Readers of Private Eye will remember the
magazine’s fictional vicar, the Rev J. C. Flannel. He is a worldly,
waffley, wishy-washy sort of fellow.
Flannel
steers clear of religious conviction. He is the kind of bland clergyman
who likes to blather on about TV soap operas in order to seem relevant.
The
Rev J. C. Flannel has been overtaken by history. He would be out of
place in the modern Church of England. For one thing he is male and
white, which would put him at a disadvantage in some quarters.
More important, I doubt that Flannel could get to grips with the craving for ‘racial justice’ born of ‘critical race theory’ that obsesses so many Anglican bishops and senior clergy.
I
know the Church of England pretty well. My father was a priest, as were
two uncles. Two of my brothers-in-law were bishops, and a third a
canon. A nephew is a vicar. I can say with confidence that the Church
whose ways I have observed, and in which I have worshipped, is one of
the least racist institutions in our country.
However,
the folk who run the C of E think differently. For many of them racism
is ‘embedded’ — this is a key, often-used word in critical race theory —
in our national Church, and must be rooted out.
They
would doubtless say that, if I don’t discern endemic racism in the
Church, it is because I am a white, relatively privileged person. Racism
is buried so deep that you can’t necessarily see it. It is cause for
shame and, if I and people like me can’t appreciate this truth, it is
because we are fundamentally racist.
Justin Welby,
Archbishop of Canterbury, has proclaimed that the Church of England is
‘deeply institutionally racist’ and called for ‘radical and decisive’
action. This has entailed setting up a Commission for Racial Justice,
and the appointment of a ‘racial justice directorate’.
The belief that the Church
is profoundly racist is widespread in higher ecclesiastical circles.
Anyone who doesn’t share it would be well-advised to keep quiet if
interested in promotion.
When he was a
black ordinand, Calvin Robinson was told by Sarah Mullally, Bishop of
London: ‘As a white woman I can tell you that the Church is
institutionally racist.’ He didn’t agree. Robinson subsequently left
the C of E, and is now a priest in another denomination.
This
past week — Holy Week, when Christians recall the Passion and
Crucifixion of Christ — wondrous storms have raged that have made me
seriously wonder whether the Church of England has gone stark, raving
bonkers.
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, who
is white and Archdeacon of Liverpool, declared on social media: ‘Let’s
have anti-whiteness, and let’s smash the patriarchy.’ An archdeacon is
one rung below a bishop in the ecclesiastical hierarchy and, although
she may sound like a demented adolescent, Dr Threlfall-Holmes has
resided on this earth for 50 years.
Unsurprisingly,
some people were dismayed by her unsolicited eruption. She partly
backtracked, assuring us that ‘whiteness does not refer to skin colour
per se but to a way of viewing the world where being white is seen as
normal and everything else is considered different or lesser’. This is
unlikely to reassure many white people.
In
view of Dr Threlfall-Holmes’s right-on opinions about the historical
burdens of whiteness, I’ve little doubt she will soon be made a bishop.
Not
to be outdone in this spate of Merseyside madness, the Rector of
Liverpool, Canon Crispin Pailing, this week decided to resign. He told
his congregation that he could ‘no longer, in good conscience’ represent
a Church which ‘perpetuates bias and discrimination against sections of
society’.
Dr Threlfall-Holmes’s
somersaults followed some unconvincing cartwheels performed by the
Archbishop of Canterbury in an interview with Times Radio.
Justin
Welby was asked about the Diocese of Birmingham’s recent advertisement
for an Anti-Racism Practice Officer (Deconstructing Whiteness)’ to work
in an 11-strong ‘racial justice’ team. This post is entirely consistent
with Dr Welby’s misguided programme to stamp out imagined racism in the
C of E.
And yet, confronted with the
absurd advert, the Archbishop became giggly and disowned it. He said it
sounded like the BBC management lingo used in the satirical sitcom W1A.
This
was disingenuous, partly because Dr Welby has zealously promoted
‘racism officers’, and partly because he is himself no stranger to
impenetrable, bureaucratic language.
