The CofE is going in the wrong direction on racial diversity. There is a better way

Mar 23, 2024 by Jill

by Ian Paul, Premier Christianity:

The CofE is going in the wrong direction on racial diversity. There is a better way.

I am the son of a migrant, who came to the UK after the second world war as part of a despised ethnic group who experienced widespread prejudice. My mother changed her name and lost her accent in order to be accepted. She was Irish.

I am now associate minister at a multi-ethnic city church, where we need to have our Bible readings in four different languages on a Sunday. I am currently learning one of these languages in order to be able to relate better to part of our congregation.

Because of all this, I found Guy Hewitt’s article on racial justice profoundly depressing. I believe his entire approach is importing ‘culture wars’ language from the American context, which is deeply shaped by Critical Race Theory (CRT), and this will bring division and disagreement to the Church of England and fail to address the issue.

Hewitt’s language of ‘antiracism’ comes straight out of the US culture wars and Hewitt appears to claim that anyone who does not agree with the current approach of the Church of England’s approach to racial justice suffers from ignorance, fragility or illiteracy.

Hewitt’s article comes in the wake of a CofE post being advertised for a ‘Deconstructing Whiteness officer’ in Birmingham – until it was pointed out that this was racist and the advert was removed. Meanwhile, in York, a new Justice Education Adviser will need to run a course on Being White, in order to make people aware of their inherent racial privilege. Try explaining that to unemployed white working-class men on outer estates. Data from the Office of National Statistics shows it is ethnic minorities who flourish best in our education system, and white boys who do worst.

A practical problem with the approach proposed by Hewitt and others is that is simply that is does not work. The goals for York Diocese include quotas of Global Majority Heritage (GMH) people in particular roles – but the use of quotas angers those excluded and patronises those included, who feel they are only appointed because of their ethnicity. In fact the advert for the York job notes that clergy and congregations are already representative of the ethnic mix of the region. And research has shown that the ubiquitous ‘Unconscious Bias’ training not only fails to effect change, but can even make the situation worse.

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