Looking backward to apologise and forward to inclusion

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 15 November 2007 19:28:05

If you wander around the right bits of the Baptist blog world this week you will find that flavour of the month appears to race, ethnicity and inclusion.

Lama's log gives clear reports on the debates that have been going on down at the BU council in Swanick and an excellent analysis of the issues involved. The question is do we apologise for the sins of the past and is that part of the key to reconciliation in the future. Although as is pointed out there are wider questions involved regarding how a denomination which holds autonomy of individual congregations as the key can give an apology on behalf of that whole denomination.

In terms of the wording which was agreed and reached Skinny Fair Trade Latte directs us to the BU website which gives the text .

Reading through the wording issued, I believe that the apology can only be worth anything if the denomination actually looks at how it can challenge attitudes on a grass roots level (and actually engage with the members and attenders of individual churches). It also will only hold worth if the denomination learns from the sins of the past and doesn't act to cause division in the present by scapegoating those who are currently seen in a negative light by churches and who the church (structurally) continues to take an approach to which is basically colonial in nature, but is dressed up as compassion. This needs to be a spring board into the denomination taking on inclusiveness as a whole, rather than focusing on one area of injustice at the expense of others.

The current focus on ethnicity co-incides with the visit of the Rev Jesse Jackson to Britain, which has included preaching in Oxford and talking to students at Regents as Andy Goodliffe reports.

Personally I am all for this if it involves listening and steps forward to real inclusivity but my worry is that practically everything that has gone on is actually an exercise in PC liberal backslapping by the Baptist elite who were challenged during Kate Coleman's year as president of BUGB. From where I've been observing they have failed to fully grasp the nettle yet as to how they help our denomination turn into a truly inclusive denomination where equality of worth in Christ and the imago dei within all are not merely theological ideas to be debated but realities to be preached and lived however hard this is. This requires more than policies and platitudes from Swanick or the spires.