The
Commission for Racial Justice he set up was evidently not intended to
be balanced, fair and proportionate. Seven of its 12 members are
non-white, including its chairman, former Labour Cabinet Minister Lord
Boateng. The Commission produces periodic reports whose effect is to
engender guilt in white members of the Church of England.
Having
examined the biographies of its members, I think it probable that
almost none of them could be described as even remotely Tory. Several of
them haven’t tried to conceal their disdain, even dislike, for
traditionalists, and have tweeted or retweeted remarks on social media
that are both Left-wing and lacking in Christian charity.
For
example, Professor Duncan Morrow, who is white, has laid into the
Tories more than once. ‘When this round of Conservatives finally allow
the UK population to choose their successors, they will be remembered
for austerity, Brexit and Covid parties.’
Another
member — Anthony Reddie, who is professor of black theology at Oxford
University, and himself black — has retweeted posts criticising
Margaret Thatcher, Nigel Lawson and Rishi Sunak. He has written a book
which he describes, in terms straight out of the critical race theory
playbook, as ‘a black theology take on decolonising knowledge’.
Reddie
also hates the upper classes: ‘There’s a reason why no one likes the
English upper classes. Anyone who honestly believes that colonialism was
benign and for the good of the colonised is either a fool or something
unspeakable.’
If I ever find myself
warming to Justin Welby, I’ll remember how he sanctioned a Commission
for Racial Justice that appears to be both biased and viscerally opposed
to the values of many members of the Church of England, let alone huge
swathes of the wider population.
Why
has the Church become gripped by the secular, American-bred critical
race theory to such an extent that, under Dr Welby’s leadership, it is
effectively renouncing its past achievements, and lashing itself for its
present supposed shortcomings?
I
believe it is being gradually taken over by people for whom God comes
second, and sometimes distantly so, to fashionable, Left-wing political
theories. I also believe that if it continues along this path the C of E
will condemn itself to certain extinction as our national Church.
This
may not take long. The Church of England’s wrong-headed obsession with
racial justice is putting it at odds with some members of its dwindling
congregations, as well as with many in wider society for whom the Church
seems increasingly irrelevant.
Take
the issue of slavery reparations. Earlier this month, a body called the
Oversight Group — an off-shoot of Dr Welby’s Commission for Racial
Justice — recommended that the Church of England should pay £1 billion
in reparations to atone for its historic links to the slave trade.
Previously it had pledged £100 million.
The
Oversight Group is chaired by the Barbados-born Bishop of Croydon,
Rosemarie Mallett, whose background is that of an academic sociologist.
She signs up wholeheartedly to the racial justice agenda. In an
interview last year, she asserted that ‘racism — this binary of black
and white — was born out of slavery’.
She
also claimed that the ‘Church [has] walked together with colonialism,
imperialism, chattel slavery’. No mention of the devout Anglican,
William Wilberforce, who with fellow Christians successfully campaigned
for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which took place in
1833.
Slavery was an unconscionable
evil, and I am appalled that the Church of England should have briefly
benefited from it 300 years ago. But raising £1 billion isn’t going to
undo what happened. The C of E could spend that amount of money to far
greater effect on existing challenges.
I
can’t, of course, see into Dr Mallett’s mind. But I believe that many
who advocate reparations are not so much interested in restitution as
in weighing down white churchgoers with perpetual guilt from which they
will never
be freed. That is an essential component of critical race theory. White responsibility for slavery can’t be expunged.
It
is forever ‘embedded’. That word again. Last month, the Jamaican-born
Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover, told the General Synod that the
Church needed to ‘further embed racial justice’ and shouldn’t be afraid
of being called ‘woke’.
The Church’s
racial preoccupations are also evident in its attitude towards asylum
seekers. Anyone can have reasonable doubts about the workability of the
Government’s Rwanda scheme. I certainly do. But the bishops have
consistently championed the interests of mostly non-white illegal
immigrants over those of white and black people who live in this country
and are sorely pressed by crumbling infrastructure and a lack of
affordable housing.
The
failure of the bishops to come up with a plausible alternative scheme
to stem the flow of illegal immigrants suggests to me that they aren’t
really interested in doing anything about it.
