Theologising Brexit: A Liberationist and Postcolonial Critique (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies) 9780367028886, 9780429019333, 0367028883

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Theologising Brexit

This book comprehensively analyses the theological challenge presented by the new post-Brexit epoch. The referendum vote for Britain to leave the European Union has led to a seismic shift in how parts of the British population view and judge their compatriots. The subsequent rise in the reported number of racially motivated incidents and the climate of vilification and negativity directed at anyone not viewed as ‘authentically’ British should be a matter of concern for all people. The book comprises a series of essays that address varying aspects of what it means to be British and how churches in Britain and the Christian faith could and should respond to a rising tide of White English nationalism. It is a provocative challenge to the all-too-often-tolerated xenophobia and to the paucity of response from many church leaders in the United Kingdom. This critique is offered through a prophetic, postcolonial model of Black theology that challenges the incipient sense of White entitlement and parochial ‘nativism’ that pervaded much of the referendum debate. The essays in this book challenge the Church and wider society to ensure justice and equity for all, not just a privileged sense of entitlement for some. It will be of keen interest to any scholar of Black, political and liberation theology and to those involved in cultural studies from a postcolonial perspective. Anthony G. Reddie is an Extraordinary Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of South Africa and a Fellow of Wesley House, in Cambridge, UK. He has written over 70 essays and articles on Christian education and Black theology and is the author and editor of 18 books. He is editor of Black Theology: An International Journal, the only academic periodical of its kind in the world.

Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies

The Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies series brings high quality research monograph publishing back into focus for authors, international libraries, and student, academic and research readers. This open-ended monograph series presents cutting-edge research from both established and new authors in the field. With specialist focus yet clear contextual presentation of contemporary research, books in the series take research into important new directions and open the field to new critical debate within the discipline, in areas of related study, and in key areas for contemporary society. Foucault, Art and Radical Theology The Mystery of Things Petra Carlsson Redell On the Resurrection of the Dead A New Metaphysics of Afterlife for Christian Thought James T. Turner, Jr. Recognition and Religion Contemporary and Historical Perspectives Edited by Maijastina Kahlos, Heikki J. Koskinen and Ritva Palmén Gaming and the Divine A New Systematic Theology of Video Games Frank G. Bosman Theologising Brexit A Liberationist and Postcolonial Critique Anthony G. Reddie For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ religion/series/RCRITREL

Theologising Brexit A Liberationist and Postcolonial Critique Anthony G. Reddie

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Anthony G. Reddie The right of Anthony G. Reddie to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or used in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-02888-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-01933-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

The Windrush Generation who have truly made Britain Great!

Contents

Acknowledgementsix Introduction

1

PART 1

Behind the scenes11   1 Setting the scene

13

  2 Courting controversy: the anti-Blackness problematic of mission Christianity

38

  3 Mind games: decolonising mission Christianity

62

  4 Now you see me, now you don’t: subjectivity, Blackness and difference in practical theology in Brexit Britain

89

  5 Being the enemy within

110

PART 2

Responding to the challenge133   6 Reading the Bible and multiple religious belonging

135

  7 Education and learning to be different

157

viii  Contents PART 3

The critical challenge of the other177   8 Rastafari and Black theology

179

  9 Doing it our way: Caribbean theology, contextualisation and cricket

202

10 Telling the truth and shaming the devil

225

Index248

Acknowledgements

All scholarly texts are collaborative enterprises whose collective input from friends, family and colleagues is disguised by the name on the front cover. This book is no different. Yes, my name is on the front cover, but I  am greatly indebted to a number of people for their insights, wisdom and judgement for the creation of this book. First, I  am fortunate to be encircled by a large number of friends with whom I  have discussed Brexit. Chief amongst them is the Troupe family, fellow Windrush Generation descendants like me, with whom I  have discussed the nature of being Black in Britain and in what ways our agency as postcolonial subjects will be impacted by the Brexit vote. I remember one particularly long, late-night conversation with my good friends Barry and Ivolyn, as we reflected on contested nature of being Black in Britain and the various forms of resistance evinced by Black people as our riposte to systemic racism. My family have always been the bedrock of my life in the United Kingdom. My siblings, Richard, Christopher and Sandra, have always encouraged me and their spouses, Lilian and Tony, and my niece Sasha’s and nephew Noah’s bourgeoning potential as third-generation Windrush descendants continues to inspire me. All scholars need intellectual sparring partners, and I  am blessed to be in dialogue with Michael Jagessar, William Ackah, Steed Davidson, Jione Havea, Daryl Balia and Sidwell Mokgothu. I am also indebted to the British and Irish Association for Practical Theology and The Society for the Study of Christian Ethics for giving me the opportunity to present keynote papers that have assisted in shaping some of the finer arguments of the book. I need to thank the Revd Cobus Van Wyngaard, an associate in the department of practical, systematic and philosophical theology at the University of South Africa for organising a lecture that also enabled me to rehearse some of the ideas from the early chapters of the book. Similarly, I need to acknowledge my thanks to the Revd Dr  Vincent Jambawo, the minister with pastoral charge of Selly Oak Methodist Church, in Birmingham, who invited me to give a public talk at the church that also assisted me in refining some of the ideas in the book. Specifically, the book was concerned with providing a

x  Acknowledgements theological articulation of the subtextual nature of Brexit that was the collective dis-ease with immigration, ‘race’ and notions of ethnic and cultural difference in Britain, as opposed to discussing the merits or otherwise of the European Union. It was the opportunity to give papers on the aforementioned occasions and more recently with the Council for World Mission that enabled me to make a seismic breakthrough: this book is not about the European Union and whether we should leave or remain in it. This realisation proved to be the key development in the construction of this book, and I thank all my dialogue partners in assisting me in clarifying my ideas. I am grateful to the intellectual support I have received from the University of South Africa (UNISA), who kindly appointed me as a research fellow and professor extraordinarious in March 2015. In this regard, I remain thankful to Rothney Tshaka, who supported my association with UNISA. As I  write these words, my thoughts alight on my parents. I  know that my deceased mother would be delighted to see the emergence of yet another book. It was her foresight and support that recognised my love of and talent for writing. I thank my father also for his immense support and encouragement. My final thanks are for my colleague and friend Carol Troupe, who bravely waded through the final draft correcting my doubtful prose and clarifying the odd infelicities of expression across the whole manuscript. Finally, there is God. God is. Amen.

Introduction

What prompted me to write this book was not any particular concern for whether Britain should remain in the European Union or leave it. I know that was the point of the referendum, so it would seem odd to many that this issue will not be addressed in this text. Let me apologise in advance to those who are coming to this book looking for explanations for why British people voted the way they did in the referendum. The merits of leaving or remaining in the European Union is undoubtedly a vexed topic. My reasons for undertaking this work lie not so much in the prevailing issues surrounding the merits of remaining in the European Union or not but rather in the underlying convictions that prompted aspects of the Leave campaign’s rhetoric, which in turn gave rise to Brexit. This book is concerned with the underlying theological constructs and religious ideologies and sensibilities of ‘Great Britain’ – a nation that controlled the largest empire the world has ever seen – and how the under-explored theological dimensions of imperialism have remained the subterranean modus operandi of British identity since the 16th century. Although there is a plethora of good intellectual and scholarly reasons for undertaking this work, most of which are linked to my ongoing concern to document the dangers of White privilege and its dialectical relationship to Black marginalisation and suffering, this book has a more affective and visceral rationale. This can be found in the account I am about to detail. After all, it was this incident that prompted me to think about the underlying constructs of British, particularly English, identity and its concomitant links with the religious sensibilities informed by empire and Christianity.

The generic start of this conversation In the months leading up to the referendum on whether Britain should remain in or leave the European Union, I had the occasion to lead a ministers’ retreat for a group of ministers in Cheshire. During one of the breaks, I found myself in conversation with one of the minsters attending the event. I  had first met this White woman a few years earlier, when I  had taught her in the capacity as a guest lecturer at the theological college where she

2  Introduction was training for public, authorised ministry. The conversation was pleasant enough, but it was also a little tetchy. She was convinced that Britain should leave the European Union and was not reticent in stating her case. I was on the Remain side of the argument, but my convictions were not as strident as hers. I explained that I was somewhat ambivalent about the European Union (EU). My desire to Remain, however, was formed from taking stock of the various proponents on either side of the argument. It seemed to me that the Leave side seemed overly populated with the kind of right-wing proponents with whom I  had little to nothing in common. Many of the leaders of the Leave campaign represented the type of people with whom I would always profoundly disagree on a whole range of subjects. My conversation partner was a radical socialist whose concerns about the European Union were not driven by questions concerns over the free movement of labour and the seemingly large numbers of foreign nationals entering Britain. Her concerns regarding the European Union arose from the neo-liberal economic agenda for growth and the unfettered free trade between members, which, she argued, precluded any notion of social justice and political transparency. As a fellow socialist, albeit a Black one, I shared her sense of concern regarding the neo-liberal character of the European Union’s economic policies. I countered, however, with my concern that the “law of unforeseen consequences” (only foreseen in this case) would mean that a vote for Brexit would undoubtedly have deleterious effects on the body politic of the nation, particularly the impact on minorities such as myself. I juxtaposed her theoretical concerns regarding the neo-liberal character of the European Union, with the very real practical concerns for the legitimation of xenophobia and racism that would have, potentially, a calamitous impact on Black and minority ethnic people in the country. I asked her if she was really comfortable being on the same side of the argument as Nigel Farage and fascist parties like ‘Britain First’? How did that square with her concerns for social justice? I pressed the question further, by asking her to recall the practical ways in which the European Union had thwarted her personal attempts to effect social justice in the United Kingdom. She provided a few examples, but to my mind, these were somewhat nebulous. I countered, citing the practical and real ways in which the experiences of Black and minority people like me would be adversely impacted by the Brexit vote. Given that we were both on a Christian retreat that I  was leading and given that our overarching theme of workshops was ‘mission amongst the marginalised’, I pressed her to consider whether a vote for Brexit was consistent with the liberationist thrust of the gospel, with which she had already claimed to identify. Pressing the matter even further, I asked, given that we are called to be in solidarity with each other, particularly those who are deemed the ‘least of these’,1 how could she be alongside me and, more pointedly, alongside visible, vulnerable migrants, asylum seekers and refugees if she voted for Brexit? In what ways would voting alongside the likes of

