How To Be An Anti-Racist

    

This summer, I have been seeking to grow in my understanding of racism; to examine my own life in an ongoing, life-long process of repentance and belief, or, turning away from a particular outlook and pressing into a new one. To help me, I have been reading (and lining up yet-to-read) and listening in on conversations. I have sought to learn from female and male voices; UK-based and US-based and other global voices; Christian, Muslim, and secular voices; written and spoken voices—all while recognising that this is a life-long challenge, not a summer-long challenge.

I’ve just finished Ibram X. Kendi's How to be an Anti-racist. I would strongly recommend it, as being both helpful and hopeful. In marked contrast to much of the noise around this cultural moment, Kendi is unwaveringly honest about the complexity of the issue at hand (including about his own dishonesty). Though he wouldn’t use the terms, Kendi models an ongoing practice of what Jesus calls “repent and believe”—and the often painful or embarrassing moments of revelation that move us on from one stage in our journey to the next.

Kendi contends that the root of racism is what he terms powerful self-interest (I would also use the terms selfishness and self-centredness) which enacts racist policies and then creates racist ideas to justify itself. This, in contrast to the view that racist ideas result in racist policies which result in racist power. And while human beings in every age have known powerful self-interest, Kendi contends that racism, as we see it today, is only around 400 years old, an expression of modernity, conjoined from birth with economics. While humanity is not going to rid ourselves of self-interest, racism is not inevitable.

One of the key learnings for me is Kendi’s recognition that you cannot change hearts and minds in order to change bad policies that are, ultimately, killing us all. That approach is too abstract; and there is too great a sense of fear at what we will lose. Instead, we need to change policies (which requires taking opportunities to challenge, and to shape and test and refine and assess and repeat-the-process, policies). Hearts and minds will follow.

For me, so much of this book, written from a secular outlook, chimes with the gospel. With the repeated challenge and invitation throughout scripture from genesis to revelation to embrace the stranger, to reject othering—and to reject making others invisible in a false post-other-ing. With the repeated challenge to put to death our desire to be at the centre—to die to self—and to live for others, preferring them over ourselves. With the call to repent and believe, again and again and again. With the body politic and economic of the kingdom of heaven as an alternative society in the midst of the world, however (inevitably) imperfect it may be. And all in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I am grateful for Ibram X. Kendi’s voice.

Genre

I love detective fiction, especially Nordic Noir / Scandi-Noir. I love it for binding-together past and present, person and place, body and soil; for the psychological profiling, the forensic attention to details, the pooling of patterns. I love it for the detectives at the heart of the story; for the way they lay bare, as on the autopsy table, the consequences of the decisions we make; for the exposition of human nature, in its complexity, and the dark secrets we all hide like a landscape lying beneath virgin snow. I love it for the wrestling with chaos, and order; the exorcising of ghosts; the guarding of community, and of the human heart.

And I realise that this is the manner in which I read, and find myself read by, scripture. The way I construct sermons, and conduct investigations into faith, hope, and love.

I recognise that this is not the only way in which scripture might be read. That it is not necessarily the best way. That some might not even consider it to be an appropriate way. But, when it comes down to it, it is the way I love.

Being human

In January, I read both Beartown and its sequel Us Against You. I’d not found Fredrik Backman before—I’m indebted to my friend Sean Gladding for the recommendation—but he is an astonishing writer. More than just well-written novels, Backman really gets under the skin of the human condition. The relevant theological term would be that we are all sinners, in need of grace. Whether intentionally or by miraculous accident, Backman story-tells the heights and depths of this mystery.

Sinner is not a moral designation. A sinner can be righteous, self-righteous, or unrighteous: they can live a morally upstanding life; be wilfully blind to their own faults; or embrace an identity as an outsider to morality. But all are sinners: we all hide from others—to protect ourselves, or to protect them—all put apart, all draw up battle lines. Good people do bad things from good motivations, or simply surrendering to badness. Bad people do good things, sometimes from bad motivations and sometimes simply surrendering to goodness. We hold back when we ought to speak out, and speak out when we would have been wise to exercise restraint. In time, as Backman describes so well, we discover that we are all alike. The realisation comes to us as violent grace, a jolt to restart the heart, a fresh beginning. But how quickly we forget.

We can’t help but polarise. And this is where liturgy comes to the rescue. Liturgy, sacred words spoken habitually over and over a lifetime, form us in a particular way. They do not do unto us, but demand hard work of us—liturgy is literally the work of the people—in submitting ourselves to the grace we so desperately need but so fiercely fight against.

When we gather together to share Holy Communion, we begin with the Prayer of Preparation:

Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

This is not a private prayer. We pray side by side with others, who each have their own God-given desires, just as we do. And we are forced to recognise, to acknowledge, that they, too, desire certain things, many of which are the very things we desire: to be known, to be loved, to be valued, to be safe from fear, to be of significance. Other people, no less than ourselves. There is no ‘Us’ and ‘Them,’ only we. Moreover, we are confronted with the truth that our desires, the ones we keep secret from so many people that they become secret to us, and the ones we wear on our sleeve, can get bent out of shape, become poisoned and poisonous—and need regular cleansing. This is as true for us as for the people standing to our right and our left. Desire is both common to humanity, and good. But—and this is also common to humanity—it needs tending to—and this not left to our own estimation, by turns too harsh and too indulgent, and so often simply tired to the bones.

Having so prepared ourselves, we move into Prayers of Penitence, saying:

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we have sinned against you and against our neighbour in thought and word and deed, through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault. We are truly sorry and repent of all our sins. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, who died for us, forgive us all that is past and grant that we may serve you in newness of life to the glory of your name. Amen.

or,

Most merciful God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we confess that we have sinned in thought, word and deed. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbours as ourselves. In your mercy forgive what we have been, help us to amend what we are, and direct what we shall be; that we may do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with you, our God. Amen.

Week by week, we look at our lives, at ourselves and those we live alongside side, and take a stand against all that tears us apart, in which we are all complicit. We do so, knowing that we will never arrive at a point where the lessons are learnt, and we live in a utopia. No, we do so out of deep commitment to a particular place and real people, we can neither live with nor live without.

And then, week by week, we hear these words:

Almighty God, who forgives all who truly repent, have mercy upon you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness, and keep you in life eternal, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

and we are washed clean, held close, somehow empowered to live another day.

In a polarised world, we need writers like Fredrik Backman—and not only for personal reading but for book group discussions. And we need liturgy. Both will help us live as characters in the story we find ourselves in.

Beartown

I’ve just finished reading Beartown by Fredrik Backman. It is a novel concerned with the Patriarchy, how it is bad for boys as well as for girls, and how women as well as men collude with it. But there is no clunky or sanctimonious Political Correctness here, just beautiful story-telling.

And, in almost every one of the fifty chapters, a sentence that arrested my heart—stopped time—before jolting my heart back to vigorous life. As unceremoniously as a defibrillator. The only adequate word to describe these sentences is grace. Grace, held out to a broken world.

Fredrik Backman has woven a brilliant story; and—unsung hero—Neil Smith’s translation from Swedish into English is stunning work.