Racism and the Church
Where to start?
Let’s begin with a couple of links – First something redemptive – “how God transformed a neo-nazi”. Second a piece about Marvin Rees (Mayor of Bristol), which although not directly about racism, does touch on BLM and Edward Colston and is inspiring around social change and the kingdom.
LifeSpring
It is a joy to be part of a multi-ethnic congregation. LifeSpring very much represents the diversity that is the Oxford Road. Out of interest I did one Sunday morning some months ago do a rough ‘head count’ and we are 50-50 white/non-white. We have dozens of nationalities from Polish to Sri Lankan, Columbian to Australian, even Nepalese, but I would estimate a good 40% are of African descent and mainly still African by nationality. What does that mean? It means diversity, richness, variety and challenge. Challenge to involve everyone to their fullest. Challenge to try facilitate a breadth in style of worship and prayer in particular.
Genesis?
One man. One woman. Mankind. No races. No tribes. One shared DNA.
I have over the last 20 years found myself apparently by happen-chance present at what felt like quite significant events related to race or sectarianism. They were all very positive, reconciliatory encounters, Christ being the mediator in each situation, whether First Nation Americans in Carrickfergus N. Ireland, Africans in Berlin, the Irish in Buenos Aires!
The present day upheavals may indeed be the world catching up with what our Father has already been doing and undoing these past few decades.
Fallen world
We sadly live in a fallen world. What we experience and what people have experienced globally over hundreds of years is not what God intended.
As Christians, what Jesus modelled should be our touchstone, but so often it isn’t.
Generally speaking it is a truism that people succeed at the expense of others.
Even if I employ you, I do so not for your good but as a means of increasing my good.
The world has seen several empires rise and fall, in the Far East, Middle East and Europe. All those empires exploited people groups either through conquest or succession. Until just a couple of hundred years ago slaves and bond-servants were an accepted part of life almost everywhere.
I would argue that, despite implicit claims to the contrary, no nation can claim to have ever been “Christian”, although much of their society was based on essentially biblical ideas, major chunks of New Testament teaching were missing! Christendom was a strange and contradictory concept that demonstrated just what power and politics can do to a Faith. Nation states aren’t good at “turning the other cheek”.
Most of the current debate around slavery and racism stems from the expansion of European interests around the globe, notably Dutch, French and Spanish, but in particular British empires. What was needed was raw materials, markets for goods and cheap, preferably free labour. In Africa, as elsewhere, people groups had already habitually fought, captured and enslaved other African people groups. So it was a relatively easy step for Europeans to create a trade in African slaves. “Britannia” of course ruled the waves and was determined that Britons themselves never, never, never should be slaves!
The existence and horrors of slave ships, plantations, the trade triangle, white America and Europe growing rich at the expense of black men, women and children treated as mere animals, doesn’t need detailed re-stating here.
Slavery and Britain
A quick look at Wikipedia tells us that “According to historian John Gillingham, by about 1200 slavery in the British Isles was non-existent.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain Taking slaves had been common among Saxons and Vikings, Scots and Picts, as the result of conquest in battle or simple pillaging. There was of course still serfdom, which wasn’t a great deal better! But it is probably fair to say therefore that enslaving another white person was unthinkable, but what of someone very different?
It is a moot point as to whether those buying, transporting, selling and exploiting slaves considered themselves “Christians” since the teachings of the church and interpretations of scripture may well have led them to believe that they were, in a similar way to which huge numbers of people think of themselves as Christians today despite not having any personal relationship with God. I would suggest that it is highly unlikely that those perpetrating slavery actually sensed that they were doing anything wrong. It took radical conversion (John Newton) and people, prepared to be ostracised by the wealthy and powerful, like William Wilberforce, to start to challenge the status quo.
Racism and Darwin
Once we deviated from the Biblical understanding that there is only one race, the human race, we were headed for problems. As Christians we well understand the differentiation between Jew and Gentile, which Christ overruled, but still creates major problems. However perhaps the worst twist in thinking can be summarised in Darwinism. Once one believes that humans have evolved from apes and indeed came “out of Africa”, which is what I was taught in school, it is not exactly difficult to see how white people could be seen as more highly evolved, more intelligent, quite simply superior. Enter “survival of the fittest”, white supremacy, subjugation and eventually excuses for extermination.
I was privileged in 2005 to find myself in Berlin at a gathering organised to bring to light and pray into the effects of the Berlin conference 1885.
