Anti-Racist Spirituality

Eight Practical Steps: Anti-Racist Spirituality
By Kenneth Leech

(1) An anti-racist spirituality demands corporate support and discipline, and the recovery of that vital word solidarity. This is not a time for lonely wilderness crusaders. Rather we need to shape a community of comrades who are seeking to deepen our spiritual experience and our political solidarity.' Macintyre stresses the need for a network of small groups of friends who can sustain and nourish spiritual and moral values through the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. We have tried to do this in the Jubilee Group network in Britain. It is vital if we are to overcome loneliness and fragmentation.

(2) We need to take seriously the issues of anger and pain, and not to seek to diffuse or sanitize them. There is much glib talk in the church about reconciliation is the aim of the Gospel and of Christian ministry, but it is rarely the immediate result. The ministry of Jesus did not, in the short term, lead to reconciliation, but to division, hostility and crucifixion. The only people who were described as being reconciled as a result of the ministry of Jesus are Herod and Pilate.

In the field of 'race relations' there is much talk of the need for harmony. But the rhetoric of 'good race relations' and 'racial harmony' can obscure the nature of racism. For, while good relations are, better than bad relations, it is injustice and righteousness which is central. And the impetus to the attainment of righteousness is historically linked to violence. We need a spirituality which can make sense of what is often termed 'meaningless violence' or 'mindless violence'. Such violence is neither meaningless nor mindless but is rooted in a recognition that violence does achieve what many years of research and documentation may not. When, in 1981, urban rebellions occurred in Liverpool 8, one of the best documented and over researched districts in Britain, government minister Michael Heseltine told some community leaders including local priest Austin Smith: 'Violence will get you nowhere.' 'It got you up here' was Smith's response. If Christian spirituality is to be a spirituality of nonviolence, it must be a nonviolence which understands and, in the literal sense, sympathizes with the violent urge to change, not the violence of those who wish to remain pure and aloof.

An anti-racist spirituality will be a spirituality which recognizes the centrality of conflict and struggle. And here we come into collision with the assumption within the liberal tradition that improvements and reforms can occur without any fundamental threat to, or break with, the existing system of power relations. If we adopt the 'coat of paint' theory of racism, that is perfectly possible. But if racism is not simply a pathological growth on an otherwise healthy and just society, but is deeply rooted in that society, then to attack racism is to threaten the whole fabric. And it is the prospect of so fundamental and painful an upheaval that many liberal Christians cannot face. Anglicans in particular are prone to a theology and a spirituality which has no place for conflict. As Conrad Noel once commented, 'they imagine that the mighty will be put down from their seats so gently that they will not feel the bump when they hit the ground.'

(3) An anti-racist spirituality must include the dimension of self-scrutiny and confrontation with our own illusion of falsehood. It was Nietzsche who said that those who fight with monsters are in danger of becoming monstrous. There is a real danger that in the course of struggle we will become bitter, permanently angry, broken and unattractive people. We will need purity of heart, intense love and persistence, as well as the guidance and watchfulness of others.

The British feminist Sheila Rowbotham writes of the phenomenon of the lonely militant, hard, erect, self-contained, controlled, without the time or the ability to express loving passion, who cannot pause to nurture, and for whom friendship is a diversion from the struggle. The lonely militant can so easily become a caricature, living on illusion, with a single transferable speech and correct line on everything.

(4) So, an anti-racist spirituality needs to be contemplative and reflective, for we are working for deep healing. As we seek to be more intensely active, so we will need prayer, silence and solitude more and more. Martin Luther King saw clearly that if he did not practice such prayer in solitude, the movement would suffer.

(5) One of the problems of the left in secular politics and in the church, is that of institutionalization. There has been a great deal of exaggerated talk in recent years about 'tenured radicals' usually in the context of so-called 'political correctness'. I am not addressing this large and confused issue, but there is an aspect which has profound spiritual consequences: the tendency in managerial radicalism towards a distant elitism which has ceased to listen to the voices from the back streets. Much professional anti-racism has become very managerial, operating in effect on policies of 'trickle down' and influencing the 'policy villages', often fighting racism from above the battle. We need constantly to return to the streets and hear the forgotten voices.

(6) The struggle against racism within the church must recognize that many of those who, in their rhetoric, agree with us, are not in fact on our side, and that our allies will be found in surprising places. So, we need to be working well beyond the boundaries of the church, and this raises the question of making connections.

I believe that anti-racist spirituality must avoid two mistaken ways of looking at racial oppression. One is to see racism as so fundamentally different from other forms of oppression that it must be understood and combated in its own right, as an issue, separate from other issues. To this it must be replied that, while there are indeed unique dimensions to racism, it is important to see the connections and parallels with other levels of oppression, injustice and discrimination, and to build alliances with those involved. If this is not possible, the outlook for any significant attack on these evils is very bleak.

The second approach, however, links oppressions in such a way as to dissolve them into one another, losing the specific and concrete character of each, and producing a kind of imprecision and conceptual and practical flabbiness which impedes action and induces paralysis. Such an approach refers airily to 'human liberation' though I have noticed that many of those who speak of 'human liberation' never showed much concern for anybody's liberation until women and blacks started to raise questions. It is in fact a way of saying we have no intention of addressing your concrete demands.

Racism must be combated at the level of the concrete and the specific, but connections must be made. Racism is in fact a litmus test or a barium meal which reveals other injustices and other levels of oppression within the body politic.

(7) I believe that much Christian opposition to racism has been sidelined to the sphere of 'social responsibility' or 'social justice ministry' so that it is seen as an area of interest for certain people but is not central to the proclamation of the gospel and to the liturgical life of the church. Yet history shapes consciousness and inspires activity. And anti-racist spirituality must place the struggle against racism right at the heart of the baptismal covenant and of the Eucharistic celebration.

(8) And this leads me to my final point: that an anti-racist spirituality needs to include the dimension of celebration. In recent years South African Christians have shown us how necessary it is to sing and dance, to celebrate the dragon's downfall even though we ourselves were bleeding. Babylon is falling, and we need to prefigure the victory of the Kingdom of God in our prayer and praise. (1996)

Loving Spirit, pour out your healing salve upon our hands that we may bind up the wounds of those hurt by racial discrimination; inspire us to accompany our actions with words of positive affirmation for the survivors of racism & move us to forge ahead in our work of racial reconciliation. Amen. (Lorna Williams)