Church leaders condemn racism report

Black Church leaders have expressed their disappointment – and anger – over the government-instigated Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report, which was prompted by last year’s Black Lives Matter protests.

The charge was led by former General Director of the Evangelical Alliance and Commissioner of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Joel Edwards. Speaking exclusively to Evangelicals Now, Edwards expressed his ‘deep annoyance and disappointment’ with the report, which he believed ‘was politically naïve and provocative’ and ended up simply ‘kow-towing to Conservatism’.

He also rejected the divisiveness it has engendered and criticised the ‘polemical views’ of the Commission’s chairperson, who believes (unlike the vast majority of UK people of colour) that ‘institutional racism has been expunged from British life’.

Edwards instead called on all concerned to ‘step away from escalating polemic arguments and induce conversations in which we do more careful and honest work’. This discourse, he continued ‘has to be an honest appraisal of where blatant structural racism stops and where social, economic and risks factors play a part. And we also need to ask where Black agency begins: better parenting, self-determination and the spiritual fortitude which the Windrush Generation demonstrated’.

The National Church Leaders Forum highlighted the community’s ‘feelings of deep hurt, especially concerning the suggestion that institutional or systemic racism in the UK no longer exists’, insisting that ‘this runs counter to their lived experiences and the success of some has been achieved despite, not in the absence of, institutional racism’.