The
C of E hierarchy has also demonstrated a near total indifference to
well-documented stories about Anglican priests offering conversion to
Muslim asylum seekers who are insincere. In some cases immigrants invoke
their newly acquired religion to prevent their being returned to
countries where Christians are persecuted.
Immigration
files published this week show that convicted sex offender Abdul Ezedi
was granted asylum after claiming to have converted to Christianity. His
application was backed by a Baptist — not Anglican — minister. Ezedi,
who threw himself into the Thames after attacking a woman and her two
daughters with a corrosive substance in January, was given a Muslim
burial earlier this month.
The extent
to which Anglican priests are involved in such conversion scams is
unclear. Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman may have exaggerated
when accusing the Church of ‘facilitating industrial-scale bogus asylum
claims’. But there is surely a case to answer.
Not
as far as the C of E is concerned. The Iranian-born Bishop of
Chelmsford, Guli Francis-Dehqani, has dismissed Mrs Braverman’s concerns
in her role as the Church’s ‘lead bishop’ on immigration. She denied
that the Church had ever enabled bogus conversions. Dr Francis-Dehqani
has described the Government’s Rwanda scheme as ‘immoral’.
It
is of course the duty of the Church to care, as Christ did, for those
who are poor or persecuted. Almost all Christians would agree with this.
That is not the issue.
The issue is
whether white churchgoers — and white society in general — should be
made to feel guilty for the sins of their distant ancestors and their
own ‘embedded’ racism. This is what is demanded by powerful activists,
who I believe are driven by motives that are more secular than
religious.
Many devout priests are
alarmed by these developments. One of them recently pointed out to me a
letter in the Church Times by an Indian-born Anglican vicar. It argued
that white bishops, deans and archdeacons should stand aside in favour
of people of ‘global majority heritage’ like him. That sounds to me like
racism.
Tomorrow is the greatest day
in the Christian year. Like many others, though a diminishing number, I
shall go to church. I’m happy to say that the Rev J. C. Flannel won’t be
present. Nor will there be any mention of ‘racial justice’.
But
I know that behind the scenes in my church — our national Church —
there are many working away, intent on making us feel perpetual shame
for the sins of the long dead, and trying to shape what would be a very
bleak future.
We had laid mum to rest with a sapphire blue and gold church stole over her wicker coffin, a symbol of her profound faith and dedication to the Church. Next to the whimsical sprigs of heather we wove around the casket, the fabric was almost too bright, a bittersweet reminder of how her eyes had shone on the day that she became a lay minister of the Anglican church. It had been such a proud moment, formalising a devotion to what she called the “CofE” that shaped much of her adult life.
The church was everything to her – and she had wanted it to be as important to me. Sadly, it wasn’t. In recent years, my absence from all but Christmas and Easter services was a strong hint at my disillusionment, but I spared her the truth, which was that I have come to deplore the Church of England under its current leadership. With every public proclamation by the sanctimonious Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, I feel more disaffected.
Were it not for my staunchly religious upbringing, it would be easier not to care. I might even be faintly amused by Welby’s achingly woke worries about ancient statues that risk offending Black Lives Matter; or depictions of our Lord that make him look “too white”. I could shrug off the fact that Welby keeps pushing political positions that are so hopelessly out of step with the views of many, if not most, churchgoers (and certainly wider public opinion) that he might as well be preaching from another planet.
But that would be like pressing delete on my childhood, which was shaped by the demands and rhythms of the church calendar, and theological debate that often felt as if it was being delivered in surround-sound: my parents talked about bits of the Bible the way other folk discussed what was on TV.
Made to attend Sunday service every week, I came to know every word of the creeds, collects and confessions, mastering the art of dutifully reciting them as if they had my entire focus while my teenage mind wandered elsewhere.
On the first Sunday of every month, livelier “family” services involving interactive sermons and happy-clappy singing broke things up a bit, but were only politely tolerated by the predominantly septuagenarian congregation, who much preferred the usual dreary proceedings.
Afterwards, we would all troop off to a chilly church hall, where the grown-ups stood around discussing the sermon while we kids ate cheap biscuits washed down with luminous orange squash.
