INTRODUCTION

I write this article as a Baptist preacher and theologian. I also offer it as a minister who is consciously White, having experienced an awakening of sorts in relation to how I navigate preparing and delivering sermons in light of this particular self-understanding. God transcends all particularity, whilst at the same time, God is always revealed through particularity, that is, in time and space amongst real people. As a result, whilst I don’t think my Whiteness (or for that matter, my maleness, my partially sightedness, or my interest in ultra running) is the ultimate factor that constitutes preaching, it is an intrinsically penultimate aspect of who I am as a finite and fallible being. Therefore, racial justice in preaching is going to take a different vibe for a White person, because I’m not Black, I’m not Brown, I’m White, and it is as this person I am witnessing to the God’s living Word.

I have not got space here to talk about the complex discourses around race, so will talk about some constructive ways I have been slowly learning to preach with an attentiveness to the theology and ethics of racial justice. In what follows, I will share examples around the aesthetics, the arrangements, and the attitudes of racial justice. These terms will be drawn from my recent publication (Dark Weeping and White Sleeping) which started to unpack this subject. I will be writing through the prism of being a White preacher, grateful to be part of a collection of articles where those from a global majority heritage will have their critical and oftentimes ignored voices foregrounded.

AESTHETICS OF RACIAL JUSTICE

From a desire to be ‘just’ regarding racism, White folks sometimes take a ‘colourblind’ approach to preaching by seeking to not see or qualify people based on skin colour. This draws something positive from the sentiments in Galatians 3:28, recognising there is no longer ‘Jew nor Gentile’, Black or White, for we are ‘all one in Christ Jesus’. Yet, the early church witnessed incidents where certain social or ethnic groups experienced marginalisation by those who were acting in ways they perhaps did not realise excluded their sisters and brothers (e.g. Acts 6:1–6; 1 Corinthians 11:17–22). Given the recent research in the Church of England regarding racism, and the theological importance of recognising unity amidst (not despite) difference, preaching would do well to witness this.

In 2021, I preached on Genesis 1. Whilst preparing a PowerPoint presentation, I typed ‘Adam and Eve’ into Google. All the images on the search engine were of aesthetically White human beings. I qualified the search to ‘Black Adam and Eve’ and saw images that were markedly different. This captures my point. We (Whites) sometimes preach and think in a way that we consider normal or even neutral (or deracialised), like we are working with a blank (white) canvas upon which all ‘other’ colours are presented, and hence, we do not qualify our White gaze. Some of us may value those from other cultures or ethnic backgrounds, whilst still imagining them as ‘other’ and not appreciating that our norms are also a particular culture/sub-culture that is an ‘other’ to numerous folks around the world. Of course, given that we are in the UK, some may consider it understandable and right for White British culture to be the norm here. But that same way of thinking is pervasive all around the world. White Jesuses are displayed in churches that are full of people who inhabit a different skin colour, and this embodies something suggestive: either White skin colour is best, and/or White skin colour is normal. That is why I intentionally used a Black Adam and Eve in my PowerPoint, and try to use images of people with various skin tones. It may seem trivial to those of us who have never had our own skin colour or presence questioned or compartmentalised on racial grounds. Justice requires preaching a diverse aesthetic.

Even in solely White churches, preaching a White aesthetic funnels God’s story through Whiteness. My church have done three simple things to address this. First, the preaching has used analogies that foreground issues of race, such as the Civil Rights Movement. Second, where possible, appropriate and genuine, people lead at the front in ways that are reflective of who they are, such as praying in their mother tongue or reading the Bible in Tamil. This reinforces the reality that Christian faith is not solely a White, English faith. Third, the White ministers have built relationships with ministers from a global majority heritage over time, and have invited some of those folks to preach on a Sunday. What was fascinating, humbling and wonderful was witnessing the Nigerian and Ghanaian congregants lining up to speak with a Black preacher recently. He embodied an aesthetic that no amount of talking could achieve on our part.

Thoughtful decisions can contribute a bit towards re-forming the preaching aesthetics. Through listening to the very people we often racialise, Whites can make intentional steps to make the preaching space more just for all.

ARRANGEMENTS OF RACIAL JUSTICE

I want to take us further, because in our (White) attempt to redress the aesthetics in our preaching, we can sometimes risk compounding what we I call racialised arrangements. That is to say, we might preach in a way that gives voice to racial justice issues and folks from a global majority heritage, but continue to narrate God’s work in the world through a White blank canvas. In other words, the script of the church’s message to the world remains a White one, where non-White people are graciously invited in but remain distinct from those at the centre.

