The Holy Sinners

The Church of England is guilty, and it has confessed. A new report reveals that it is guilty of "institutional racism" and has harassed minorities and discriminated against the very people whom it seeks to win over to its fold.

The report—Called to Lead: A Challenge to Include Minority Ethnic People—says Christians of Indian origin and black and other non-white Christians have felt "stereotyped, unwelcome and undervalued". No wonder they found the Church "cold" and remote from the ways of Jesus, and felt "alienated, lonely and excluded" within it. Attending church service was an experience that was "elevating yet disappointing", says the report. It cites the Church of England's "slowness to make changes" and its "inadequately trained church personnel" as the primary reasons for the feeling of alienation among non-white minorities.

The non-white respondents to the feelers sent out by the inquiry committee, which the Church of England had appointed, spoke of a culture of elitism because the "people there think they are better than anyone else". They spoke of the role of the Church in "slavery and oppression of black people" and of "boring services, strange language and strange clothes". The Church has broadly accepted the report's findings.

"The Archbishops' Council has recognised that the Church of England, like other institutions in society, must accept the challenge of institutional racism and repent," it said in response to the inquiry report. This inquiry came after the watershed report into the murder of the black youth Stephen Lawrence back in April 1993. An inquiry into that murder investigation brought into public focus the practice of "institutional racism" in Britain. Now the Church, of all institutions, has been shown up to suffer from the same malaise.

The inquiry committee found only what Indians within the Church of England have known for long. "This has not happened overnight," Reverend Canon Ivor Smith-Cameron told Outlook. "People like me have been speaking about these matters within the Church for the last 30 to 40 years," he says. Rev Smith-Cameron has himself not been elevated to higher positions within the Church "for what they think were good reasons—and who knows, they may have been". The inquiry report says the minorities are "drastically under-represented" in the clergy.

The Church of England is moving now to "put her own house in order before it can tell society what to do", says Rev Smith-Cameron. The Church will now give minorities "the support and training and encouragement they need to become priests because there are not as many as there should be," he says. "The structures are not inclusive enough not because anybody is being malicious but because these structures are organisationally unjust." The Church needs a change of culture "that takes into account different cultural patterns within society".

Bishop John Sentamu, one of the few non-white bishops, told the General Synod, a parliament of the Church, that the Church is glued together by a culture that is white and that "it still lacks colour and spice". The Archbishop of Canterbury responded with a call to "metanoia", a kind of glasnost of the heart. The Church hopes to alter the situation in the next 10 years.

The Indian Christian population in Britain runs into many thousands, though not all groups are within the Church of England. The Syrian Orthodox Church has many followers as also the Roman Catholic Church.

The revelation of discrimination within the Church comes at a time when several evangelical groups are making concerted efforts to win over minority groups in Britain to Christianity. Members of fringe groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists have been undertaking door-to-door campaigns in Indian areas to persuade them to embrace Christianity.

The Church hopes the reforms will bring the minorities to their side. It has agreed to have three times the present number of black and Asian clergy and will also recruit more teachers from the minorities in its schools. "If there is no representation, there is no participation, and there is exclusion," says Rev Smith-Cameron.

The Church is also appointing "harassment advisers" to deal with "staff who think they may have been subject to some sort of harassment or discrimination". The report has asked the Church to ring in changes quickly as a matter of justice and social policy and also because it's "about the integrity of the Church before its God".