The whole thing took forever, and the older I got, the more I quietly resented it. As far as my parents were concerned, though, my attendance was non-negotiable, not least because the congregation was so small that our presence sometimes doubled it.
Failing to show up would have let the side down and made the hymn singing even more embarrassing for the handful of reedy-voiced pensioners huddled in the front pews.
I understood and respected how much it all meant to them, and went along with it. Indeed, when I was 12, they briefly talked me into becoming a “server,” which involved wearing a white robe and processing down the aisle at the beginning and end of the service carrying a huge cross. I was mortified, but it made my parents happy.
The arrival of a charismatic new vicar from South Africa, a blonde firecracker reputed to be as handy with a rifle as she was with the chalice, was a huge relief. She had such a gift for making services interesting and entertaining that it almost became a pleasure.
As soon as I left home, I exercised my adult freedom to stop spending Sundays this way – though I was more detached than disillusioned. For the next two decades, I would dip in and out, sustained by the comforting familiarity of the order of service I knew by heart, and the sense of community and togetherness.
It was not until the pandemic that I began to feel actively hostile towards the church as an institution. With a gutlessness that took my breath away, at the first sign of wolves, the shepherds ran for cover, abandoning their flocks to their fate. By order of the state, doors to God’s house were locked, and the Archbishop of Canterbury – who I believe should have resigned sooner than let it happen – said barely a word.
The initial panic in March 2020 when the virus took hold in Italy, ripping through frail and elderly congregations in Catholic churches, was understandable: the Church had a duty of physical as well as spiritual care.
It would have been irresponsible to have defied that first “very simple instruction” from Boris Johnson to the nation to stay at home.
As time went by however, the absence of robust resistance from the highest echelons of the Church of England to lockdown policies that were causing huge unnecessary suffering became more and more difficult to understand.
By summer 2020, the sun was shining, the skies were blue, and people were gathering safely and sensibly in all sorts of settings, including garden centres and DIY stores. I felt sure the Church would encourage vicars to lead services outside – but no.
It was left to a handful of rebel reverends to take a stand, while a relaxed looking Welby streamed services from his kitchen, encouraging other men and women of the cloth to do the same. How could they have accepted ministry by Zoom meeting for so long, and what possessed them to accept the Government’s ludicrous ban on singing, a rule borrowed from the Taliban?
To this day, senior Church of England figures have failed to acknowledge the cruellest excesses of lockdowns: the hideous isolation of vulnerable care-home residents subjected to months of solitary confinement “for their own good”; the misery of crazed social distancing rules at funerals; the sickening forced separation of loved ones from dying relatives or partners giving birth.
So far from being appalled by the grotesque abuse of power, Welby seemed almost impressed by the might of the state at the time. Instead of injecting some balance into the crazed culture of fear, he penned a feeble article in which he argued that it was up to local communities to determine their response.
We will be living with the poisonous legacy of this disaster for decades – yet Welby has said almost nothing about the many millions of people of all ages in this country paying the price. He seems more interested in the plight of asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and unidentified descendants of 18th-century slaves.
The recent decision by the Church to pay out up to £1 billion in “reparations” for its association with the slave trade some 300 years ago sums it all up. While hard-pressed parishioners donate precious pennies to repair crumbling spires and leaky roofs, Welby and his acolytes are presiding over what must be the most expensive and misguided display of virtue signalling in history. What next – compensation for descendants of victims of the Crusades? Best not give him ideas!
As for his angst over the “immorality” of the Government’s Rwanda scheme, potential deportees have more than enough hand-wringing advocates.
If Welby believes his diocese extends to Africa, he should be shouting about the persecution of Christians in Rwanda, where thousands of churches have been forcibly closed. Certainly, his cup of compassion overfloweth, but why is it always for the wrong recipients?
No wonder many of those who stopped going to church during the pandemic have never come back.
My mother would have given these complaints short shrift. I think she’d say I should be more Christian; less political.
I’d reply that if the High Priest of Woke steps down from his pulpit, perhaps I’ll find my way back.