When I was a teenager, we had a youth weekend away where we were asked to make a drama for the parable of the good Samaritan. We wanted to modernise it and someone suggested that it could become the parable of the good Rastafarian. In Is God Colour-Blind? Anthony Reddie notes the underlying optic which arranges characters in this way, which assumes that ‘[Black men] are trouble-makers and undesirables; but some of [them], of course, can be acceptable’ (p. 18-19). Preaching not only needs to address the presence and dignity of Black and Brown bodies in our content. Critically, preaching must also attend to the racialised script that posits the ‘non-White’ person as surprising when they are virtuous. A group of White evangelical youths were shocked to contemplate a good Rastafarian who had been othered by them, much as the Jews othered their Samaritan neighbours in the original version. But not only does this place White people as God’s people (i.e. Jews) in the story-telling (a classic error), but the arrangement of characters in this way compounds the seeming inconceivability of a dread doing something good. A well-meaning attempt to modernise this story was clumsy and potentially devastating. Tellingly, we did not qualify any racial identity in the other characters, presumably because they were racially neutral?!

I mentioned above that it is important to address subjects in our preaching that go beyond our general horizons, That said, we must be careful that we do not pigeon-hole people racially regarding what we think is important to them. A few years ago, I had a housemate from Kerala who made me realise not everyone from India can cook! Instead, they had numerous other gifts that they shared in our home. Usha Reifsnider recently said in a ministerial classroom, if you invite a non-White person to preach, for goodness sake don’t ask them to preach on hospitality. Her point chastised me, but she was absolutely right. Whilst White Western culture can indeed learn a lot from those of other tribes and tongues (and I would say hospitality is an example), we should not reduce others by arranging them racially to speak solely about those subjects, as though that is all we can learn from them, whilst Whites have a free reign regarding their preaching emphases. Surely a Black or Brown person could preach on any subject, as there is so much more to them than the racial stereotypes we confer on them. Black people are just as diverse as White people are. We will be blessed to let someone preach on a subject that is not what we presume they should preach on.

ATTITUDES OF RACIAL JUSTICE

Most readers are familiar with William Wilberforce, the well-known hero of the abolition movement. Intriguingly, in Black and British: A Forgotten History, David Olusoga notes that abolitionists such as ‘Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, Ottobah Cuguano, the Sons of Africa and others’ were written out of the story, ‘and a similar fate befell the female abolitionists, like Elizabeth Heyrick and Hannah More.’ These omissions are demonstrative of how a story arranges or forgets certain characters. Olusoga argues: ‘the notion that the enslaved people had played a role in their own emancipation, that liberty had been demanded and fought for, rather than simply given, was for the most part forgotten’ (page 232). We may locate the reason for this by considering how emancipation was managed. Wilberforce was part of the ‘gradualist’ group that felt it necessary to orchestrate the mode of slaves’ liberation. Wilberforce was categorically against treating Africans like property, but he effectively exercised dominion over the Black bodies he sought to liberate. The story is that Black people were poor unfortunate fools. Wilberforce maybe never considered that Blacks could have some wisdom regarding the process and timescale of their salvation. Thus history betrays its attitude.

This is what I call ‘progressive White supremacy’ and it operates in numerous institutions. Some White people recognise the inherent value, legitimacy and beauty of those who are not White, but continue to live in a way that (albeit subtly) betrays an attitude of mastery. Many of us would happily listen to a Black or Brown preacher from time to time, but wouldn’t want them to be the senior leader of our church, yet we would expect Black or Brown people to accept a White minister. There is a continual, subconscious, attitude in many Whites that entertains the voices of non-White believers within an underlying assumption that Whites are cleverer, more virtuous, safe, or more fit for leadership. To be honest, it is a pathology that continues to rear its head within me. I do not do what I want to do (Romans 7:15–20). It is critical to check within myself whether I am resisting someone because of an ingrained attitude of racial superiority and mastery.

Paula Gooder (in The Parables) shares a helpful analogy (which she got from Mark Allan Powell in What Do They Hear). In Luke 15:11–32, a range of people were asked to interpret the predicament of the younger (prodigal) son. People from the USA equated his hunger and need with his own moral fault as he had clearly ‘squandered his wealth in wild living’ (verse 13). A group of Russians interpreted his plight as a tragic misfortune because the text says ‘there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need’ (verse 14). Readers from Tanzania noted that the son was clearly starving because ‘no one gave him anything’ (verse 16). If we read this passage with an attitude of individualistic morality, we will judge its characters and the world (as well as other interpreters) this way. It is not a bad perspective, but there is so much more in the text, and so much more to being a disciple of Jesus, if we intentionally engage readers and commentators who might not assume the same attitude as us.

CONCLUSION

Jill Marsh shares some helpful wisdom as a necessary caveat to all I have shared (in Anthony G. Reddie and Carol Troupe eds., Deconstructing Whiteness, Empire and Mission). She contends that many White people are intentionally seeking to be positive, kind and inclusive of those from a global majority heritage, but fall into the trappings of racialised assumptions. I confess to potentially having done that here. Apparently, ministers of ethnically diverse churches ‘considered the making of assumptions to be the top obstacle to healthy intercultural relationships within the churches where they worked.’ One example might be assuming that ‘people’s lives must be difficult rather than might be.’ So it is with humility that we preach the aesthetics, arrangements and attitudes of racial justice, recognising we may get it wrong at points. However, honesty and penitence over our racialised mistakes can be transformative, if we are willing to grow. Many Black and Brown Christians have a lot more grace for White people who are genuinely willing to learn.