Introduction 3 Britain First and UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) be considered compatible with liberation-informed models of Christianity and the theologies that emerge from this radical tradition that is in solidarity with the most marginalised and oppressed peoples in history? As we spoke, I was aware that the weakness of single-issue referenda like this one is that they offer a blunt and unnuanced set of political choices. I was sure that this woman was not a racist and that her concerns for marginalised peoples, particularly those who are often scapegoated and traduced by the right-wing media in Britain, were real. Yet she was also genuinely concerned with and opposed to the European Union. The two things can be held in tension, but not within the framework of a yes/no binary, singleissue referendum. It seemed to me, therefore, that the woman had a critical choice to make, following my spirited riposte to her seemingly settled rationale for voting for Brexit. Where did her priorities lie? Would she abandon her initial concerns when confronted by the visceral concerns of genuine societal hardship and suffering for predominantly Black, Asian and the other minority ethnic people, thinking particularly of Britain’s Muslim communities? Or, conversely, would she bracket out the former as being of lesser importance than her own convictions? The latter, as I reminder her, would mean siding with many proponents who had little or no regard for the communities and people I had cited earlier. Voting for Brexit would mean tacitly legitimising xenophobic disinformation such as the infamous Leave campaign hoarding depicting lines of alleged brown-skinned foreign nationals, queueing to enter the country if Britain remained in the European Union.2 After further thought, the woman, although sympathetic to my concerns, reiterated her previous beliefs and asserted that she would be voting to leave the European Union. I accepted her position, and we spoke no further on the matter for the remainder of the retreat. Now, to be clear, I respect the right of all individuals to vote the way they choose in a democratic process. I will not characterise her reasons for voting for Brexit as being racist or, indeed, as being informed by notions of race or xenophobia. On the contrary, as a socialist, she believed that the cause of social justice was furthered by voting to leave the European Union. Undoubtedly, I was disappointed that my heartfelt protestations did not sway her thinking and feeling. I had shared not only my intellectual concerns regarding Brexit but my personal and emotional ones also, but she remained unmoved. Although I  respect her convictions and her right to express and act on them, this incident did get me thinking. Why did my real and evidencebased feelings not affect her actions? Many activists on the Remain side had cited the dangers of encouraging fascism, which would give rise to racist attacks and a more hostile climate for visible minorities. This has subsequently proved to be the case, following Brexit. So what was it about White autonomy that even when White people are faced with the major consequences of their actions, they are intent on carrying them out regardless?

4  Introduction I had juxtaposed my more theoretical concerns with my practical ones. The issues she raised had no material or existential challenge or impact on her immediate well-being, but the ones I raised, conversely, were all too real and visceral in nature. And yet when confronted with the consequences of her actions, she continued with them anyway. Of course, a number of important caveats need to be made at this juncture. First, this woman, although claiming that she would vote Leave may have changed her mind. Second, there are countless millions of White people whose concern for minorities and those who are inevitably being scapegoated as the ‘problem’ saw them reject the often-toxic rhetoric of the Leave campaign. Third, there are innumerable dangers of theorising and indeed theologising based on one isolated incident. Despite a plethora of warnings regarding the social and cultural implications of Brexit (not to mention the ongoing concerns of the economic impact of the vote), millions of people, the majority of whom were White, still voted for Brexit. Although concerns were raised regarding the xenophobic nature of the Brexit debate and the scaremongering and exaggerated claims concerning immigration and security, many White people still voted for Brexit. I am, for better or for worse, a religious scholar, in particular a Black liberation theologian and a decolonial educator. My work has aimed to shine a light into the dark crevices of the religio-cultural, political and social impact of Christianity on the body politic of the predominantly White Western societies in what one might term the ‘Global North’.3 In particular, my concern has been to investigate the intersectionality between Black bodies and the overarching phenomenon of Christianity since the epoch of transatlantic slavery (from the 16th through the 19th centuries) and since European colonisation of Africa in the latter part of the 19th century and into our contemporary era.4 This text is concerned with the underlying theological constructs that helped to give rise to the phenomenon that people are now terming ‘Brexit’5 in popular parlance. The essays in this book have been written over several years and represent, at various turns, my concern with the rising tide of British, particularly English, nationalism and ways in which this is becoming increasingly mainstream and acceptable as the 21st century has progressed. Although I make no claims to possess special powers of foresight, I will claim a firm belief that I saw this Brexit phenomenon in the making and was not surprised that Britain chose to leave the European Union.6 My surprise was the vote was as close as it was.7 My 2008 book Working Against the Grain,8 contains a chapter in which I look at the realities of being a nonWhite ‘other’ and how the constructions of Britishness and belonging are predicated on White entitlement and privilege, from which Black and other minority ethnic people are excluded.9 The essays that comprise this book have been in gestation since 2012 or so. In that time, in response to various invitations to contribute chapters to

Introduction 5 edited books and to give public lectures and scholarly papers at academic events across the United Kingdom and further afield, these chapters have subsequently grown and developed. The common thread in all the chapters of this book is a Black liberation and postcolonial theological critique of British Christianity, Whiteness, colonialism and empire. What led to the decision to bring these various essays together was a chance conversation with my friend Steed Davidson at the annual American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature conference in 2015. While enjoying our annual convivial catch-up, we spoke about our shared experience of engaging with British colonialism, his from the twin Caribbean island republic of Trinidad and Tobago and mine from living in the so-called mother country of empire, in Britain, but born of Jamaican parents. As we discussed our shared heritage (which also includes both being Methodists) and future writing projects, it suddenly occurred to me that I had a potential book in gestation as we spoke. It was at that moment that what was to become Theologising Brexit was born. In titling the book this way, I need to make it clear that ‘my theologising’ (and it is clearly that) makes no pretence to be scholarly neutral, objective or universal. Rather, it is polemical in its attack against the scourge of White supremacy, entitlement and privilege. It is subjective, in so far as it emerges from my own existential challenges of being a Black British-born male theologian existing in an academic and ecclesial context in which I am often one of only a few non-White people. For the most part, White people often fail to notice that people who do not look like them are invariably invisible. I have lost count of the number of times I have been the only Black person in a room at either academic or church-related events, and no one has commented unless I chose to do so. So this book is not a balanced account of all the theological perspectives that might account for the Brexit phenomenon. Rather, it is an account from a Black liberation and postcolonial critique of Brexit as it is understood from within the prism of Black experience. This book addresses potentially the biggest crisis in contemporary British life. The narrow referendum vote to leave the European Union has led to a seismic shift in how parts of the British population view and judge their compatriots. The rise in the reported number of racially motivated incidents in light of the Brexit climate of vilification and negativity directed at migrants, asylum seekers, refugees and all those still not viewed as being ‘authentically’ British is one that should be a matter of concern for all people. The Brexit vote has arguably given rise to the biggest challenge in British community relations and how we assess British identity and notions of belonging since Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech on 20 April 1968. One of the critical points of departure for this text is Salman Rushdie’s broadcast talk ‘The New Empire within Britain’.10 In almost prescient tones, Rushdie outlined the anti-immigration discourse of many White people in Britain as a reactionary impulse to the presence of Black and Asian migrants

6  Introduction in the country, namely that the ‘old empire’ had now returned home. The old empire was one that was ‘out there’, external to the island of Great Britain, in those parts of world marked in pink in countless school atlases and globes. The new empire, after 1948 and ushered in by the Windrush, is within, often located in the inner-city conurbations of major cities like London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Bradford, Leicester, Liverpool, Cardiff, Coventry, Wolverhampton and so on. Rushdie’s polemic is helpful in how he clearly cites the subterranean construct of empire and colonialism as a remaining feature of White British identity from which the nation has never deconstructed or indeed repented. Rushdie recognises how Black and Asian migrants are stereotyped and traduced, often being used as scapegoats for social ills not of their making, regularly pitted against White working-class peoples and their prevailing sense of marginalisation and disaffection.11 Rushie states that In the new Empire, as in the old one, it seems our masters are willing to use the tried and trusted strategies of divide-and-rule. . . . But I’ve saved the worst and most insidious stereotype for last. It is the characterization of black people as a Problem. You talk about the Race Problem, the Immigration Problem, all sorts of problems. If you are liberal, you say that black people have problems. If you aren’t, you say they are the problem. But the members of the new colony have only one real problem, and that problem is white people. British racism, of course, is not our problem. It’s yours. We simply suffer from the effects of your problem.12 Given that Rushdie was speaking in 1982, during the early years of Thatcherism, so a whole generation prior to Brexit, one cannot help but notice the prescience of his words. Although a plethora of reasons persuaded many people to vote to leave the European Union, it would be an extreme case of myopia for anyone to suggest that the sentiments that Rushdie outlines here were not salient ones in the leave debate. To ‘Black people’ add ‘immigrants’, ‘Muslims’, ‘foreigners’, and ‘economic migrants’. Rushdie’s essay provides a helpful backdrop against which this text is written. In creating this work, I am seeking to offer theological substance to the literary and sociohistorical critique that Rushdie offered in his 1982 talk. ‘The New Empire within Britain’ was an unheeded clarion call for Britain to deconstruct the toxic residues of empire and colonialism that had set the template for interpreting the meaning of Britishness and Englishness when juxtaposed with the world, particularly our immediate neighbours on the European continent.

The content of the book Theologising Brexit comprises a series of essays that address the varying aspects of what it means to be British and how churches in Britain and the

Introduction 7 Christian faith should respond to the rising tide of White, English nationalism that underpinned the vote to leave the European Union. The book is a provocative challenge to confront the rising tide of xenophobia and the paucity of any prophetic response to Brexit from church leaders in the United Kingdom. This book aims to be a prophetic, postcolonial model of Black theology that challenges the incipient sense of White entitlement and parochial ‘nativism’ that pervaded much of the referendum debate. Theologising Brexit is a comprehensive analysis of the theological challenge presented by the Brexit epoch that has just begun. The essays in this book are a prophetic call to action, challenging the Church and wider society to live out the gospel of Jesus Christ in order to remind us all that a socalled Christian nation has to be one in which there is justice and equity for all and not just a privileged sense of entitlement for only some. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 comprises five essays which explore the sociopolitical, cultural and theological background of the Brexit phenomenon. Part 1: Behind the scenes Chapter  1: “Setting the scene”. This chapter  provides a historical and contextual background to the book. It explains why these essays emerged against a backdrop of rising nationalism and populist politics in which the claims of White entitlement and normativity have become distinctly pronounced. How is this period in British history providing a critical challenge to the continued claims for an inclusive model of Christianity? In response to this challenge, I provide a Black liberationist and postcolonial critique of the subterranean theologies of White supremacist English nationalism that underpinned the Brexit phenomenon. Chapter 2: “Courting controversy”. This chapter outlines the historical context in which Britain finds itself. Although we are no longer the centre of an empire, notions of ‘superiority’ and a lament for the time when ‘we’ were still ‘great’ still persist. So the vote for Brexit was no surprise for many of us, because we had already seen the ‘writing on the wall’ in the desire to be ‘Great Britain’ once more. This chapter outlines how Christianity has conditioned Black people into internalising the tropes of empire within their psyche, so they end up, inadvertently, defending the very entities that have oppressed them. Chapter 3 “Mind games”. This chapter explores the role mission Christianity played in the propagation of imperialism and colonialism through the teaching and learning of the Christian faith across the British Empire. The chapter is a reminder that the underpinning of the Brexit vote was a subterranean longing for the grandeurs of Britain’s imperial past that has its roots in the collusive role played by mission Christianity. Chapter  4: “Now you see me, now you don’t”. This chapter  looks at theological anthropology and asks what it means to be a human being in

