Racial justice enablers: hills of the north, rejoice

The introduction and job description run for more than 2,500 words, as well as the Racial Justice Charter, which is attached. I shall try to boil it down.

First of all, the post will not be offered to a white person. The ad cannot state as much (such racial discrimination is against the law), but I think that is what the “person specification” means when it says that the successful candidate will have “a passion for racial justice and radical hospitality borne out of lived experience”.

I am not sufficiently educated in modern missionary lingo to know exactly what “radical hospitality” means, but I do know that “lived experience” is something that white people, in racial questions, are considered incapable of possessing.

The problem the diocese wishes to address is that most of its population is white: “We are working within what are traditionally conservative cultures, both in the church and wider society, which means that culture change to become more diverse is a complex and contested arena…Whilst there are diverse communities in Middlesbrough and in Hull, the Diocese of York is a predominantly white community with around 3 per cent of the population of 1.4 million who are Global Majority Heritage [GMH].”

How, short of ethnic cleansing, can the racial justice enabler get to work on this problem? It is not absolutely clear, but he will need “the ability to speak truthfully to others” and to get tough with backsliders, having “experience of working with adult learning which has needed to be transformational in its impact and overcoming barriers to change”.

There are targets. “By mid-2025,” the enabler must “plan, curate and roll out an appropriate unconscious bias and diversity training programme”. By 2027, he must have produced a “resource” for social justice and to have this “used by one third of the ministry Units” (I think these are what Christians have traditionally called parishes) in the diocese.

Of the 13 qualities the enabler will need to exhibit, only two refer explicitly to Christianity. But he will have to work hard on “the 4th mark of Mission”, which is “transforming unjust structures”. In doing so, they must use “the ‘Being White’ programme to work with senior leaders to address issues of white fragility”.

Once white fragility is dealt with, “We hope that this will help us to see those who our biases cause us not to see, to widen the funnel of those who enter the discernment process and to increase the numbers of GMH lay and ordained ministers in the Diocese of York.”

Poor enabler. Truly, his task will be as hard, though not as dangerous as that of 19th-centry missionaries cutting their way through equatorial jungles. How would you fancy telling a whole load of Yorkshiremen and women that they are fragile because they are white?

I find this all rather tragic. Christianity is at a low ebb in most of Europe. Energetic missionaries from black Africa would be very welcome. Instead, an Anglican diocese is disrespecting “those who our biases cause us not to see” — 97 per cent of its population.

END

Racial justice enablers: hills of the north, rejoice
The Church of England has focused its attention on evangelising wokeism

By CHARLES MOORE
THE TELEGRAPH
19 March 2024

Once upon a time, people used to speak about a Christian mission to “darkest Africa”. The extent of the change is visible in a job advert recently put out by the Diocese of York. It appears to be announcing a mission to whitest England.

The diocese is seeking a “racial justice enabler”, a half-time post for which he/she will be paid £32,000 — more than double the annual rate of pay for a full-time vicar. Thrown in on top of the pension scheme are free parking in York, the benefits of a cycle to work scheme and eye-care vouchers.