‘Humpty,’ I said, ‘I have a problem. It seems to me that churches find it hard to square being inclusive and at the same time being true to John 14.6. Any ideas?
A day or two later I found a note put through my door. It mentioned five churches. Their names were familiar. Sometimes Humpty and I think along the same lines. Here is his list.
St Matthew’s, Brixton, south London, is in a position to know something about this matter. A picture of a crowd of happy worshippers on the website suggests it’s possible to enjoy diversity. The parish says of itself: ‘We are an inclusive church. We welcome all people regardless of age, relationship, status, race, disability or sexual orientation and regardless of how much or how little faith people have when they join us. We rejoice in our diversity. We are all one in Christ Jesus – Galatians 3.27b. Our attitude flows from our encounter with God in Christ in whom our longings for freedom and service find their fulfilment.’
You can’t be clearer than that, I thought.
Canon Stephen Prior, Vicar of St Mary’s, Rushden, writes in the light of his experience of growing up in the USA. In the July issue of his elegant monthly magazine he says he has felt deeply depressed by the pervasive, continuing presence of racism in American life highlighted by the incident in Minneapolis. We should not be complacent, he says. We too in the UK have a way to go in making life a more level playing-field for those in the BAME community.
With that background, he should know.
Patrick Taylor, the Vicar of what is said to be the most visited parish church in England, talks of the problem of racism in the July issue of ‘Trinity Times’, the handsome monthly magazine of Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon. The parish is as English as they come, known widely as Shakespeare’s church. Quoting from a book by Ben Lindsay ‘We need to talk about race’, Patrick Taylor says the writer makes the point that whilst white people may not be actively racist they do ‘often struggle to acknowledge the privileges that come with their whiteness or perhaps have simply never considered them.’
Spoken like an Englishman.
St Nicholas’s parish church, Sevenoaks has Peter Rowan commending the same book by Ben Lindsay. He says: ‘Attracting black people to church isn’t difficult… Creating inclusive communities, however, where black people feel that they are a valued part of the culture, not just observers, is more complicated.’ The reader’s attention is drawn to the poor showing in percentage terms of BAME people in the stipendiary ministry.
Ben Lindsay should obviously be on our reading list.
Peter Toller is Rector of Dibden, Hampshire, on the eastern edge of the New Forest. The parish has a beautiful little medieval church, restored after WW2 bombing, and a handsome modern building and church centre in the midst of new housing. He comments in his July ‘News Extra’: ‘May God teach us to be people after his own heart, to have a loving and longing for everyone, no matter what race, class or culture to come to repentance and salvation.’
The name ‘Dibden’ means a deep valley on the outskirts of a forest. Hmm, yes. A suitable place to consider these deep matters.
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