8  Introduction the body politic of Britain. It explores the invisibility of Whiteness and how it is the hidden nature of this phenomenon that causes the sense of entitlement and normality that underpinned the Brexit vote. The chapter outlines the counter-radical assertion of Black and postcolonial theologies in making Whiteness visible, thus critiquing notions of White entitlement. It is an invitation for White people to critique and deconstruct their inherited notions of privilege and entitlement in order to be in critical solidarity with Black and other visible minorities in Britain. Chapter 5: “Being the enemy within”. This chapter addresses the issue of how Black and other minority ethnic people have often struggled to belong in the body politic of this island. This chapter  challenges the xenophobic backdrop of the Leave campaign and lays out how Black and postcolonial theologies have always sought to challenge the rhetoric of English nationalism, by offering Black bodies multiple perspectives for anchoring our identities beyond the bounded nature of White supremacy, entitlement and privilege. The chapter revisits a previous piece of work of mine, where I use drama and role play as a means of exploring explore the Black positionality of belonging in the body politic of ‘Great Britain’. Part 2: Responding to the challenge Chapter 6: “Reading the Bible and multiple religious belonging”. This chapter rehearses the challenges of how we read the Bible and use it as a tool for liberation and inclusivity. Black theology has always adopted a critical posture to the Bible, seeing it as a source for inspiration but also readily acknowledging how it has been used as a weapon against those considered to be the ‘other’. How can we handle the Bible more thoughtfully in this Brexit age? The chapter  explores how the multiple religious belonging of Black Caribbean people represents a critical riposte to the monocultural logics of Brexit, thus opening alternative reading strategies of the Bible to challenge White English nationalism. Chapter 7: “Education and learning to be different”. This chapter demonstrates how Black theology seeks to enable ordinary people to better analyse the world as they experience it and so be better disciples of Jesus in the world. What was most striking about the referendum campaign was how half-truths and scaremongering about minorities were able to flourish, with little challenge from the media or church leaders. This chapter  illustrates how Black theology provides tools for enabling people to better read the signs of the times around them. Part 3: The critical challenge of the other Chapter  8: “Rastafari and Black theology”. This chapter  outlines three models of Black positionality that have sought to critique the monological notions of identity and belonging that are exemplified in White British

Introduction 9 nationalism. Blackness has always been seen as the other, and Rastafari and ‘Christian’ Black theology have sought to provide alternative and often subversive ways of belonging within the United Kingdom. How have these respective movements sought to challenge normative Whiteness in Britain? How can they be a resource for challenging the corrosive impact of White privilege and entitlement of Brexit? Chapter  9: “Doing it our way: Caribbean theology, contextualisation and cricket”. This chapter looks at the role of Caribbean theology and the inspiration of Fidel Castro on Caribbean identity. The relevance of  this lies in the Caribbean identity of the ‘Windrush Generation’ and how they have become emblematic in the body politic of the nation by means of the alternative model of Christian identity that they have created in the second half of the 20th century. Caribbean theology represents the underlying theological framework for Black Caribbean people as they have responded to being the visible other in postcolonial Britain, both as ‘insiders’ because of their Christian faith and ‘outsiders’ in their ethnicity and cultural background. Chapter 10: “Telling the truth and shaming the devil”. This final chapter outlines how the complex ways of identity found within diasporan African peoples in Britain, informed by postcolonial theologies, can give rise to hermeneutical tools for prophetic truth telling. How can Black and postcolonial theologies challenge what the powerful often assert as truth? How can Caribbean ‘proverbial wisdom’ challenge the disinformation and the rampant mendacity of the Leave campaign that often sought to legitimise xenophobia and racism?

Notes 1 This phrase arises in what is often deemed an iconic proof text for liberation theologies, Matthew 25:31–46, where the praxis of faith as outlined by Jesus calls for radical solidarity with marginalised people in order to effect salvation. 2 For commentary on the infamous Leave campaign hoarding, visit www.the guardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farage-defends-ukip-breaking-pointposter-queue-of-migrants – accessed 25 July 2018. 3 This term refers to the economic and social divide between nations in the world, with the ’Global North’ denoting nations that have achieved a measure of dominance in the global system and the ‘Global South’ representing those formerly colonised nations whose indices for socioeconomic development remain low compared to the former. I am aware that this topic itself is worthy of a whole doctoral study, but for my point of departure, I  am using this term simply as a broad descriptor with which to identify the concerns that have underpinned my work. This term has been used in theological discourse, particularly by postcolonial and liberationist scholars. For a brief explication of the term, visit https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_divide – accessed 29 June 2018. 4 An example of this work can be seen in some of my more recent texts: Anthony G. Reddie Is God Colour Blind: Insights from Black Theology for Christian Ministry (London: SPCK, 2010); SCM Core Text: Black Theology (London: SCM Press, 2012).

10  Introduction 5 The term ‘Brexit’ has now become a convenient shorthand for the vote to leave to the European Union, although there is some debate on the derivation of the term. Visit the following link for a concise genealogy of the term: www.euractiv. com/section/uk-europe/news/oxford-english-dictionary-the-man-who-coinedbrexit/ – accessed 29 June 2018. 6 It was always my belief that given the underlying anti-immigration, White privilege and entitlement and xenophobia that have always been present in Britain, predominantly White British people would, given the opportunity, vote to leave the European Union. My only surprise was that the margin of victory for the Leave campaign was not higher. Perhaps the most influential text detailing the nativist xenophobic character of British/English nationalism and identity vis-àvis its relationship to visible minorities is Paul Gilroy’s There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (London: Routledge, 2002). 7 See the following link for the final count as per the BBC’s official figures: www. bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results – accessed 29 June 2018. 8 See Anthony G. Reddie Working Against Grain: Reimaging Black Theology for the 21st Century (London: Equinox, 2008). 9 Anthony G. Reddie Working Against Grain, pp. 137–156. 10 This talk was broadcast on Channel 4 in an opinion piece in 1982. A printed version of the text can be found in the following link: https://public.wsu.edu/~heggl und/courses/389/rushdie_new_empire.htm – accessed 25 July 2018. 11 See the following link: https://public.wsu.edu/~hegglund/courses/389/rushdie_ new_empire.htm – accessed 25 July 2018. 12 See the following link: https://public.wsu.edu/~hegglund/courses/389/rushdie_ new_empire.htm – accessed 25 July 2018.

Part 1

Behind the scenes

1 Setting the scene

Historical roots of Brexit – the problem with difference I was born into a Caribbean family. My parents came to the United Kingdom from the Caribbean island of Jamaica, my mother arriving first, in January 1957, and my father, from the opposite end of the island, in September  1959. They met in a shared house in 1960 and were married on 6 August 1962. I was born on 10 October 1964, in Bradford, West Yorkshire, their eldest child. My own parents were part of the mass migratory movement of Black people from the Caribbean in the years following the end of the Second World War. I am not only a child of my parents but also the heir to one of the most significant developments in contemporary British history: I am a progeny of the ‘Windrush Generation’, so named because of the arrival of 492 Caribbean people at Tilbury dock on the Empire Windrush, on 22 June 1948. I started school in September 1969. I entered the British education system as one of only two Black children in a school of approximately one hundred pupils. The other 98 or so were all White. The head teacher made it clear to me that he resented my presence in the school and that my parents had no legitimate claim to be in the country. My schooling coincided with backdrop of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech.1 Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ arose at a time when concerns over immigration from Commonwealth regions, such as the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent, were causing alarm. Enoch Powell became a deeply polarised figure in British public life. Powell, a classically educated patrician Tory made his inflammatory speech on 20 April 1968, expressing his disquiet at the levels of Black and Asian immigration from the New Commonwealth, believing that these growing communities would destabilise Britain and would disempower and marginalise indigenous White people. His speech was seen as a cause celebre in the history of race relations in the United Kingdom. While thousands of trade unionists at the time sent in letters of support for Powell, Edward Heath, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, sacked Powell from the shadow cabinet. On the thirtieth anniversary of the speech, in 1998, 64 percent of a Channel 4 studio audience brought together to discuss

14  Behind the scenes the legacy of his speech believed that Powell was not a racist but a courageous nationalist.2 In the early part of 2018, there was a contentious proposal to mount a historic blue plaque in Wolverhampton in Enoch Powell’s honour as a former distinguished member of parliament (MP) for the city. In this opening essay, I argue that while the surface level indices of social, cultural and economic opportunities for Black people have improved, the unreconstructed, substantive underpinning notions of what it means to belong and be acceptable in the United Kingdom have remained largely unchanged. In effect, Black people3 are still the ‘other’ in this context. We are not authentically of this place in the fashion that is readily accepted by White subjects in this nation, and the Brexit phenomenon simply reinforces this notion, given the clearly marked way migrants were seen as the essential problem that the Leave vote would undoubtedly solve.

British Christianity and empire This opening essay attempts to set the scene for the essays that follow. My central argument is that what underpinned the Brexit phenomenon was an unresolved set of religious and theological ideas that have helped to shape the national identity. Essential to the development of the populist thrust of British (more specifically English) nationalism4 is a conflation of religion and economic and political expansion abroad, namely the link between Christianity and empire. One cannot understand the development of the Brexit phenomenon within if one is not cognisant of the creation of empire and the process of colonialism beyond the shores of Britain. So my assessment, vis-à-vis the development of Brexit, commences with an assessment of the colonial context in which Christianity in Britain is deeply located in the construction of Black bodies in faraway places from British shores. One aspect of the positionality of this work, indeed of my wider scholarship, rests on the existential nature of Black bodies as they have collided with the White missionary endeavour  – a topic that will be explored in greater detail in chapter three. Thinking back to my first days in primary school in Bradford, West Yorkshire, I was aware of my difference and the ambivalence with which I  was perceived in that context. My very existence in that school threw into sharp relief the contradictory and ambiguous nature of Britain’s attitude to its former colonial subjects. While the head teacher, like Enoch Powell, decried my presence in this country, my parents reminded me constantly of the British presence in their country. The fact that I am writing this piece as a Black African-Caribbean male whose parents came from Jamaica reveals a great deal about the positionality of Britain with a part of the world several thousand miles from these shores. In the words of a poster beloved of the anti-racist movements of the 1970s and 1980s, “We Are Here Because You Were There”.5 It should be axiomatic, therefore, that one cannot talk about Christianity in Britain without engaging with the broader thematic hinterland of empire and colonialism.

