I’ve already posted a reflection on the power / white Christianity relationship.  I feel really called to post a second one.  This one comes from an entirely Christian perspective.

If we were created in the image of God then, as a human, Jesus must bear the divine image too.  Yet we have twisted things so that God and Jesus have become images of us instead.  The image with this post has a white, blue-eyed, Aryan Jesus like those in childrens’ bibles of my youth; it also has a historically informed impression of how Jesus might have looked.  Aryan Jesus is, for me, a heresy.

Jesus was born to an unwed mother, into a working-class family; he was a refugee for parts of His life; He was mocked, tortured and killed for speaking truth.  How many of our clergy have experienced the above?  Yet they stand in persona Christi.  The vast majority of clergy (in my experience) are white, middle-class or above, highly educated people from stable families and inherited the established faith of their homeland.  Many of them went straight into theological training from university and then into ministry.  Some of them people have taken great effort to see how the other half live; many have not.  I was once told by a priest that ordination is a profession of the middle classes – and he was proud of how he, from a background in care and a patchy education, was managing to emulate everything they represented.  No, no, no, no, no! 

I must call myself out: I am white and from a middle-class background.  I have, however, lived in poverty for much of my life and left behind my middle-class roots.  I’m also not neurotypical, have a physical disability, came from a home that was abusive and am gender non-conforming.  I also feel called to ministry, but the diocesan vocations team can’t seem to equate this to the above. 

I have seen how clergy who are out of touch with the man on the street damage our integrity: the priest who married during the second lockdown because his fiancée was pregnant and was more concerned about their lavish wedding with 29 people present than about solidarity with the rest of the world, damaging the reputation of the Church locally, and the priest who can’t understand that most of the congregation can’t afford a £350 weekend pilgrimage to Walsingham or a £1200 trip to Oberammergau, alienating most of his congregation and leaving them feeling inferior; he couldn’t understand why parishioners asked for free, local discipleship courses instead.

These clergy are not unusual and neither are congregations who are like them.  Imagine walking into church like that for the first time as a person of colour, having nothing to put into the collection plate or not understanding half the words in the sermon.  How long would you stay?  If white, middle-class Jesus is a heresy, surely we should be trying to represent Jesus with diverse clergy?

Jesus ALWAYS sided with the underdog.  He never excluded the poor, the disabled, the foreigner, the uneducated, the outcast or the slightly odd.  Surely our churches and their clergy should be exactly the same?  Yet still our churches are treated more as country clubs for the righteous than hospitals for the broken and outcast; our mission to those we view as less fortunate than ourselves come from the ‘poor them’ perspective rather than Jesus’ absolute equality of welcome and hospitality.

Lord, help me to wave my nonconformity around as a beacon to all those who might be afraid to come to Your Church as a sign of your radical acceptance, equality and love.