blesses and supports its members; which does not accept racism; and who calls out those who perpetrate it, providing a safe place for all to belong.

December 9, 2019