Setting the scene 15 I write as a confessional Black Christian from within the Methodist tradition. Methodism found its way to the Caribbean via the missionary work of Nathaniel Gilbert, even though the indefatigable work undertaken by his two Black enslaved women has largely gone unheralded.6 The ‘historic church’7 version of Caribbean Christianity into which approximately two-thirds of all Black people of Christian faith in Britain have been inducted and formed is one that echoes to the continual strains of British-run slavery in the English islands of the Caribbean.8 Caribbean Christianity, which emerges from the comparatively more recent Pentecostal tradition, has nonetheless been influenced to an equal extent by the blandishments of empire and colonialism. Michael Jagessar commented on Caribbean British Pentecostal Christianity as it pertains to Joe Aldred’s book Respect:9 Further, in spite of his discourse on the richness of Caribbean diversity (ethno-religious), what comes across from this volume is the sense that the default mode represents Caribbean folks stepping off the Windrush, so fully de-culturalized and purified of their inter-cultural ethno-­ religious heritage that their faith resembled the chalky white cliffs of Dover and the pristine un-deconstructed euro-centric theology.10 The African dimension of Christianity in Britain has also been informed by empire and colonialism, which continues to circumscribe the parameters of acceptability and notions of what constitutes the status quo and normality in faith adherence.11 This chapter and later essays will demonstrate that the relationship between mission Christianity and Black people, which operates through the refracting lens of colonialism, has an inextricable connection at a level only now beginning to be teased out. At the time of writing, only a handful of texts have explored this relationship to any satisfactory degree.12 The relationship between empire and colonialism, in many respects, remains the unacknowledged ‘elephant in the room’ in much academic theological discourse in the United Kingdom. R.S. Sugirtharajah, the doyen of postcolonial biblical hermeneutics, once noted that the relationship between British Christianity and empire is one that has been suffused with a collusive sense of mutuality.13 Both the Christian faith and imperialism, and the regimes that connote the latter, do so based on presuming themselves to be superior to the phenomenological entities they seek to usurp. Speaking with particular attention to the question of empire, Sugirtharajah writes, Empires are basically about technically and militarily advantaged superior ‘races’ ruling over inferior and backward peoples. When imperial powers invade, the conquered are not permitted to be equal to the invaders. This was true of all empires, Roman to British and American. The basic assumption of superiority is never questioned in their writings.14

16  Behind the scenes The superiority of Britain is built on a bedrock of Christian-inspired exceptionalism in which God has set apart the British, particularly the English, to occupy a special place in the economy of God’s kingdom. One can see an element of this in the rhetoric of Britain’s greatest writer, William Shakespeare, who in his play Richard II, written in 1595/1596, a few years after the Spanish Armada of 1588, states in unambiguous tones the import of the English when thinking of their sense of exceptionalism. Shakespeare writes This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.15 The outworking of this exceptionalism was the desire to export the superiority of the British across the world. Empire and colonialism found much of its intellectual underscoring based on White, Eurocentric supremacy, which marked the clear binary between notions of civilised and acceptable over and against uncivilised and transgressive.16 There are no prizes for guessing on which side of the divide Black people, for example, found themselves. Much of the epistemological weight for the buttressing of colonialism, when approached through the refracting lens of Christian faith, has been the seeming invisible trope of Whiteness. I shall return to this point shortly, because I believe that it is the inability to name and detail the epistemological construct of Whiteness that is a significant weakness in the scholarship of White academics and their failure to wrestle with the nature of White Christianity in Britain. R.S. Sugirtharajah, once again writing on the development of imperial missionary Christianity, writes, It is no coincidence that the founding of all these missionary societies took place contemporaneously with the activities of the trading companies like the East India Company and the Dutch East India Company. The East India Company initially resisted the presence of the missionaries. It feared that the interference of missionaries in local religious customs and manners might be counter-productive to its mercantile interests. However, the renewal of the Company’s charter in 1833 and the abolition of its monopoly, missionary enterprise received a boost. . . . Once the impediment to missionary work was removed,

Setting the scene 17 the missionaries themselves became willing supporters of commercial expansion.17 If the legacy of the under-explored relationship between “Christianity, commerce, and civilisation”18 in White British theological circles is a cause for concern, however, the record amongst Black Christians in Britain has, until comparatively recently, been equally lamentable (showing that ‘we’, of which I am a part, are really no better). The absence of writing on the latter topic has not been an indication of the inability or the lack of ability amongst Black people of African descent to write. One can point to such landmark texts as the now iconic The Empire Strikes Back,19 produced by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. This work has become part of a larger tradition of cultural studies and sociological work that has made explicit the relationship between the Christian superstructure that buttressed and offered the necessary theological underscoring of the colonially led missionary enterprise that underpinned empire.20 Whiteness as the significant thread in English Christianity Thus far in this essay, I have sought to provide a rationale for the essays that follow, by critiquing the underlying theological constructs that informed the Brexit phenomenon. An important factor in the construction of the Brexit phenomenon was the unexplored dimensions of Whiteness that have remained unresolved in the British psyche. The concept of Whiteness has been under-explored in any analysis of British, particularly English, Christianity and in the scholarly, theological works that are concomitant to the aforementioned broader phenomenon of which the latter is a part. In more recent times, a branch of scholarship called critical White studies21 has begun the task of naming and unmasking the privileged construct that is ‘Whiteness’. Whiteness operates as an overarching construct, which assumes a central place in all epistemological and cultural forms of production, thereby relegating other positions or perspectives as ‘other’. I am not seeking to traduce all White people, nor am I constructing this discourse on the pejorative understanding that Whiteness is aberrant or wholly without legitimacy. Moreover, feminism and gender studies add a particular piquancy to this debate, because they contextualised and complicated the nature of this discourse, as Whiteness has to be contextualised in other overarching vistas, such as patriarchy and androcentric notions of being. Chris Shannahan, a White British contextual urban theologian has undertaken some of the necessary critical work on deconstructing and decentring Whiteness in his recent, excellent work.22 Shannahan takes me to task, however, for not investing my critique of Whiteness with a more nuanced exploration of the diversity of power and the positionality of contextual experiences of White people in Britain.23 Not all White people are imbued

18  Behind the scenes with privilege, nor do all White people experience the economic benefits that Whiteness seems to imply. In one respect, Shannahan is absolutely right and I am (and Robert Beckford also)24 guilty as charged. I have been guilty, and perhaps continue to be so in this chapter, of not exploring sufficiently the myriad complexities of Whiteness. Is it really the case that there is one overarching macro-theory for exploring the privileged, invisible, normative posture of the phenomenological basis of Whiteness? Surely this form of discourse is both inaccurate and unfair. Undoubtedly, Shannahan has a point, and this is something I will seek to explore in more detail in chapter four of this book. In another sense, however, Shannahan has missed the point: the power of Whiteness is not solely a materialist form of productivity. In his work, Shannahan seeks to develop a fluid, postmodern paradigm for British urban theology that moves beyond the quasi-Christendom models adopted by a previous generation of White British urban theologians.25 The construction of this work, like many other forms of liberative theologies, operates under the aegis of materialistic forms of analysis on the socioeconomic, political and cultural markers that connote power in Britain and across the world. I am not challenging this methodological approach, in any substantive sense, as I have also used this form of analysis in my own work. Urban and contextual theologies seek to unmark the hegemonic structures of postmodern life. They are attempting to differentiate between the worst excesses of neo-liberal capitalist systems for structuring socioeconomic and cultural activity on one hand and what connotes the liberating presence of the kingdom of God on the other. My critique of White scholars whose work is ensconced within British contextual and urban theology, however, is tempered when one considers the absence of any reflections on Whiteness, power and entitlement. Given the toxic relationship between British, particularly English, Christianity, Whiteness and empire, it is rather disappointing but not surprising that the theological underpinning of the Brexit phenomenon was overlooked in such a myopic fashion. One of the key texts that seeks to outline the nature and character of English Christianity is Nigel Rooms’s The Faith of the English.26 Rooms, an Anglican priest in the Church of England, is a practical theologian whose work has seen him develop an adult theological course that helps participants to explore the nature of English Christianity. His text is a creative exploration of English Christian identity that is both descriptive and constructive, and much within this work is to be commended. The central problem with it, however, is that at no point does Rooms ever seriously engage with the Whiteness of English Christianity and how this phenomenon has shaped the very nature and intent of English faith. So in what can only be charitably be seen as at best a naïve observation, Rooms states, So there may also be another connection to be made from the notion of fair play to the evidence of how we behave towards outsiders, one showing that, despite a surface racism in some people and places in

Setting the scene 19 England, in general we are pragmatically tolerant of the outsider. How else could a version of an exotic dish from the East have become our favourite food?27 The favourite food to which Rooms is referring is chicken tikka masala, a curry dish that has its origins in the Indian subcontinent,28 which was voted the most popular meal in the United Kingdom in 2011. Notwithstanding the facility of the English to appropriate the cultures of others, a key facet of colonialism and empire (liking someone’s cultural production doesn’t mean that one actually likes the people who produced it), one has to wonder how this benign sense of Englishness stands alongside the Church’s recognition of systemic and endemic racism in the United Kingdom?29 As an addendum, this assumed benign form of Englishness has added piquancy given the fact that Anglicans were more disposed to vote Leave than any other religiously defined group in the United Kingdom when it came to Brexit.30 Rooms’s text speaks of the importance of the contextualisation and inculturation of the Christian faith in the United Kingdom, but nowhere in this necessary formulation is there any attempt to configure the import of Whiteness in the semantic understanding of English Christianity. The author looks at the mythologised figure of Robin Hood as an important archetypal English figure that serves as a symbolic totem for the essential qualities that are replete in Englishness and its concomitant model of Christianity.31 One of the most telling aspects of Rooms’s analysis, which is perhaps emblematic of the book as a whole, is that the manifest Whiteness of Robin Hood is never mentioned. What seems invisible to Rooms is patently obvious to me. It was patently and painfully obvious during the referendum debate when the xenophobia of the Leave campaign began to ratchet up as the date for the vote began to loom large. As a Black Englishman who was born in the country, one of the reasons I have rarely if ever identified with the corporate identity of this country has been that I most often do not see myself reflected in the images and ideas that are presented as quintessential Englishness. In a previous piece of work, I argued that the ways Englishness presents itself to the world are such that Black people are invariably cast as the aberrant other.32 In chapter 5, when I outline the nature of what it means to be the ‘enemy within’, I speak of the reasons why I have never supported ‘England’ (as opposed to Scotland, Wales or Ireland) in any sporting endeavour when I am English by birth. What seems innocuous and virtually transparent to many White people, as visible signifiers, are often ones that strike me as exemplifying my otherness in the body politic of the nation. In fairness to Rooms, he is not entirely oblivious to the deep notions of English superiority and ideas of manifest destiny. He recognises that within the English is a deep-seated sense of being special: But what of Christianity in the history, mythical or otherwise, of our nation? Anyone who has sung William Blake’s hymn “Jerusalem” taps into something very deep in the English which we need to explore – that

