Mission, Anguish, and Defiance: A Personal Experience of Black Clergy Deployment in the Church of England

By David Isiorho and Anthony G. Reddie

Mission, Anguish, and Defiance documents how David Isiorho has explored his ministry as a black priest in the Church of England using his formidable intellect, which reveals the ingrained prejudices and lack of genuine love from the structures of that august institution. He draws on his PhD as a platform to conduct this examination, not seeking pity but writing prophetically from a deep loyalty to the Church.
He has meticulously interviewed a wide range of research participants, giving them a voice to join with his own. He uncovers evidence of vast, painful, and redundant suffering in this group of black colleagues.
This book is about hurt and it may be perceived as hurtful, certainly by those who are called to account. Isiorho's bravery comes through clearly, as does his hopeful fidelity to the God and the Church that he loves. Throughout he does not seek to be vindictive; rather, he searches to show the salvific and redeeming love of Christ which, together with the energizing Holy Spirit, can see real reform and profound healing. That is his prayer in this moving and challenging piece.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Sep 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532674235

David Isiorho

David Isiorho, a sixty-year-old vicar of the Church of England, was born in Windsor, studied at Liverpool for his first degree, and worked as a social worker in London before ordination. He has published “The Big Society” in British Liberation Theology: For Church and Nation, and more recently Theology and the Critique of Idolatry in the Work of James Baldwin: A Demand for Integrity and Its Application to a Context.

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Introduction

How many church wardens does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is two: one to do the deed and the other to reminisce about the old bulb. A church that laughs at that has some self-aware people in it who realize that it is always time for change in this sublunary world. Sometimes, however, our churches need a different version of the joke: How many church wardens does it take to change a light bulb? None, because nothing changes around here. I have yet to work out the version that would suit the twenty-first-century green church; I could say none because they have solar power, but that might not really resonate.

This preamble was not without purpose as my methodology and delivery are key signifiers of my understanding of my own vocation as a priest and educator. Within that, as a lifelong learner myself, I am enthusiastic about theology and my rhetoric is undergirded by prayer. This book is about reaching out to my readers and meeting them at their point of inquiry to such an extent that I can wave them goodbye as they fly, informed and excited, into their own particular sunset. As a theologian and sociologist, I am passionate that people understand that theology is neither boring and nor does it have to be so abstract as to exclude the majority of inquirers. I use the term inquirer advisably, for inquiry and its close partner, reflection, should be at the heart of any Christian ministry. The long intellectual tradition of sociological investigation as a starting point for theological considerations has a strong pull for me personally. It is genuinely inspiring to see the sociology of religion active in our churches, helping us to take our Christian inheritance seriously, and transporting it to the twenty-first century.

I intend to use my own experience for the case study. I am an ordained priest of the Church of England, with nearly thirty years’ experience in holy orders. I was brought up an Anglican, in the tradition of Anglo-Catholicism, although I now describe myself as a part of the Church of England, liberal, reformed, and catholic. It was not a smooth journey to ordination despite my early awareness that priesthood was my vocation. My Blackness posed difficulties.

It continues to present a challenge to the White institution of the Church of England. For example, I was the first Black vicar in a well-known, some would say infamous, Black area in the West Midlands, something that has taken quite some time for that church to achieve. Handsworth is an area of Birmingham which was notable for receiving a large succession of African-Caribbean immigrants during the Windrush era in the immediate post-war years. Handsworth is also a name associated with some so-called Black riots in the mid-eighties (actually, most of the violence occurred in a neighboring area, Lozells, but that is another story).

In my ministry and in my academic work, justice, compassion, and mercy are key. I cannot divorce my scholarly interests from my ministry as the one energizes the other in that very traditional Anglican way. At the heart of the Christian endeavor, I see the Christ who endured all we could do yet who remained in solidarity with us, never forsaking us, even to the cross and beyond. The Magnificat is the one piece of Scripture that I would cite as my mission statement. I am concerned for justice and rescue on both a large scale and at the individual level. This is backed up by the imperative to inform in order to empower. I feel strongly that worship has a role here and should offer people a variety of modes of discourse and expression that point their minds toward God, so the register and the spectacle are important. In other words, to comfort and to proclaim are the keynotes of my praxis.

I would describe myself as a priest who is aflame with the mission to bring wholeness into the everyday. I seek to bring to people a sense of their neediness before God and the assurance of their capabilities under God. For me, prayer and action cannot be separated so I seek to present the urgency for works of justice and witness that our Lord calls us to engage in to those who are in my care. As a Black priest, I am a living reminder to people of the realities of oppression and prejudice; particularly as a Black priest, I am a token of redemption and hope. We have a directive to bind, to include, for what God of love would ever want anything to be lost when it could be secured? I believe God gave us brains for a reason and that we should use them in rational, practical ways to change the world for the better. I therefore would describe myself both as an activist and as a meditative person who sees the here-and-now as an indicator of what is to come. In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke made it very clear that the kingdom depends upon the active participation of all with all the diverse talents and ministries this involves. Bringing people more deeply into faith should mean giving them more opportunities to minister in their own unique ways.

