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So, I ended up spending four years as an active member of a Baptist Church. From the moment I first walked in, it was an eye-opening experience. It was full, I was warmly welcomed, and the minister immediately arranged to have coffee with me. Church leaders don’t always find it easy to have a former minister in the congregation, but he wasn’t remotely threatened. A major change of theological heart led to me leaving this church for Unitarianism in 2017, but I did so with warm memories, and after long conversations with the minister to see if there was a way I could stay. He left his post recently, and we are still good friends.
The church wasn’t just full, it had all ages, and people from all different ethnic and national backgrounds. In the 1960s, a former minister of the church spent time in Jamaica, and through this, some of the Windrush generation started to attend the church back in the UK. Today, there are at least three generations of Jamaican heritage members, and the first generation are a substantial part of the church’s backbone.
They didn’t always have it easy. One lady, now in her eighties, joined the church after arriving from Jamaica as a young nurse. She told me how a prominent church member used to avoid speaking to her when he saw her, whether in the street or the church. One Sunday, she blocked his path and said to him: ‘You can walk past me in the street, but don’t you ignore me in here.’ It would have been understandable if this generation of Jamaican Baptists had given up and gone to a black majority church. But they stuck it out, and the church owes them a great deal for their pioneering spirit.
Having learned to welcome one generation of immigrants, the church has now provided a home for people from all over the world. It has members from other Islands of the West Indies, Nigeria, China, the Congo, and Iran. Its astonishing development hasn’t always been smooth, though. One long standing church member, who married the daughter of a second generation Jamaican British woman he met at church, explained it like this: ‘We prayed for growth, and then some of us complained about the growth that God gave us.’ But although there are some grumbles, and, like all families, now and then people fall out, the church is alive and well.
One day, an Iranian taxi driver turned up and asked if he could meet there with a few friends for Bible study and prayer. The church didn’t hesitate, and today there is a huge fellowship of Iranian and Kurdish Christians, most of whom have come to the UK to escape persecution. Their asylum applications are frequently denied, as the Home Office routinely claims they are not genuine Christians. So the minister would accompany them to an appeal hearing in Bradford and testify to the depth of their faith and involvement in the life of the church. For a time, I went with them, offering support and praying with those about to face the court. Fortunately, most of these appeals are successful.
There are record numbers of Baptisms in the church, most of them Iranian. A large proportion of them end up moving to other parts of the UK, mainly at the Home Office’s bequest. But the minister would stay in touch, and it is clear that they nearly always join a church in the place that they move to. Those that stay remain active and committed church members. And this church is far from alone in having a large Iranian convert contingent.
The Congolese fellowship has its roots in an escape from horrific brutality in their homeland. They are slightly more separate from the main church than the Iranians, but they are still part of the family, and are always among the mainstream church on special occasions, when their choir is truly something to behold.
What has happened at this church is remarkable, but it is far from unique. Across the UK, the churchgoing population is increasingly made up of immigrants and their descendants. Some white British churches have managed to bring minorities into the church, and are reaping the rewards now. Others have failed, and continue to be all-white, all-British, and to decline sharply. But many of the churches that ‘belong’ to non-white ethnic groups are packed.
The perception of inevitably declining British Christianity comes from some unpleasant assumptions about who is British and what Britain is. They think that Christianity in the UK is synonymous with Middle England. It isn’t. Black majority churches are booming, there are more and more Chinese and Korean fellowships and churches, and many mainstream churches are becoming less and less white. There are also many East Europeans in our churches as well.
As an itinerant preacher I’ve often travelled across cities on a Sunday morning, and I can assure you - the churchgoing traffic is a lot less white than you might imagine. In London, more than one in four churchgoers is black.
So it enrages me when I hear middle class white people declaring that Christianity and Christians have privilege. Is there not something rather troubling in their inability to see non-white Christians? They wouldn’t say that Christianity is privileged in this country if they had spent time talking and praying with Christians who have come here after being tortured for their faith, and who suffer the indignities of asylum processes before getting minimum wage work.
I should also mention that I’ve met more people from working class backgrounds in church than I have in the circles where Christianity is accused of having privilege.
