PASSIONS ran high in Tuesday morning’s General Synod debate on the final report and recommendations from the Archbishops’ Commission on Racial Justice, which has completed the work it was mandated to do in 2020, following the Windrush debate.
Its chair, Lord Boateng, suspected that there were Synod members who would breathe a sigh of relief at that, “because for them it couldn’t come a moment too soon. They didn’t want it in the first place and there has been some recrimination, resistance, anger, and occasional complaint.”
But the Commission had also found engagement, co-operation, real action, and change along the way, he said, “for which much thanks. . . Ethnicity is not a marginal concern. It isn’t a genuflection to worldly political correctness. It is, rather, to reaffirm the whole basis of our relationship with God the Father.”
The Church now needed to create space in which to build on what all the research and numerous reports had demonstrated, he said. “Too often the Church of England takes refuge and even pride in its conversations, even though those conversations don’t always involve listening, particularly to the affected or afflicted.
“There have been occasions during the lifetime of this Commission in your highest councils when people of colour have been invited to input into a meeting and having served this purpose, have then literally been sent out of the room where discussions and decisions directly affecting them take place.”
Geoff Crawford/Church TimesMichelle Obende (Chelmsford)
Structural anomalies that would be intolerable in any other institution had been compounded by “a culture that is unwilling to share information and guards it with a fierce protectiveness that defies any explanation other than blatant self-interest. . . Synod, this is a matter for you to address in your legislative role. Because if you don’t, it will be forced upon you by external forces and statutory agencies. The choice is yours.”
The Bishop of Dover, the Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, spoke from a lifetime of experience. “Our lack of knowledge about our competing histories, our inability to recognise one another as made in the image of God and therefore part of the whole human race, mean that we fail to see the unifying bonds that can hold us together,” she said. “All we’re left with are the cries of those who are still trying to separate us from one another, often for political gains.”
She continued: “Racial justice cannot be seen as responding to sheer political pressure. It has to be integrated into the life and fabric of the Church and the nation. It has to be woven into its governance seamlessly and it must be appropriately resourced. Otherwise, it will go nowhere, and some 10 or 20 years down the line we will simply see history repeating itself.
“And then we’re wringing our hands and saying we’re sorry. Let’s not be sorry. Let’s just get on with what we need to do.”
Michelle Obende (Chelmsford) urged the Synod to recognise that racism did not exist in isolation within the Church: its struggles overlapped with others around age, disability, and gender. “One journey should not trump another. The journeys are entwined,” she said. “I have been ‘othered’. I’ve been dismissed by some and belittled by others, all the way up to here in Synod. I sadly can say I do know what it feels like to be the change you want to see.”
The Revd Andrew Mumby (Southwark) described slavery as “a genocidal holocaust”. He was fiercely opposed to money from the Queen Anne’s Bounty “supporting our thriving parish, without reparatory justice”, referring to “the blood money of my enslaved great-great-grandparents in Jamaica”. He invited Synod members to stand up, hand on heart, to support the call for reparatory justice, which many then did.
Peter Adams (St Albans) wanted to see racism called out whenever it was seen. Coming from Luton, where 70 per cent of the people were “non-British ethnic”, he told the Synod: “What we saw in Southport in the summer was pure racism. As Christians, you can have no truck with it. There is also no place for us to toy with white supremacy rhetoric. This is not about me being ‘woke’ but me responding to continuing pain.”
Prebendary Amatu Christian-Iwuagwu (London) described the Church’s history of complicity in the slave trade as dehumanising. “As someone who grew up in Africa and is now serving as clergy in the Church of England, the wounds of the past continue to shape lives today. We cannot afford to let the momentum slide.”
Although the theological colleges were strongly criticised in the report, and castigated again by Lord Boateng as “monocultural”, the Principal of the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, the Rt Revd Anne Hollinghurst (Southern Suffragans), spoke powerfully of the Foundation’s long history of encouraging diversity and of the ongoing work amongst her counterparts in other institutions.
“I have real hope for the future, especially when you look at the new and younger leaders coming through who will shape and reshape the theology and faith of our churches present and future,” she said.
Synod voted overwhelmingly for the motion — 311 in favour, one against, with six abstentions — which affirms the need for further efforts towards racial justice and commits the Church to resourcing a new governance framework, including a Racial Justice Unit and the appointment of a Lead Bishop on the issue.