TITLE: An Amazing Journey: The Church of England's
response to institutional racism
AUTHOR: Glynne Gordon-Carter
REVIEWER: Billy Hall
THIS IS a work of history, and February is 'Black History Month'.
Jamaican Glynne Gordon-Carter went to England in 1986, and became the first black secretary of the Committee for Black African Concerns, which later became the Committee for Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns (CMEAC) of the Church of England. She was also the first black person to be employed as a senior executive efficer at Church House in hallowed Westminster.
AWAKENED HER
It is her sojourn in England that awakened her to racist realities there, and led her to tackle the issue with what she had in her hands her sincerity, integrity, education and sense of history. What is unique about her work is the enormous energy and conviction she brought to it, as a woman working mostly among men, and working from inside the synod, the power centre of the very institution stained with the guilt her research uncovered. Her choice of tackling the issues from inside the sanctuary, instead of from outside in the streets, distinguishes her.
Certainly, the approach from the streets is what distinguishes more radical counterparts from across the Atlantic, of Jamaican and Trinidadian roots, such as Marcus Garvey and Stokeley Carmichael. But then, perhaps their times were somewhat different in terms of pioneering realities. In Britain, more contemporaneous with her, Bishop Wilfred Wood has fought the issue with his strong independent, well reasoned voice from within the ranks the clergy (Keep the Faith Baby: A Bishop speaks on Faith, Evangelism, Race Relations and Community, 1994).
Also, from within the Anglican Church, internal voices were raised and the issue of institutional racism of the Church documented. Certainly, quite influential has been the 1985 report of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission on Urban Priority Areas the Church House publication entitled Faith in the City. But in terms of say, the Synod taking action, progress has been slow, and it is this aspect the author has pursued with remarkable persistence yet dignified professionalism, as an activist and radical, but solidly faithful to Church and to professionalism.
That kind of understanding of her work is evident to any reader even thumbing through the approximately 200 pages of this book. Both its essence and its strength is the meticulous documentation of developments. It becomes, therefore, an invaluable reference work on the internal perspectives of the Anglican Church on one of the worst features of its life and ministry-racism.
In the book, the author reminds of the words of the Queen in her jubilee speech delivered in Westminster Hall, to both Houses of Parliament, in which she said: "Change has become a constant: managing it has become an expanding discipline; the way we embrace it defines our future" (p. 156).
ON TARGET
On that point, the author is on target in challenging the Church she grew up in the Caribbean and in England "the established Church - present in every corner of England .., and its ability "to adapt to change" and so to become "more inclusive in order to reflect the people of God in all their diversity, if it is to truly reflect the kingdom of God on earth" (p.157).
Most of the book is about unfolding developments, faithfully recorded, in secretarial fashion almost, but not bound by traditional format, for as the author explains, "The report has been written from a personal perspective, so that it would afford me the opportunity of sharing with the reader insights into the committee's failures and successes. The report shows the step-by-step process which the CMEAC had to develop in order to make an impact on the structures" (p. 155).
The step-by-step process is there alright, and the journey is slow and tedious, even disappointing, despite what some would regard as much better days today. What the book contributes uniquely, even if advertently, is how difficult it is to get the Church of England to embrace much more manage change. The book reveals too, inadvertently, the journey of the author from naiveté to reality, regarding racism. Altogether an amazing journey.
Publisher: Church House Publishing, London, 2003