Nor is it an example of privilege when white middle class Christian children are bullied at school - something that has happened generation after generation. Adult Christians don’t have an easy time of it either. I know from long, painful experience, that some people’s reaction to Christianity is visceral. It’s the way of all prejudice to feel the instant revulsion or hostility, and then look for a justification for it.
Where privilege does exist I am still uneasy at the way in which so many people seem to be looking for permission to insult, abuse and threaten. The idea of ‘punching up’ is starting to look more and more like an excuse to deny the humanity of the other, and sometimes this is the prelude to serious persecution. But irrespective of this point, the accusation of ‘privilege’ is an absurd one to direct at Christians in the UK today.
But, they object, Christianity is the state religion. This really is clutching at straws, and it makes no sense to anyone who knows their history. Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Unitarians, and all other non-conformist churches, including evangelical independents, trace their history to the Great Ejection of 1662, that followed the Act of Uniformity. These are dissenting, nonconformist denominations, with a history of persecution, struggle and exclusion. Their ancestors in the faith were martyred. The first nonconformist ministers gave up all income, comfort and security rather than become part of the national church. Generations of nonconformist Christians were denied entry to university or certain professions. Our history makes it clear that the cause of the poor, and the founding of the Labour and Liberal Parties owe much to nonconformist Christianity.
Nor are Roman Catholics part of the state religion. Many of them are first or second generation immigrants, the Irish among them suffering constant prejudice and unwarranted police attention in the seventies and eighties. Now, many UK Catholics are Polish, and do we consider them privileged? And if you consider the history of long-established English Catholics to be one of privilege, well, just read The Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser.
What of the black-majority Pentecostal churches - some of the largest, and fastest growing congregations in the UK? Where is their connection to privilege?
Now, it is true that the Church of England retains some vestiges of privilege, compared to other denominations, and many Christians are unhappy about this. But just as not all Christians are white and middle class, so they are not all Anglicans. And anyway, how much power does the C of E really have these days? Is it really enough to justify spraying insults and abuse at all Christians?
Look at our schools, our Universities, our public services, and our media. Have you not noticed that humanism has comprehensively defeated Christianity? Do the last faint traces of the church’s former status really trigger you to the extent that you perceive Christianity as some sort of totalitarian regime under which you chafe?
What about faith schools? Yes, this is a tricky issue. But there are Jewish and Muslim schools too.
What about Christianity’s history? Well, it has to be faced: all is not well there. Christianity has done great evil in the world as well as great good. I would concede that, and so would just about every Christian that I know. And often it has been Christians on the receiving end of Christian violence, in the same way that Muslims today are the principal victims of Islamist terrorism.
What about Christianity’s association with imperialism and war? I would concede that too. It is not a glorious history, and many Christians, particularly non-conformist Christians (including Unitarian Christians) frequently go to great lengths to point this out. And yet globally, the church is most alive in those places on the receiving end of colonialism. So many some former colonial subjects have become a fixture in British churches. Are they, and their British born children, privileged?
All that notwithstanding, here’s the fundamental problem. When you take something that has happened due to the activity of one portion of a nation, ethnic group, or religion, and blame the whole nation, ethnic group or religion, that is a very wicked, no, evil thing to do.
Finally, there’s one more glaring fact that some people struggle to see. Other religions also have, shall we say, rather unfortunate histories. Islam, for example. Islamic history is inextricably linked with war and empire. It has also, like Christianity, been used as justification for appalling human rights abuses. There is no equivalent condemnation of Islam from the people who hate Christianity because they’re afraid. Afraid of the consequences of criticising Islam. Afraid of being called racist or Islamophobic. Too afraid to think through a consistent attitude towards the world’s religions.
Perpetuating this myth about the privilege of Christianity is straight out of the far-right play book. You take a weakened minority and pretend that they have enormous power. You portray any status, resources or influence that they might have as an existential threat to others. You bully the other, by pretending to be a victim. Christianity is not privileged. It deserves the same respect as other world faiths, and as secular beliefs. Not more. Not less. Why is it so hard for some people to concede this? The answer, like the Kingdom of Heaven, lies within.
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