As an institution, the church can be explored as a context for race relations. The bishops I interviewed for this book described Black communities in the United Kingdom (UK) as flourishing, scattered, and vibrant, and some of these terms have unacknowledged pragmatics behind them. They emphasized the importance of forming ecumenical partnerships with independent Black churches and interfaith dialogues with other faith communities. Thus, with the help of the fund known as the Single Regeneration Budget, interagency work was encouraged to link the church with society at large at the civic level. The response of the Church of England towards Black communities was to foster multiculturalism, where we all learn about each other’s customs within the safe confines of an apolitical and civic religion.

I have interviewed key people and quoted extracts in this book. In order to preserve the anonymity of the respondents, they are referred to as RP plus a number, (e.g., RP 39_. RP stands for Research Participant.

This city has been multifaith, multicultural, multiracial for decades. That is our future and we are committed to that and, as a church, my colours are firmly nailed to the mast. If they want to criticize me they can but my concern is for a multifaith, multicultural, and multiracial community in this city. There are people who complain that when people from other communities buy half the houses in the street and take over a whole area and compete with them for jobs then they become a threat. I think people who cannot see beyond that, who are inward looking and narrow minded will perceive their own well-being and way of life as threatened. The alternative is to see it as being enriched, which is my own particular view. If you look at England, we are mongrels. It is absolute rubbish to talk about the purity of the English. It is people who are threatened and are frightened or have some bizarre philosophy who move most easily into racism. What I am trying to do is to say that there are three stages broadly speaking. Firstly, get to know the person, don’t put some label on them like Black or White. It tells you something, it does not tell you everything. Then see if you can do something together for the good of the community, maybe raising money on Remembrance Sunday. (RP

39

)

This bishop complained that criticism of his work with ethnic minority communities was an expression of the racism that still exist within White communities:

My suspicions would be that racism amongst White Christians is not difficult to find. But there is an increasing number who would be aware of it and do all they can to discourage it. I would be distressed to hear of a Black family in this diocese who were not made welcome. If I did have just a complaint, I would follow it up without delay. I don’t recollect having one to date. I hear it said frequently that there has been discrimination, and people give themselves away occasionally with the odd remark. I certainly have received letters criticizing me for spending so much time with people of other faiths. Why don’t they go back home, bishop? (RP

39

)

All research participants accepted that Black worshippers had been discriminated against in the fifties and sixties, and that racialized exclusion was still a possibility in many parish churches. This historical legacy was related to the formation of independent Black churches and there was general recognition that Black people still felt marginalized in the Church of England. Some research participants felt that racial awareness training would address the issue of racial prejudice, treating it as a product of poor education. Thus:

The other thing as a bishop I think I should do is to promote racism awareness training and we have done this with the bishop’s staff meeting spending two days at it. We have set up pilot projects in three deaneries and we are now ready to carry that forward. But there is quite a lot of resistance. People think that it’s all about political correctness and that it meant to make them feel guilty. The way we experienced it when I did it was not like that at all. It made me do some heart searching. It was liberating. (RP

36

)

Racial awareness training offers us a sociopsychological view of racism which has been depoliticized. It is an individual response to what is largely an institutional problem. Racism is more than just a few misguided ideas contained within the psyche of White people. No amount of human relationship training by itself is going to change the working practices of institutions which work against Black people.

The race relations approach was related to a more general perspective about English society. Since most people could not be described as racist in any overt sense of that term, they could be reminded that to live in England had something to do with decency and fair play. The Church of England, having put its own house in order through organizational development techniques, could now establish its traditional role as a neutral party in community relations. Thus, the church could challenge racial disadvantage and exclusion in society at large by acting as a broker with and between other organizations in the pursuit of good race relations, and at the same time gain much need credibility in the urban context. The following extract from one of the bishops I interviewed gave focus to the role of the established church as a kind of broker between secular institutions and Black communities. The bishop comments thusly:

I am chairman of a borough partnership board. They asked me to do it because they thought that, as a bishop, I would be a fairly neutral person. But this board is a group which comprises a lot of the agencies within the borough and is responsible for single regeneration budgets which support and develop work in the local schools and in the local colleges with Asian and Afro Caribbean groups. I am involved in that but that is a secular involvement rather than a Church one. I think that kind of involvement is worth doing. I think also the involvement through the racial equality council is well worth doing and I find myself sitting as a co-opted member on that council. Obviously, the concerns of the Afro Caribbean community there are very crucial. The monitoring of racial harassment and police involvement with Afro Caribbean groups has got to go on. And I am also the president of a One World group that works with all the different ethnic communities in the borough in a very creative way. (RP

37

)

Another bishop made the following observations:

And I want to encourage lots of exchanges between different kinds of parishes. When I was vicar of a country parish in Bedfordshire, we developed a link with a Black Church in Bedford, a Black Pentecostal Church, . . . a half a dozen of us went to this Black Church for the evening and we got to know them through that and we said let’s invite them over to a family service. And then I thought this is going to be awful and all the racism is going to come out, nobody will come to Church and it was going to be a big flop and people will be hurt. I didn’t need to worry because more people came to Church that Sunday than we have never had apart from Christmas and special funerals. And people came out of their homes, they came out of the pubs. I suppose they had seen gospel singing on the television and they came in large numbers. And the choir from the Black Church was very affirmed. And I sometimes think that perhaps we worry too much about racism. What we need is not to analyze our racism, that’s something we need to do as well, but I