FROM THE BOUNDARY: Buffalo soldier – Part 12
On 12 June, thousands of people defied social distancing to call for racial justice across the UK. One week later, BLMUK declared “We are an ABOLITIONIST movement. We do not believe in reforming the police, the state, or the prison…complex.” That went largely unnoticed.
Meanwhile, the Church of England wrung its hands, shed its garments and begged forgiveness for its past. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, invited Christians to be “angry” about racial injustice. “I acknowledge that I come from privilege and a place of power as a white person in this country,” he said. Do you Justin? I don’t think my Mom did. The Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev Paul Butler, confessed the time had come to own up and repent of white privilege. “I have never been able to eradicate entirely in my mind those thoughts and feelings of a gentle and quiet superiority.” OK – self-hatred has become the order of the day.
At St Alban’s Cathedral, a painting of Jesus as a black person at the Last Supper was rapidly completed as a response to BLM protests.
In the ‘Church Times’ the writer, Chine McDonald, of Nigerian origin, wrote: “The issue is why, today, the Church is steeped in white supremacy….the pervasive yet often subconscious idea that whiteness is better, or best, which finds its way unto every parish in the country through monochrome church leadership…the complicated intertwining of Christianity with Englishness…” So: the white man thinks of God as white, she says. Sorry, this one doesn’t. Oops, saying that am I asserting “white supremacy”? It’s difficult, isn’t it?
Authorities at Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral have stated they’ll review their monuments (which include the tomb of Queen Elizabeth 1) “to reflect the attitudes of our times”. Whose attitudes?
The ‘Letters’ pages of the ‘Church Times’ during protest-tide are rich in thought-food. A priest lady from Denmark wrote that a notice should be placed in every church reminding the faithful that, “If you have any racist attitude or tendency there is no room for it here”. She also enjoined comfort, in face of toppling statues, in remembering “we were slave owners”. A 75-year-old lay lady expressed her personal sense of guilt for slavery; and yet another reminded readers that when Wilberforce’s Bill for the abolition of slavery went through Parliament, every bishop voted against it. A male reader criticised Justin Welby’s invitation to be “angry about injustice” since it could be interpreted as a licence to violence given that 62 policemen had been injured in BLM protests in London. Another writer insisted we should distinguish between ‘BLM’ and the truth that black lives matter. The latter, he wrote, speaks “from within an inclusive tradition of valuing” all lives. The former, BLM, by contrast is an organisation with revolutionary aims, with its own unaccountable structures, leadership, funding and strategies which arise from Marxism. Christians were not to be treated as “useful idiots”.
In this climate, clergy have to be careful what they say. Consider the reported case of the vicar who, in a video sermon, had referred to Martin Luther King Jr kneeling to pray before a protest march and then suggested that since all lives matter ‘taking the knee’ must not be merely symbolic, but an act of trusting homage to Jesus as Saviour of us all. A black church warden protested and later resigned despite the vicar’s abject apology. What exactly was the vicar’s offence? Again, what of the newly ordained BAME man who was turned down for a curacy because the parish he applied for was white working class so that there was an insufficient “match”? The posting might make him feel “uncomfortable”. Well, it all caused quite a stir. Another abject apology followed. The applicant later wrote an article in the ‘Church Times’. The article ended thus: “Don’t you know that riots are the voice of the unheard? …We, the people, have faith in Jesus. We hope one day our pastors will believe in him, too.” H’mm.
Go safely, then – until the next time.
John Lewis, from the boundary: “Every generation leaves behind a legacy….What legacy do you want to leave behind?”