Following the killing of George Floyd in 2020, many churches and secular institutions committed themselves to racial justice. Notwithstanding, recent gains in far-right movements put this work at risk.

THE ACT OF REMEMBRANCE

In acts of Remembrance, we remember those who defended against the worst of humanity, the structures we take for granted. In acts of Remembrance, following John 15:13, we remember those who sacrificed their lives so that peace could flourish.

These events seem a lifetime ago, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rise of right-wing extremism and neo-fascist movements create instability globally. Acts of Remembrance unite the past to the present in the hope that such inhumanity isn’t repeated.

OVERCOMING COLLECTIVE AMNESIA

There is a danger in forgetting. For many, memory loss is often associated with elderly dementia, but it also afflicts Gen Z – born between 1997 and 2012 – as these digital natives wrongly learn history through social media and news clips.

More widely, collective amnesia exists on matters of racial justice. In the lead-up to the 80th anniversary of VE Day, a survey reported that the public is largely unaware of the contribution made by Commonwealth soldiers in WWII. However, over three million Global Majority Heritage men were mobilised from across the Commonwealth into combat and non-combat roles.

BLACK LIVES MATTER

It’s instructive that during WWI, less than a hundred years after Emancipation, Black men from the Caribbean with amazing grace volunteered, and many died for a king they had never seen, against an enemy they didn’t know, in lands not hitherto set upon. Most tragically, the racial prejudice experienced in life was perpetuated in death. The 2021 Report, commissioned by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to review Historical Inequalities in Commemoration, revealed that hundreds of thousands of British soldiers from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and The Gulf were commemorated ‘unequally’; many received no headstone, too many were not commemorated by name or possibly at all.

This ‘amazing grace’ of those servicemen resonates with today’s readings as both the Epistle (Rom 8:35-36) and Gospel (Matt 5:11-12), provide solace to the persecuted. However, if we view these experiences through the narrow lens of military history, we could overlook the important truth about the British Empire.

The Home Office paper The Historical Roots of the Windrush Scandal revealed how ‘the British Empire depended on racist ideology in order to function’. For centuries, England has misled her offspring, satiating them with tales of ‘glorious’ Empire and colonial benevolence, instead of liberating them with the incontrovertible truths of exploitation, oppression, and genocide.

This system of racial bias, instituted hundreds of years ago, manifests itself today in social and economic inequalities. It also impacts the Church’s work on contested heritage, as historical memory is an area of disagreement.

Many sacred spaces bear silent witness to these historic injustices. Plaques, windows, and other monuments celebrate the financial patronage of colonialism without confronting the un-Christian suffering that underwrote such ‘exploits’. There’s a lack of appreciation of the need to offer welcome and solace to all instead of projecting public iconography of White privilege.

A BALM IN GILEAD

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist, emphasised that ‘until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter’. Truth-telling is a balm in Gilead.

During Holy Week, Archbishop Stephen Cottrell spoke on reparatory justice and institutional accountability at the United Nations. In his address, he lamented that ‘…scriptures and traditions of the church were twisted to legitimise enslavement… Because we the hunters, we the slave traders…exploited and bought and sold our own sisters and brothers, we need to be liberated from our failings. We need to do this by being honest and penitent about what happened, and then determined to build a better world.’ The Church Commissioners have committed £100m to address these failings.

The Church’s commitment to racial justice isn’t simply to reflect demographic trends, or to be socially responsive in pursuing equality, diversity, and inclusion, but rather to stand against the evil and pernicious sin of racism. The racial justice mandate flows from our primary identity in our Lord Jesus Christ, and his command of love and unity. Racial justice is the contemporary actualisation of the biblical exhortations to welcome the stranger and love our neighbour.

This is not a struggle between races but the pursuit of unity across them. It responds to Micah 6:8, which reminds us of what the Lord requires: to ‘do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God’.