20  Behind the scenes somehow we are a chosen nation visited and blessed by God in Christ. For many, that is enough to make us Christian, whether we go near a church or not.33 In what is perhaps the most telling phrase in the whole book, Rooms has inadvertently (given that this book was written in 2011, well before the EU referendum) tapped into the most salient feature of the underlying theological construct that defines the Brexit phenomenon. As I outline in chapter 4, when looking at the theological anthropology that underpinned the Brexit phenomenon, a subterranean theology of election, in which the claims of Whiteness and Britishness (especially Englishness) and God are unhelpfully conflated, becomes the default marker for shaping exceptionalism and specialness. That is, the island nation of Britain is different from and better than the undifferentiated conglomeration of Europe, from which the nation wishes to secede.34 The rise of popularist nationalism in the United Kingdom forms the substratum of the Brexit phenomenon. The aggressive polemics of the Leave campaign and the visceral anti-immigration discourse that underpinned Brexit has been explored more recently by a number of predominantly White British theologians.35 Whatever one thinks of the merits or otherwise of the Brexit campaign, one cannot doubt the significance of how the Leave campaign was able to tap into a subterranean ferment of discontent amongst British people, particularly amongst disenfranchised poor White people. The toxicity of the Leave campaign focused a great deal of its invective at the issue of immigration. Ben Ryan, writing the introduction to his edited text Fortress Britain,36argues for the legitimacy of interpreting the Brexit phenomenon through the refracting lens of Christian ethics because There are good reasons for taking a particularly Christian approach seriously on these issues. For one thing, Christianity provides a language in which the British and the migrant communities can converse. For the former, although fewer than ever before now self-identify as Christian (the most recent British Social Attitudes survey found that 53 percent of British adults now have no religion and only 41 percent are Christian), the UK remains a place shaped by its Christian history and values.37 Ryan and the various contributors to this important text provide incisive and cogent arguments for exploring the ethical concerns surrounding immigration policy and the impact of migration on the body politic of Britain. Of particular import in the context of this work are the essays by Susanna Snyder38 and Mohammed Girma.39 Snyder’s excellent essay outlines biblical and theological perspectives on migration, reminding us that The starting point in any discussion of migration in the Bible has to be that the people of God are migrants themselves. Being on the move is

Setting the scene 21 part of our identity as human beings, and the themes of strangeness, travel, journeying and uprooting weave their way through the Bible as a recurring thread.40 Throughout her essay, Snyder outlines the critical challenges presented by the transnational identity of Christianity, in which the ‘people of God’ is not restricted to any particular land mass and in which notions of solidarity are not limited to one’s immediate ethnic or cultural group. In a telling concluding comment, Snyder states that Finally, the visio dei – or vision of God – reminds us to raise our eyes to see over the boundary walls and barbed wire fences we have constructed around nation states, and to revitalise our sense of connection with all people rather than just those within our particular nation.41 Although Snyder does not explicitly name ‘Whiteness’ as a concern, she nevertheless calls into question the inherent theology of election that permeates British, particularly English, identity, in its axiomatic sense of entitlement and specialness as a people. Snyder interprets the notion of God’s people in its correct, transnational identity, countering the more myopic and bounded sense in which it is used as a bulwark for British nationalism. One of the theological issues raised by Brexit is the dialectic between immanence and transcendence, particularity and universality within Christianity. I address this issue, in part, in the penultimate essay of this book, where I look at the development of Caribbean theology, given its relationship to the Windrush Generation, of which I  am a part, in its role and significance in post-war Britain. While Christianity has rightly sought to preserve the ideal of universality and unity, the growth of the Christian church worldwide has also been predicated on the realisation that every branch of its worldwide body is some particular expression of the faith. Every particular manifestation of church is one that is attendant with specific social and cultural markers that identify it as something distinct within the overall macro phenomenon of the faith. Rooms’s text (which I  have already mentioned) is one such attempt to contextualise Christian faith in England to establish a dynamic synergy between cultural expression and identity and the concomitant faith in Jesus Christ.42 The problem with the contextualisation of British, and more specifically English, Christianity is that it is rarely, if ever, undertaken in a way in which the subtextual nature of Whiteness and notions of the manifest destiny of empire and colonialism are ever taken into account.43 The issue at stake is not whether Christianity in Britain can and should be contextualised, because clearly, every manifestation of the Christian faith in any context represents some element of a localised adaptation of belief and practice, as one would expect in all cultural expression and its relationship to faith expression.44 Rather, the salient issue for me in my theologising of Brexit is

22  Behind the scenes the exceptionalism of British, specifically English, identity, which makes the process of contextualisation a potentially toxic undertaking for those people who are Black and perceived as the other in the body politic of the nation. Mohammed Girma’s essay “Cultural Identity in Post-Brexit Britain” offers a religio-cultural and political theory for bringing together the sharp divides in British society that were clearly evinced within the Brexit phenomenon.45 Girma, drawing on the religio-political discourse of Hegel and Habermas, argues for the utility of ‘narrative reasoning’, where Christianity provides the discursive template around which differing groups of people can rehearse their generative stories that connote meaning and identity. This process is one in which differing groups of people can be enabled to participate in a reconstruction of the macro narratives that constitute the nature of Britain as a nation state, grounded on liberal democratic values. Girma reflects on the developments of differing models of multiculturalism, outlining the various approaches that the state has adopted in seeking to generate notions of social cohesion within British life, particularly in innercity conurbations in the United Kingdom.46 The failure of these approaches to multiculturalism can be summarised in the pithy observations of Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, who has stated that “Multiculturalism has made us build not a ‘home’ but a ‘hotel’, where there is no sense of belonging and common purpose”.47 Girma’s proposed model of narrative reasoning draws on Hegel’s philosophy and reflections on the Judeo-Christian tradition and the pivotal figure of Jesus within it as a means of creating a metanarrative for the construction of creative encounters between different groups of people.48 While I applaud Girma’s attempt to wrestle with the social fragmentation of British society so painfully evinced by Brexit, not even to acknowledge that the creative dynamic at the heart of narrative reasoning takes place against a backdrop of asymmetrical discourses of esteem and notions of belonging is a critical failure of his contextualisation of this issue. Notwithstanding the efficacy of using Hegel as the basis for constructing an ethic of mutuality,49 Girma fails to recognise that even the normative figure of Jesus within the Judeo-Christian tradition is not a neutral terrain on which to build.50 As Black and womanist scholars have shown, central to the construction of Euro-American White supremacist ideologies has been the creation of a White Christ who has justified Black oppression at the altar of White normality.51 Once again, most crucially, the hermeneutical import of Whiteness as a generative theme underpinning notions of belonging and identity in the British psyche is not recognised or acknowledged. Alongside the important work undertaken by Ben Ryan is the discourse contained in the April  2018 issue of Crucible: The Journal of Christian Social Ethics, which focuses on the issue of populism.52 The focus on the rise of populism in the United Kingdom is a timely one given the obvious rise of this phenomenon in the zeitgeist of the nation. There is a great deal to commend in what is a relatively slight issue in terms of numerical pages.

Setting the scene 23 Richard Sudworth’s editorial makes a helpful distinction between populism and democracy.53 He states that “Populisms exist on both right and left of the political spectrum, promising new vistas of opportunity by harking back to a fallacious past”.54 For the purposes of this text, the most significant articles in this issue are by Al Barratt55 and Jenny Daggers.56 Barratt’s article explores the triumvirate of the Occupy movement,57 Grenfell Tower and Brexit. Barratt acknowledges the complexities inherent in our contemporary epoch, charting the disconnect between supposed elites and ‘the people’, which can be seen in the three prevailing moments indicative of our societal dis-ease.58 Barratt presents the case for the Church playing a more mediating role in the current sociopolitical impasse, seeking to become a repository in which competing narratives can be heard and where space is created so that different voices, often neglected and angry voices, can be heard.59 This proposal is a helpful one in that Barratt is pointing to “the complexities of human subjectivities in the political ecology of listening”60 that disturb the simplicities of cause-and-effect modes of analysis. In the context of this work, I take this to mean that we need the kind of creative, critical intersectionalities of identity and subjectivity that take us away from such unhelpful and dare one say dangerous binaries as ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’, ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ that seem to underpin the toxic discourse expressed within the Brexit phenomenon. I  outline aspects of this work in chapter  4, where I  offer a creative response to White British peoples’ false consciousness around the melancholia from the loss of empire and the perceived diminution of White privilege and entitlement that British imperialism provided for the internal self-understanding of the British, particularly those self-identifying as English.61 An important rejoinder of this article is Jenny Daggers’s work, which explores Anglican social theology and which seeks to re-envision this important facet of English Christianity via the optics of feminist and postcolonial theologies.62 Daggers’s article is extremely helpful for this project given the significant role that the Anglican Church has played in the construction of English exceptionalism borne of an imperial hubris that was expressed in the confidence of mission Christianity and its triumphant re-creation of British social mores across the globe.63 While acknowledging the helpful facets of Anglican social theology in envisaging a constructive and egalitarian understanding of British social life, particularly through the lens of Christian socialism, Daggers nonetheless critiques this tradition for its failure to recognise the deeply embedded tropes of imperialism in its modus operandi.64 In a perceptive passage, Daggers states, Second, there is an absence of reflection on the significance of the fact that our nineteenth and twentieth century tradition of Anglican social theology emerged at the height of empire. That is to say, it arose in

