ALL types of racism are learned, and it follows that they can be unlearned; a proposition that holds out the promise of the emergence of a society free from racism.
During this Racial Justice Week in Chichester diocese (and Race Equality Week nationally), it will be just to teach and educate that there is no need to hate another person because of their colour, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, caste, or creed. As Graham Greene puts it: “Hatred is a failure of imagination.” Christians must learn to imagine themselves in the place of fellow passengers on the journey of life.
Racism is a universal problem; it seems to exist everywhere — it is ubiquitous. One simple truth we all should recognise is that it is God who chooses the place and purpose of His calling. But, when the calling comes, we are overwhelmed with joy.
God called Abraham to leave his country, Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq), and go to an alien land — Canaan (modern day Palestine) — and he went in obedience to Him. Perhaps he found himself among the ethnic minority in his new home country. But then he might have found great solace in the fact that the God who called him was with him.
In the days after the resurrection, the disciples of Jesus went to different countries to preach the gospel. Probably, they, too, might have been among the ethnic minorities. The presence of God with them might have helped them to surmount the difficulties.
I GREW up in India. So, more personal to me was the calling of the British missionaries, since it was their dedicated work in India that brought my forebears to Christ and brought about social emancipation of those discriminated against on the basis of the accident of birth. To this day, the schools and hospitals that these missionaries established stand as testimony to their selfless service.
Missionaries from Britain went to many more countries, too. That these missionaries were among the minority race was no impediment for them to proclaim the love of Christ to people of all races. Race should fade into insignificance in the face of God’s calling.
I was ordained in the Church of South India. It is my unshakable conviction that God had called me for ministry in England. During a morning prayer, He made it unambiguously and abundantly clear to me that I was to minister in England. The interview and appointment were mere formalities, but they put the seal on God’s calling.
Within a few weeks of life in my new home in England, it began slowly to dawn on me that I was among the minority ethnic group here. Putting my thinking cap on, I was pondering why God had allowed us to have different coloured skins. Why are there many races? I still do not know why, but what I do know is that we are all the same beneath the skin. We are wonderfully and fearfully created in the image of God. A person’s race should not matter, because there is no one who has not been created in the image of God. We do not have to be of a particular skin colour for God to love us. It does not make sense to discriminate anyone on the basis of race, skin colour, or anything else.
I can recall vividly instances that have given me a taste of what racism is; its manifestation is dehumanising to both the racist and the victim.
While I served as an Associate Priest at St George’s, Edgbaston, in Birmingham, between 2005 and 2007, I used to take home communion to different people. Some of them were not sure about receiving communion from me. After seeing me on the doorstep, one person who had prepared himself for home communion changed his mind, and did not want to let me inside his home. I still do not know whether my colour brought the prejudice in him to the fore, or instilled fear in him for no valid reason.
As they say, time flies, and we ended up in Bridlington, in Yorkshire. It was here that a bereaved family did not want me to take the funeral of the deceased. I did feel sorry for them, because I knew that I loved them. I would have done an excellent service for them, with loving words of comfort, strength, and hope. I would have prayed that God would show his light to them in the midst of a dark and difficult time. Through the funeral director, however, they arranged for another priest to take the service.
There were two couples who wanted “other priests” to take their wedding. I was an assistant curate there, and this happened during an interregnum. I am pleased to say that the churchwardens held their ground that the couples either accept me as the officiating priest for their wedding services, or they could go somewhere else. Sad to say, they went elsewhere to get married.
There is no coming to consciousness without pain; then it makes you more courageous and more compassionate. Ministry, after all, is all about God and His love for us, and little about us. My experience of God has taught me that the gospel is universal, and it does not change in relation to our skin colour or features. How churches and communities treat minority-ethnic groups and vulnerable people matters, however.
In 2010, we moved to West Sussex. Initially, there were people in the wider parish community who could not believe that a coloured person could be their parish priest. I was at a pub with my clerical collar on. A gentleman thought that I had come there after a fancy-dress show. His bemused look said it all. He just could not accept that I was a real priest. There were instances when families were reluctant to accept me at religious ceremonies.
Needless to say, during difficult times God assured me of His presence. It is an indefinable and indescribable joy to know God’s presence with you. It uplifts your heart. In a way, if God is with you, nothing else matters.
PERHAPS it would be rewarding to think, this week, of ways in which racial justice can be upheld. There is a wrong yet widespread notion that you have to live where you are born. In other words, there is a conscious bias among some people — and a subconscious bias among some others — that black people should live in Africa or in the Caribbean, brown should live in Asia, and white people should live in the West.
But it is God’s plan and will in which part of the world one should live. At church, we sing the words of Isaiah, “I will go, Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.” Should not local communities and societies at large welcome people from all races? God calls us to go from everywhere to everywhere. The call might not be to the priesthood necessarily; it could be, to be a bus driver, a nurse, an engineer, or any other profession.
Jesus always had a preferential option for minority groups around him. The Bishop of Chichester, Dr Martin Warner, has reassured me more than once, saying: “You are a priest like any other.” I am immensely grateful for that. It is absolutely clear that Jesus shows us a model for standing with the vulnerable, the marginalised, and the voiceless.
Evidently, without God’s help, a priest cannot fulfil his or her calling. “With the help of God, I will” is the phrase to rely on. As a minority-ethnic priest in England, I derive great strength from this. People of different racial groups, by their very presence, remind everyone around them to think globally and act locally. They remind themselves and others that the world is wider, bigger, and more beautiful than we are sometimes inclined to think.
To be a broad-minded Christian takes courage, enthusiasm, confidence, and strength, which God alone can provide. Archbishop Tutu rightly (and famously) said that we (the global community) are a rainbow people. We need people of all hues, nations, and tribes to have a foretaste of heaven here on earth. The revelation of St John says that there will be people of all tribes and nations in heaven. People of all racial groups provide a glimpse of the diversity and glory of God’s creation in the world, and in heaven — the world yet to come.
THE simple point is this: racism is unreasonable because none of us choose our features or colour. What is the logic in discriminating against someone based on something which individual did not choose and cannot change?
During this Racial Justice Week, we can take to heart this truth: there is only one race: the human race. The latest genetic studies establish that we are all the same under the skin — and real beauty is much deeper than the skin or its complexion. God looks at the heart, and we must learn to do the same.
It is encouraging that the Archbishops’ Anti-Racism Taskforce, in its report From Lament to Action (News, 23 April 2021), says: “Repentance requires more than apology. . . Decades of inaction carry consequences, and this inaction must be owned by the whole Church. A failure to act now will be seen as another indication, potentially a last straw for many, that the Church is not serious about racial sin.”
In fact, to live a life like Jesus, we need to adhere to the true inwardness of His teaching. God’s love for His people overflowed from Jesus to others in word and deed. He exemplified how we should love God and love one another. He is the model for us to emulate when it comes to holding ethnic-minority groups to our hearts.
Being part of a minority racial group can be challenging, but the redeeming good news is that the love of Christ on the cross has the power to breach shallow differences (which an Indian Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, has described as “narrow domestic walls”) and save the entire world. The Christian way of life provides more than enough space for all of us to learn together, grow together, and flourish together in peace, hope, and love.
The Revd Dr Godfrey Kesari is the Interfaith Adviser for the diocese of Chichester, and the Vicar of the Holy Innocents’, Southwater, in West Sussex.
Monday is the first day of Race Equality Week, and, on Sunday, the Church marks Racial Justice Sunday. Dr Kesari has written reflections for Chichester diocese’s Racial Justice Week here.