By the end of the 1885 Conference, which spanned almost four months of deliberations, from 15 November 1884 to 26 February 1885 the European powers had neatly divided Africa up amongst themselves, drawing the boundaries of Africa much as we know them today.
There were of course no Africans present at the original conference.
The 2005 two day gathering brought together representatives from most of the present day African nations as well as those from European nations.
America / U.K.
Recent events in America have ignited “fires” here as well and I fear that there has been a serious blurring in people’s minds of the differences between America and the U.K. We do not have the proliferation of guns whereby both police, gangs, organisations not to mention huge numbers of “ordinary” people. We do sadly see knife crime and occasional shootings in our cities, but not the nightly blood bath that some American cities which sadly we have come to see is mainly black on black shootings. Neither do we have a police force who enter areas of our cities armed to the teeth from fear that the next bullet might just have their name on it. The habitual harshness of their arrest methods is hardly surprising. Which is why I now mention Derry.
Ireland
Derry, or Londonderry, as the British prefer, has been the tragic home to much sectarian violence. Again having been on a number of prayer initiatives in Northern Ireland I appreciate the virtual hopelessness that there is for peace and unity because of generations of hate, murder and reprisals. Bloody Sunday stands as a microcosm of the problems of empire and occupation. A people who are oppressed, held down and exploited will almost inevitably attempt to rise up.
On bloody Sunday an illegal (deemed so by the British government) march, in which it was known that weapons were being carried, led to the deployment of battle hardened paratroopers with live ammunition. The result was tragically predictable and probably set back any peace process by decades. The judicial whitewash that followed only benefitted the lawyers and hardened attitudes further.
Rioting
Does rioting achieve anything good?
Returning to the events in America, the people who suffered from the rioting, looting and arson were tragically mainly the members of the community itself, a kind of communal self-harm. The trigger is clear, the wider causes perhaps open to debate. Unemployment? Poverty? Lack of education and opportunity? Deprivation? Despair? Drugs? Gangs? Fatherlessness? The list goes on and I would add on this occasion “Lockdown”!
What followed was lawlessness, street violence, random attacks on individuals, people dragged from their cars and beaten up or even shot at in their vehicles. A breakdown of law and order. Calls to defund the police! The response from the authorities was ultimately inevitable.
In the U.K. the reaction was sadly as if we regularly see police brutality and shootings of black people, as if we have the same situation that certain American cities have! The sight of mostly young people (black and white) shouting and cursing at “Bobbies”, even throwing a bicycle at a horse and causing injury to the rider and desecrating monuments to the war dead was deeply disturbing. Inevitably counter protests occurred bringing together a motley crew ranging from genuine ex-servicemen, wanting to protect the monuments to past servicemen and heroes, to simple football supporters who, blind to the changes occurring in most premiership teams in terms of racial mix, and fuelled by alcohol, turned their frustrations on the police in violence and foul language. Decades of “positive discrimination”, education, community groups, community policing, etc. at risk of “going down the Swannee” (and yes I do know where that saying came from!)
So does rioting really help, or just demean the participants and cause harm to others and to causes?
Judging the past by present values
Taking out anger on people who cannot answer for themselves is easy. We used to say that one should not speak ill of the dead. Apparently that little idea has been cancelled.
Germany
I have personally had the privilege of praying with a group of young people in Dusseldorf who were still in bondage to “blood guilt” and consciously felt shame and guilt for something that their grandparents generation were responsible for, not even necessarily their actual family. Guilt is a powerful weapon of the enemy. So it was for a man in his late 20’s in Grossenhain whose grandfather was a high ranking S.S. officer. Axel was suffering from mental illness that had been directly linked to the guilt and shame. Praying with him I hope was a step in his recovery.
I relate those two accounts specifically because they illustrate for me that an individual, family, group, tribe or nation should only be responsible for their actions, although they may choose to intercede in repentance for past generations’ wrong-doings.
Judging the present by past values
Time and again I am challenged by the words of Jesus.
If like me you enjoy historic dramas you will have a sense of how brutal and cruel life used to be. Whether that be the Romans or the Greeks, the Vikings and Saxons, the Crusades, Protestants and Catholics, life was brutal and punishment often involved gruesome agonising deaths. Serfdom and slavery have existed for most of human history.
Then we turn the spotlight on one Jew who lived a mere 30 years or so and in 3 years turned the world upside down. In the midst of a brutal empirical rule he spoke words which have never been bettered. Words of freedom, liberty and love.