24  Behind the scenes the metropolitan church, which had strong links with the colonies, in a period of missionary activity that anticipated the collapse of other religions in contact with Western culture in its secular and Christian religious form.65 In challenging this critical lacuna in the current discourse around the continued development of Anglican social theology, Daggers asks for a more penetrating form of analysis: But I suggest we need to go much further, not only in taking more seriously a long-overdue appraisal of the postcolonial effects of our imperial history in the British church and nation, but also in raising the question of what sort of Anglican social theology is indicated by the wider Anglican communion.66 Daggers’s article in many respects speaks to some of the larger questions pertaining to the role of Christianity and the Church in the construction of British identity and the sense of importance and entitlement, which I believe is deeply embedded within Brexit. Sadly, her perceptive insights are not shared by other scholars looking at British Christianity, such as in Ian Bradley’s Believing in Britain.67 Bradley’s comprehensive appraisal of the spiritual identity of Britain, assessing how Christianity and faith have shaped and continue to shape the nation, does include a significant chapter that moves us beyond a limited, bounded construction of nationality that equates simply to Whiteness.68 Bradley devotes a whole chapter  to looking at how Black and other minority ethnic peoples have contributed to the metanarrative of Britishness and its overarching nationality that is enveloped in the framework of Christianity and its concomitant Judeo-Christian values.69 Bradley demonstrates the extent to which Black Christians, for example, have internalised the national characteristics of Britishness and, as a corollary, the tropes of Christian identity. The latter can be identified in such facets as a love for the monarchy, an appreciation of the nation’s Christian heritage and a sense of gratitude for the mother country’s missionary exportation of Christianity and its attendant values of education, social development and notions of progress.70 I  accept that many Black Christians, particularly African and Caribbean Pentecostals, will define their identity in Christian terms, as opposed to adopting nomenclatures that are explicitly linked to ethnicity or culture.71 This particular hermeneutic of Black Christianity’s adherence to the normative tropes of Britishness fails to take account of the pervasiveness of colonialism and how mission Christianity has affected the socioreligious and political agency of Black people. As I  will demonstrate in the next chapter, mission Christianity, replete with notions of respectability politics and the internalisation of White, Eurocentric normality, has created forms of

Setting the scene 25 neo-conservatism in Black Christianity in Britain, which as a corollary, leads to the reification of the tropes of empire, such as the monarchy and the normativity of British religio-cultural aesthetics. I believe that the internalisation of the tentacles of neo-colonialism explains why many Black people voted for Brexit, believing that, in doing so, they were aligning themselves with Christian Britain. This issue will be explored in more detail in the following chapter, when I assess the efficacy of Black people’s finding themselves on the same side of the argument as White right-wing nationalists and unabashed apologists for colonialism and for the glories of Britain’s imperial past. I believe that just as mission Christianity has helped to shape the nature of White supremacist notions of entitlement and superiority that provides the substratum for Brexit, so too does it create a toxic form of self-negation in the psyche of Black people, encouraging them to identity with religio-­ cultural and political discourse that is inimical to their freedom. The antidote to such doubtful machinations is the substantive riposte of Black theology, which argues for Black existential freedom and agency and for a rejection of the tropes of White privilege and superiority.

Post-Brexit reflections The comparatively recent furore in the United Kingdom about the potential and actual deportation of Caribbean migrants in the spring of 2018 seemed to galvanise the body politic of the nation in ways that have proved surprising and affirming. The sense of outrage felt by many ordinary British people has surprised many in the news media. The construction of the binary of the privilege of Whiteness and those who are othered is one that is replete in the English psyche. The recent actions of the government in trying to deport Black Caribbean people whose citizenship was held in question due to governmental conspiracy or incompetency was but the sharp end of a continuum of the racialisation of Black bodies that has been centuries in the making. The virulently racist treatment meted out to Black people of  the Windrush Generation is all the more unpalatable in that it exacerbates the already-pernicious nature of being ‘different’ and the ‘other’ in a nation that often wants to exemplify homogeneity and sameness. The statistics of Black and Asian lives in Britain largely make for grim reading. Living here is never easy or without its struggles. The vast bulk of our numbers, for example, remain at the bottom of the economic ladder.72 So a form of subterranean Whiteness becomes emblematic for the sociocultural and political framing of belonging that constructs semiotical walls and borders in the body politic of Britain. In effect, the furore caused by the attempted deportation of the Windrush Generation is predicated on a semantic demarcation between Whiteness and Blackness, in which the boundaries between the Whiteness of belonging and the otherness of Blackness of the Windrush Generation is such that even the normal rules of civility around nationality and common decency are exposed as being illusionary.

26  Behind the scenes African-American womanist ethicist Emilie Townes has written about the cultural construction of evil via the media depictions of Blackness and how the toxic ephemera of the media exacerbates this hegemonic dynamic of White supremacy.73 Townes’s penetrating analysis of the cultural production of Western life reminds us of the embedded ways in which Blackness is fixed in the popular imagination.74 The objectification of Blackness is echoed in the literary and media production that is resonant in the public landscape of the West, particularly in the United States.75 Given the impact of American ‘soft culture’ on the public consciousness of the United Kingdom, one can see how Townes’s analysis echoes in the British context and in how cultural production contains embedded notions of Black objectification in its modus operandi. Blackness is othered behind a culturally constructed, media-influenced wall that situates the Windrush Generation as the seemingly disposal entities on the sharp end of the vituperative rhetoric of entitled Whiteness that provides the underpinning of Britishness. In the context of this work in theologising Brexit, I have noted the distinct diffidence with which the Church responded to the phenomenon. I have yet to find any church leader who has identified, unambiguously, with the cause of marginalised Black and minority ethnic people who have been othered in the Brexit phenomenon. I have sat in meetings and watched and listened to predominantly White leaders pander to the toxic rhetoric that othered Black bodies and minority ethnic migrants so that they could placate the wounded psyche of White privilege and entitlement. In so doing, they ironically show more care for dissatisfied, disillusioned, often poorer White people who largely do not attend their churches than to Black migrants who do so in disproportionately large numbers – often maintaining inner-city buildings long after they had been vacated by ‘White flight’ in the 1980s and early 1990s. Church leaders in Britain, while challenging the more jingoistic elements of the Leave campaign, nevertheless, refused to critique the concerns over immigration as being part of an orchestrated attempt at obfuscation. So blame can heaped upon migrants for the strain on resources that are disadvantaging the entitlement of poor White people while the neo-liberal social and economic policies that have marginalised these communities for the past two hundred years are ignored.76 As I demonstrate in chapter 4, because the subtextual nature of privileged Whiteness remains unexplored and barely articulated, it becomes easier to name immigration and the fear of the other as legitimate concerns that shape Brexit and not once mention Britain’s own complicity in the dynamic that has created patterns of migration over the past two hundred years. As I  have outlined in this opening essay, one cannot construct notions of British identity and self-understanding outside of a larger narrative of Britain’s relationship with other parts of the world, via the refracting optics of colonialism and empire. It does seem deeply ironic that a nation that overthrew governments, gerrymandered borders, plundered resources and

Setting the scene 27 enslaved peoples77 should be so resolutely set against the relatively benign presence of what is still a comparatively small minority of Black and minority ethnic people in the country. This stark disparity can be understood only if we are clear about the notions of manifest destiny and theological exceptionalism in the body politic of White Britain that sees their actions as qualitatively different from and superior to the agency of others. So while Britain has become deeply entrenched in the machinations of global capitalism that enshrines the doctrine of the free movement of capital, including goods and services,78 this most certainly does not include the corresponding movement of people, especially if they have dark skin.79 The ambivalence of British Christianity to take a preferential option for the marginalised, particularly those who are being traduced and scapegoated, might involve the nature of the collusive relationship that the historic churches, especially the Church of England, has with the operational activity of imperialism and colonialism. Timothy Gorringe explicates the relationship between ‘imperialism and prayer’ as he details how the Church was an important beneficiary of and a contributor to the age of empire.80 R.S. Sugirtharajah reminds us that in the latter half of the 19th century, “For most European theologians at the time, the empire was a matter of divine dispensation, and, as such, beyond ultimate criticism”.81 Sugirtharajah continues by saying that “What is also ironic is that systematic theology in Britain has continued to the present day as complacently unwilling to confront the reality of empire and its postcolonial consequences”.82 I am willing to concede that it must be difficult for the Church to critique the underlying frameworks that have given rise to Brexit when she herself is to deeply immersed in and is guilty of aiding and abetting the privileging of Whiteness and its accompanying forms of theological exceptionalism. So rather than challenge the scapegoating of migrants and the Windrush Generation and their forbears, the Church was largely ambivalent, until the blunt instrument of proposed deportation of largely elderly Black Caribbean people was threatened – and then belatedly the Church spoke. The scandal of the attempted and actual deportation of the Windrush Generation could not have happened without the toxic environment against immigration and migrants enacted by the Conservative and Unionist Party in 2013, which fed into the subsequent vote in Brexit.83 Andrew Brown and Linda Woodhead’s creative analysis of the Church of England outlines the sense of crisis and loss of confidence and identity of the state church that in many respects represents the barometer for the macro crises in the body politic of the nation as a whole.84 Reflecting on Brown and Woodhead’s narrative of the Church of England and its disconnect with the substantive developments in British society, I note the extent to which the loss of Britain’s imperial prestige on the world stage is mirrored in the increasingly ineffectual nature of the Church in relationship to Britain’s former colonial subjects in the Anglican communion.85 The diminution of the Church of England’s influence on the corporate identity of England is

28  Behind the scenes mirrored, in some respects, by the rise of a form of nostalgia for a cultural model of Christianity in which the certainties of Englishness are enshrined in the broader Judeo-Christian tradition rather than any specific belief in Jesus Christ.86 In creating this work, I have been struck that the most egregious ‘dereliction of duty’ of White Christianity vis-à-vis its response to Brexit has been the ambivalence with which it has recognised the singularly vital role that Black Christianity has played in revitalising the Christian faith in Britain. The growth of Black Christianity has occurred within White majority historic churches and through the growth and proliferation of Black majority Pentecostal churches. In terms of the former, historic denominations like the Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist and the United Reformed have all benefited greatly from the growth in their numbers of Black members and attendees from Caribbean and more latterly from Sub-Saharan Africa.87 The growth in Black Christianity from within the Pentecostal tradition is no less significant than the former.88 Both typologies of Black Christianity are not without their problematics when it comes to Black existential freedom and how they have been infected by the toxicity of mission Christianity, as will become clear in the next chapter. However, at this juncture, these problems notwithstanding, British Christianity would be in an immeasurably poorer state if Black people were not present in this country. The conflation of White privilege and entitlement alongside notions of election that are derived from a deep-seated theology of exceptionalism that is buttressed and exacerbated by the triumphs of empire has seen many historic churches remain somewhat ambivalent at the increased significance of Black and minority ethnic people to the future mission and ministry of their churches.89 Given that British Christianity has been one of the greatest beneficiaries of post-war migration from the Caribbean and Africa and given how this phenomenon traduced the multi-ethnic and multicultural paradigms that have benefited the Church in Britain, one might have hoped for a greater resolve to oppose the very concept of Brexit. I argue that the apparent ambivalence was a result of the continuing need to placate White sensibilities and the fragility of Whiteness that has little agency once it is shorn from its moorings of privilege, entitlement and superiority.

