Author: Jonathan Petre
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: August 29, 2005
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/29/nbish29.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/29/ixnewstop.html
The Church of England is infected with institutional
racism and is still a place of "pain" for many black Anglicans,
according to its first black archbishop.
Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop-designate
of York, has used the foreword of a new book implicitly to criticise fellow
Church leaders for failing to deal properly with discrimination in the organisation.
Though a long-term critic of the Church's
"monochrome" white culture, his comments will now carry far more
weight as he is soon to be enthroned as the second most senior cleric in the
hierarchy.
They signal his intention to place racism
at the heart of his agenda in office and will reopen soul-searching over one
of the Church's most sensitive issues.
Another black bishop, the Bishop of Rochester,
the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, complained of racism when an unnamed cleric
dubbed him a "Paki papist" while the Church was selecting a successor
to Dr George Carey at Canterbury in 2002.
The book to which Dr Sentamu has contributed,
Rejection, Resistance and Resurrection, Speaking out on racism in the Church,
is a hard-hitting account of the rejection felt by many black Anglicans.
Written by Mukti Barton, the adviser on black
and Asian ministries to the Bishop of Birmingham, Dr Sentamu's present post,
it describes racism as a "deadly poison" often unconsciously spread
by white Christians.
It also claims that black people are significantly
under represented in the clergy, even in the diocese of Birmingham.
Dr Sentamu, who is to launch the book in Birmingham
cathedral next month, said in the foreword: "The stories in this book
speak of the pain of what it is to undergo institutional racism.
"The cost is in terms of the lives of
people who are hampered in their growth into the image of God created in them."
He referred to his role as a member of the
Macpherson Inquiry into the death of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence,
which branded the Metropolitan police as "institutionally racist."
Quoting the inquiry report, he said that institutional
racism persisted in organisations because of their failure "openly and
adequately to recognise and address its existence and causes by policy, example
and leadership". The archbishop-elect, whose promotion was announced
in June, said that institutional racism was found in all the Churches to some
degree.
He added, however, that there were signs of
encouragement for the future, and various anti-racism programmes had been
effective.
The former Ugandan high court judge who fled
the regime of Idi Amin to become Bishop of Birmingham has been an outspoken
scourge of racism for decades.
In 2000, while Bishop of Stepney, he complained
bitterly of being stopped and searched outside St Paul's cathedral by a police
officer who did not spot his clerical collar under his scarf.
He first accused the Church of institutional
racism the previous year, when he said in a General Synod on the Stephen Lawrence
Inquiry report that the Church suffered from many of the same sins as the
police.
The then Archbishops of Canterbury and York,
Dr George and Dr David Hope respectively, subsequently attended a "racism-awareness
course".
