A message from the Dean - 17 July 2020
Dear Friends,
It’s been an eventful week: not only have we reopened the Cathedral’s doors, but the news is full of simmering stories. Whilst we come to terms with life in an age of a sinister virus, the climate continues to heat up alarmingly and racial tensions seethe. We could do with (metaphorically at least) a long cool summer. It was alarming to see news reports of forest fires in Siberia, well into the Artic Circle, with temperatures reaching 38 degrees centigrade. Climatologists confidently predict further instability in our weather systems leading to potentially fatal freak weather patterns. We’ve seen here in the UK the damage caused by increased flooding and concentrated, persistent heavy rainfall is the new normal. All English Cathedrals have been advised to double their capacity to cope with sudden rainfall in the next 5-7 years. Things are on the move. I’m looking on my own garden, carefully planted to be at its best in late June and into July, and sadly much of the show is already over. Everything came up early, blossomed and did its tricks a month too soon. Worrying. There’s much to be done to get sustainability on everyone’s agenda. Think global, act local!
Similarly, I’ve been watching the controversy in Bristol and the very public debate taking place across the world about how we honour figures from the past. The statue of Edward Colston removed from its plinth by Black Lives Matters Demonstrators and replaced with a resin statue of a leading campaigner, brought into the open a deep wound. Colston was a munificent benefactor to institutions, churches and charities in Bristol. Some of the glass in Bristol Cathedral was dedicated to him. Yet he was a slave-trader. It has been claimed that much of Britain’s capital wealth in the eighteenth century was accumulated from slavery, that wealth financed our mercantile and industrial strength. It’s as well to look history in the face. Starting in the sixteenth century and continuing for almost three centuries an estimated ten million Africans were traded across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, a tragedy of such scope it is difficult to conceive or imagine. Stolen from their villages and transported across the ocean in crowded, horrific conditions, those who survived the “Middle Passage” then had to face being auctioned as commodities. They went on to unrelenting labour on plantations and in white households. Many were subject to violent beatings, sexual assault, hunger, injury and early death. Treated as chattels, slaves were denied stable family ties. Masters could break up kinship groups by selling individuals at will. The system required African slaves to be regarded as goods not people. It took a long time for the Christian conscience in Britain to be stirred, and we are in awe at the bravery and moral fervour of the abolitionists who had to argue from first principles against the wicked assumptions of a hierarchy of racial worth, i.e. white supremacy. Some leading voices in the church of the day also made lazy and uncritical assumptions that failed to challenge the legitimacy of slavery. Some Bishops voted against the earliest moves for abolition in Parliament. The Slave Trade is a stain on our history, but in America slavery and its aftermath has been pervasive: it led to the virtual breakup of the USA during the civil war; even after the abolition of slavery a pattern of injustice and segregation was deeply entrenched. The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement fought and campaigned for Black recognition, inclusion and empowerment and its work continues. Black experience in America is still one of inequality, daily encounters with subtle and explicit forms of racism, and life simply being a lot harder. The odds are not stacked in black people’s favour.
In Britain we are still coming to terms with our diversity. Immigration has been a politically incendiary question and despite legislation to provide equality and freedom from discrimination, racism remains alive and well. We are not a country at ease with our diversity. People of colour find this nation a different place to the one white people inhabit.
Although we have no memorials to people involved in the Slave Trade in Lichfield Cathedral, the current controversy about Edward Colston and Cecil Rhodes makes me want to examine and revisit our past carefully. It’s always good to begin that searching and sifting with the question “Who’s interests are being served or represented here? Whose case is not being made?” We all know Cathedrals have become “halls of fame”: we are replete with past generations’ generous estimation of their peers and their achievements. But we don’t see or hear much from what might be called “the underside of history”. Like many other Cathedrals, Lichfield is rich in memorials to military campaigns; many of them colonial operations, the direct subjugation of people resisting British rule. Over the next few months and years I can foresee Lichfield, with most other Cathedrals, having to undertake an honest and judicious review of how we interpret and display these artefacts and whether some might need to find a home in a more neutral setting. It would be arrogant and stupid of us not to undertake this evaluation.
The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, at the hands of the police, the murder of Stephen Lawrence by racist thugs in South London and the unsatisfactory and ineffective investigation by the Metropolitan Police are both wake-up calls. They cannot be ignored by Christian people. Is this just me being a well-meaning white liberal? Of course, I’m conditioned by my background and education. But like all believers I, with you, must listen to the Bible. Every Easter, along with our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrating Passover, we tell the story of Moses leading the enslaved, oppressed people of Israel into freedom. God made a way through the sea and the wilderness where none seemed possible. Like you, I listen to the prophets and the way they spoke of the liberating power of God: you hear these transforming visions of roads made straight, mountain tops sealed, flickering lamps restored, righteousness flowering like a mighty stream, being bound for glory. We have visions of a world where all God’s children will dwell in peace. The chains that humiliate and oppress are to be broken. God’s signature deed is liberation. We’re freed from death and sin, so we share in his liberating work of lifting burdens. To be black in Britain is still too often to be discriminated against because of one’s colour and what that colour means to white people. This continued presence of racism, subtle or overt in our church and in our society is a bitter sin that tears at the soul of the white community, as it inflicts dehumanising harm on the black community. When we “do” racial justice, actively make room for, appreciate and understand Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people (BAME), we actively seek to heal a wound.
Martin Luther King once explained: “Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love”. For people of faith, acting justly in race matters expresses a love of specific neighbours which is all part of believing in a living and loving God. Doing justice is intrinsic to faith because the God who points out springs of water in the wilderness cannot be separated from the ones who wander there; the God who breaks chains is always alongside those marching, walking or hobbling to the promised land.
“In the wilderness I will make a way” (Isaiah 43:19)
With my love, prayers and blessing.
Adrian