What needs to happen next? As I will demonstrate in chapter 4, Whiteness in Britain can be detoxified and released from the stultifying tentacles of theological exceptionalism and its accompanying sense of superiority and sublimated arrogance. For this to occur, however, two simultaneous moves will need to be undertaken, which call for courage and unflinching honesty. First, Britain needs to deconstruct the relationship between Christianity and empire. As I  demonstrate in chapter  3, the historical development of Christian mission that travelled hand in hand with empire and colonialism

Setting the scene 29 had negative consequences for all those who were ensnared in its web of deceit. The anti-Black problematics that I have described in an earlier iteration of this work was no accidental phenomenon.90 While British-run slavery ended in 1833 and Britain’s former enslaved and colonial Black majority territories were granted independence beginning in Africa, with Ghana in 1957, then in the Caribbean, with Jamaica in 1962, White supremacist notions of superiority and privilege outlived the aforementioned developments.91 Britain’s failure to come to terms with its colonial past and the almost complete absence of any meaningful discourse in British Christianity and theological life has led to the incubation rather than the death of imperial hubris and neo-colonial notions of specifically White English exceptionalism. It is why we have witnessed the collapse in space and time between the virulent racism meted out to the Windrush Generation in the years immediately following the arrival of the SS Empire Windrush in 194892 and the manifest racism of the Conservative government actions to deport members of these communities and their descendants in 2018. It is as if nothing had been learnt in the interim period. Clearly, British antipathy to Black bodies had not disappeared. At this juncture, I  am reminded of a conversation with a close friend who recalled an incident that happened to him the day after the Brexit vote was announced. He, like me, was a child of the Windrush Generation, his parents coming to the United Kingdom from the Caribbean island of Barbados in 1961. He was born in the United Kingdom in 1969. We have spoken several times in the past of our formative experiences growing up in 1970s Britain, he in Manchester and me in Bradford. At that time, it was not uncommon for Black people to hear the epithet n***** being directed towards us. By the early to mid 1980s, this deeply offensive term had begun to disappear from common parlance in the lexicon of abuse in public life in Britain. Save for its appearance in hip-hop music and predominantly in the discourse of African-American popular culture, one did not hear the word for the most part in Britain. But on the morning after the Brexit result being announced, my friend shared with me the visceral shock he felt as a White man drove past his front gate as he was leaving for work and shouted “Go home, you n****. We are taking back our country”. In our subsequent conversations, I remarked how the change in climate in Britain after the Brexit vote reminded me of the shock of waking up one morning with shingles in the autumn of 2015. I remember catching chickenpox as a seven-year-old, but having recovered from the itchy unpleasantness, I had assumed that the virus that had caused this complaint had disappeared. A  visit to the health clinic quickly disabused me of this notion. The chickenpox virus does not disappear. It is incubated within the body, and in moments of acute stress and anxiety, it is prone to resurface in adult life, as shingles. My friend and I both reflected on my medical metaphor as being deeply emblematic of the current epoch in which we are presently living in Britain.

30  Behind the scenes Brexit Britain is experiencing the collective dis-ease resulting from the outbreak of systemic shingles as the toxic residue of racism and xenophobia has re-entered the body politic of the nation, having lain dormant for a period of time. This leads me to the second move that is needed if we are to recover our equilibrium in Britain after Brexit. Not only is it necessary to deconstruct and purge ourselves of the noxious fumes of imperial grandeur that still continue to assault the senses of contemporary Britain; the Church must also recover its prophetic stance as a critical voice that rejects the right-wing populist zeitgeist. A prophetic church will provide the nation with the necessary resources to denounce the dangerous memories of imperial Christianity and its attendant theologies of White exceptionalism and superiority. An important resource in this critical step of renouncing the hegemonic theologies of empire is John Hull’s magisterial book Towards the Prophetic Church.93 Hull explores the history of the ‘missio dei’ (the mission of God) from its biblical roots through the development of church expansion across territories and nations and into the present day. Of crucial import for this work is Hull’s perceptive analysis on the ongoing tension between the prophetic church with its roots in the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures and the imperially friendly church that colludes with rather than opposes oppressive, totalising forms of hegemony.94 Although Hull does not name the dangerous construct of Whiteness, as this work seeks to do,95 he nevertheless critiques imperial theology and recognises that the dangerous residues of this discourse have not gone away: The theology of empire has outlived the empire. The empire has gone but its theology lingers on. Much of the modern church is like the Israelites, going into exile with a royal Kingdom theology. Faith has become a remnant, far from the glories of its greatest achievements.96 Hull points to the constant flourishing of a theology of resistance to the worst excesses of imperial theology. He recognises the radicalism of the early Methodist movement under John Wesley in the 18th century, the Christian socialism of Anglican social theology in the mid 19th century (which I mentioned at an earlier point in this chapter) and the developments in contextual theologies of liberation from the Global South in the latter part of the 20th century.97 In outlining the constituent parts of a prophetic church, Hull is highlighting the need for a countercultural church, whose critical challenge is to the state and the prevailing status quo.98 This model of church is one that is not focused narrowly on its own survival or on internalised battles around sexual ethics, all the while wrapping itself in enveloping forms of obfuscation in order to remain inattentive to the nature of power to which it has all too easily succumbed.99 Rather, a prophetic church is one that is acutely aware of the nature and the danger of Whiteness and its attendant notions

Setting the scene 31 of entitlement, privilege and exceptionalism. Most importantly, in aligning itself with marginalised, visible minorities, this model of church will discover a radical and liberating Jesus in the figure of the other, thus refuting the ‘White Christ’ who supported and sanctions the perdition wrought by empire and colonialism.

Conclusion This opening essay has sought to highlight the subtextual, religious and theological fault lines that explains, in part, the Brexit phenomenon. While all people had a myriad of reasons for how they voted, this work is focused on the theological underpinnings of that vote and its subsequent impact on Black communities in Britain. In this opening chapter, I have sought to provide the opening salvo of and for my prophetic Black liberationist and postcolonial critique of Brexit. This work has resonance with the pioneering scholarship of R.S. Sugirtharajah, whom I  have mentioned several times, and more latterly that of John Hull. Whereas Sugirtharajah’s particular focus is on postcolonial biblical hermeneutics, Hull’s focus is on missiology. Both have contributed to this opening chapter. In the following essays, however, it will become clear that my focus also differs from that of Sugirtharajah and Hull. As a Black liberation theologian and decolonial educator, I infuse this work with the clear intentionality of naming and subverting Whiteness, and I offer a hermeneutic of Blackness as its critical riposte. In doing so, I am seeking to make visible constructs and discourses that have, for too long now, remained hidden in academic and ecclesial theological work in Britain. So now, we move on to explore why many Black Christians sought to align themselves with Brexit when the tentacles of empire and neo-colonialism should have seemed obvious to anyone who was watching the news media and observing the shrill xenophobia of the Leave campaign.

Notes 1 For further details on this significant event in contemporary British history, see the following link: https://news.sky.com/story/enoch-powells-rivers-of-bloodthe-speech-that-divided-a-nation-11339291 – accessed 20 June 2018. 2 Please see the following link and the section entitled ‘Support for the Speech’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivers_of_Blood_speech (Accessed 7 April 2019). 3 In using the term ‘Black’, I am speaking in a specific sense of people of ‘African’ descent but also more generally of all people in the United Kingdom who are not perceived or recognised as White. In effect, I am juxtaposing and conflating two tropes of postcolonial identity. The first usage of the term understands identity in terms of ethnicity and culture, whereas the second reflects the identity politics and the rationale of oppositional of resistance in the body politic of the United Kingdom. For a helpful explication of this semantic point, see Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Postcolonial Black British Theology: New Textures and Themes (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2007), pp. xiii–xv.

32  Behind the scenes 4 This distinction is developed more fully in the fourth essay/chapter in this book. 5 This phrase has now been developed into a multimedia educational resource for teaching about empire, nationality and asylum in Britain. See www.virtual migrants.com/we_rhere/index.htm 6 In more recent times, my colleague and friend Michael Jagessar has sought to both critique Gilbert’s importance and give agency to the two enslaved African women in an important essay. See Michael N. Jagessar ‘Early Methodism in the Caribbean: Through the Imaginary Optics of Gilbert’s Slave Women  – Another Reading’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2007, pp. 153–170. 7 In using this term, I am referring to those established denominations of the Protestant tradition and the Roman Catholic Church, which account for the greater majority of the population that can be described and identified as attendees and practising Christians. The churches in question are the Anglican Church (the Church of England), the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church, the Reformed Church (the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom) and the Roman Catholic Church. These churches account for approximately two-thirds of all Black Christians in the United Kingdom. Both branches or wings of the Christian faith have nevertheless been informed by the imperial missionary strains of British Christianity via the Caribbean and the continent of Africa. See entries marked ‘Christianity’ and ‘Churches’ in David Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones (eds) The Oxford Companion to Black British History (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 99–104. 8 See Richard Reddie Abolition: The Struggle to Abolish Slavery in the British Colonies (Oxford: Lion, 2007). 9 See J.D. Aldred Respect: Understanding Caribbean British Christianity (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2005). 10 Michael N. Jagessar ‘Book Review of J.D. Aldred Respect: Understanding Caribbean British Christianity’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.5, No.2, pp. 128–130, 130. 11 See Chigor Chike African Christianity in Britain: Diaspora, Doctrines and Dialogue (Milton Keynes: Authorhouse, 2007) for an excellent appraisal of African Christianity in Britain. 12 See Robert Beckford Dread and Pentecostalism: A  Political Theology for the Black Church in Britain (London: SPCK, 2000). See also Anthony G. Reddie Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Postcolonial Black British Theology; Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Black Theology in Britain: A  Reader (London: Equinox, 2007); Robert Beckford Documentary as Exorcism: Resisting the Bewitchment of Colonial Christianity (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). 13 See R.S. Sugirtharajah Postcolonial Reconfigurations: An Alternative Way of Reading the Bible and Doing Theology (London: SCM Press, 2003), pp. 143–161. 14 R.S. Sugirtharajah Postcolonial Reconfigurations, p. 147. 15 See John of Gaunt’s death-bed speech in Act 2, scene 1, where he prophesises the downfall of an idealised England under the rule of Richard II. William Shakespeare Richard II. (Stratford: Arden Shakespeare Series, 2003). 16 Anthony B. Pinn Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), pp. 27–79. 17 R.S. Sugirtharajah Postcolonial Reconfigurations, p. 24. 18 Comments made by Stanley Livingstone to sum up the imperial colonial missionary enterprise in Africa, in Oxford in 1857. See Fidelis Nkomazana ‘Livingstone’s Ideas of Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation’. Botswana Journal of African Studies, Vol.12, Nos 1–2, 1998, pp. 45–57.

Setting the scene 33 19 See The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 1970s Britain (London and New York: Routledge in Association with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1982). 20 Within the British context, this work has, until more recent times, been undertaken with greater alacrity by sociologists and cultural theorists than theologians. Amongst the best work that has emerged from the former, see the University of Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1982). See also A. Sivanandan A Different Hunger: Writings on Black Resistance (London: Pluto Press, 1982); Colin Prescod and Hazel Waters (eds) A World to Win: Essays in Honour of A. Sivanandan (London: Institute of Race Relations, 1999); Arun Kundnani The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain (London: Pluto Press, 2007). To my mind, the best collective work from a Black Theology perspective in Britain can be found in Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie Black Theology in Britain. 21 Some of the key texts in this emerging discourse include the following: See James W. Perkinson, White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). See also James W. Perkinson, Shamanism, Racism and Hip Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Laurie M. Cassidy and Alex Mikulich (eds) Interrupting White Privilege: Catholic Theologians Break the Silence (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007); Jennifer Harvey Whiteness and Morality: Pursuing Racial Justice Through Reparations and Sovereignty (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Jennifer Harvey Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation (Grand Rapids, MI: W.M.B. Eerdmands, 2014). 22 See Chris Shannahan Voices from the Borderland: Re-Imaging Cross-Cultural Urban Theology in the Twenty-First Century (London: Equinox, 2010). 23 Chris Shannahan Voices from the Borderland, pp. 140–142. 24 In many ways and for many reasons, Robert Beckford and I have become the major figures and the focal point for the development of Black theology in Britain. For a helpful assessment of our respective work, see Anthony G. Reddie SCM Core Text: Black Theology (London: SCM Press, 2012), pp. 58–84. 25 See amongst the following Kenneth Leech Through Our Long Exile (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2001); Kenneth Leech Doing Theology in Altab Park (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005); Rod Garner Facing the City (Peterborough: Epworth, 2004); Laurie Green Urban Ministry (London: SPCK, 2003); John Vincent Hope From the City: Report From the Commission on Urban Life and Faith: Faithful Cities – a Call for Celebration, Vision and Justice (Peterborough and London: The Methodist Publishing House and Church House Publishing, 2006); Chris Baker and Elaine Graham (eds) Religious Capital in Regenerating Communities (Manchester: William Temple Foundation, 2004); Chris Baker The Hybrid Church in the City: Third Space Thinking (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 26 Nigel Rooms The Faith of the English: Integrating Christ and Culture (London: SPCK, 2011). 27 Nigel Rooms The Faith of the English, p. 107. 28 The origins of Chicken Tikka Masala are complex In that it has been argued that the dish is a British variation of an existing Indian dish (i.e. Chicken Tikka existed in India, but the ‘Masala’ component was added in the UK). Whatever the exact origins of the dish are, my assertion remains valid, because whether it is a British adaptation or can be seen as authentically Indian, it is, nevertheless, not an invention of White people, but Indians, whether living in India or in the UK.

34  Behind the scenes 29 See Faithful Cities: A Call for Celebration, Vision and Justice (Peterborough and London: Church House Publishing and the Methodist Publishing House, 2006), pp. 17–44. 30 See the following link for the voting patterns of religious groups in the United Kingdom in regard to the Brexit vote: www.brin.ac.uk/2017/how-religiousgroups-voted-at-the-2016-referendum-on-britains-eu-membership/ – accessed 16 July 2018. 31 Nigel Rooms, The Faith of the English, pp. 73–92. 32 See Anthony G. Reddie Working Against the Grain: Re-imaging Black Theology in the 21st Century (London: Equinox, 2008), pp. 146–156. 33 Nigel Rooms, The Faith of the English, p. 35. 34 Given that the analysis coming from the voting patterns of religious people towards Brexit demonstrates that Anglicans were more likely to vote Leave more so that than any other expression of Christianity, this demonstrates the conflation of Englishness, tacit Whiteness and ‘Christian Britain’, to which reference has already been made. For an overview of these voting patterns, see the following link: www.brin.ac.uk/2017/how-religious-groups-voted-at-the-2016-ref erendum-on-britains-eu-membership/ – accessed 16 July 2018. 35 See Ben Ryan (eds) Fortress Britain? Ethical Approaches to Immigration Policy for a Post-Brexit Britain (London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley, 2018); Crucible: The Journal of Christian Social Ethics – Populism [April Issue] (London: Hymns, Ancient and Modern, 2018). 36 Ben Ryan (eds) Fortress Britain? 37 Ben Ryan (eds) Fortress Britain? p. 9. 38 Susanna Snyder ‘Biblical and Theological Responses on Migration’, Ben Ryan (eds) Fortress Britain? Ethical Approaches to Immigration Policy for a PostBrexit Britain (London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley, 2018), pp. 94–113. 39 Mohammed Girma ‘Cultural Identity in Post-Brexit Britain: A  Thought on Narrative Healing’, Ben Ryan (eds) Fortress Britain? Ethical Approaches to Immigration Policy for a Post-Brexit Britain (London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley, 2018), pp. 114–133. 40 Susanna Snyder ‘Biblical and Theological Responses on Migration’, p. 96. 41 Susanna Snyder ‘Biblical and Theological Responses on Migration’, p. 110. 42 Nigel Rooms, The Faith of the English. 43 For an excellent distillation of this sense of manifest destiny that underpins Anglo-Saxon-inspired notions of Whiteness that reflects both British and Americans notions of selfhood, see Kelly Brown Douglas Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), pp. 4–23. 44 For excellent work in respect of how Christianity is contextualised in relationship to cultures and practices in specific milieus, see H. Richard Niebuhr Christ and Culture  – 50th anniversary edition (San Francisco: Harpercollins, 2002); Stephen B. Bevans Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002); Robert Schreiter Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985); Gerald A. Arbuckle Earthing the Gospel: An Inculturation Handbook for Pastoral Workers (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002). 45 Mohammed Girma ‘Cultural Identity in Post-Brexit Britain’, pp. 114–133. 46 Mohammed Girma ‘Cultural Identity in Post-Brexit Britain’, pp. 118–122. For alternative theological interpretations of multiculturalism, see the work of Chris Shannahan. See Chris Shannhan Voices from the Borderland; Chris Shannahan A Theology of Community Organizing: Power to the People (New York and London: Routledge, 2014). 47 Cited in Mohammed Girma ‘Cultural Identity in Post-Brexit Britain’, p. 130. 48 Mohammed Girma ‘Cultural Identity in Post-Brexit Britain’, pp. 122–131. 49 Black religious and philosophical scholars have identified Hegel as part of an Enlightenment tradition that venerated the White racialised reasoning that

Setting the scene 35 has helped to shape the discourse of White supremacy. See Victor Anderson Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay in African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (New York: Continuum, 1995), pp. 53–61. See also Emmanuel Eze (ed.) Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 109–153. 50 Shawn Kelley’s work explores how the person of Jesus has been racialised in the development of biblical studies. See Shawn Kelley Racializing Jesus: Race, Ideology and the Formation of Modern Biblical Scholarship (New York: Routledge, 2002). 51 See James H. Cone ‘The White Church and Black Power’. In Gayraud S. Wilmore and James H. Cone (eds) Black Theology: A Documentary History, 1966– 1979 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), pp. 112–133. See also Kelly Brown Douglas The Black Christ (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), pp. 10–19. 52 Ben Ryan Crucible. 53 Richard Sudworth ‘Editorial’. Crucible: The Journal of Christian Social Ethics – Populism [April Issue] (London: Hymns, Ancient and Modern, 2018), pp. 3–6. 54 Richard Sudworth ‘Editorial’, p. 4. 55 Al Barratt ‘The Church and Populist Politics: Reflections on Occupy, Grenfell Tower and Brexit’. Crucible, pp. 18–29. 56 Jenny Daggers ‘Repairing and Reimaging: Anglican Social Theology in Feminist and Postcolonial Perspective’. Crucible, pp. 45–52. 57 The‘Occupy movement’ is a global grassroots social justice movement that is committed to challenging and ending the extremes of social equality, particularly, within the major cities that have come to define the central agencies for the perpetuation of globalisation and neo-liberal economics. See the following link for a brief precis of the movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement – accessed 2 July 2018. 58 Al Barratt ‘The Church and Populist Politics’, pp. 24–27. 59 Al Barratt ‘The Church and Populist Politics’, pp. 24–27. 60 Al Barratt ‘The Church and Populist Politics’. 61 This issue is addressed in transnational, sociopolitical and cultural terms by Pau Gilroy. See Paul Gilroy After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). 62 Jenny Daggers ‘Repairing and Reimaging’, pp. 45–52. 63 This issue is addressed in chapter 3, where I look at mission Christianity in light of the ‘Great Commission’ and the creation of colonial subjects in the mission field. 64 Jenny Daggers ‘Repairing and Reimaging’, pp. 50–52. 65 Jenny Daggers ‘Repairing and Reimaging’, p. 51. 66 Jenny Daggers ‘Repairing and Reimaging’, p. 51. 67 See Ian Bradley Believing in Britain: The Spiritual Identity of Britishness (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006). 68 Ian Bradley Believing in Britain, pp. 167–200. 69 Ian Bradley Believing in Britain, pp. 167–200. 70 Ian Bradley Believing in Britain, pp. 174–182. 71 See Nicole Toulis Believing Identity: Pentecostalism and the Mediation of Jamaican Ethnicity and Gender in England (Oxford: Berg, 1997). See also Joe Aldred Respect; Mark Sturge Look What the Lord Has Done! (Milton Keynes: Scripture Union, 2005). 72 See Ceri Peach ‘Black-Caribbeans: Class, Gender and Geography’. In Ceri Peach (ed.) Ethnicity in the 1991 Census – Vol.2 the Ethnic Minority Populations of Great Britain (London: HMSO, 1996), p. 27. 73 See Emilie M. Townes Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 74 Emilie M. Townes Womanist Ethics, pp. 11–55. 75 Emilie M. Townes Womanist Ethics, pp. 29–55.

36  Behind the scenes 76 See the following link for a news story in which the archbishop of Canterbury is seen to buy into the toxic narrative of immigration concerns in the United Kingdom before the Brexit vote: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-church/ british-fears-over-immigration-should-be-addressed-archbishop-of-canterburyidUKKCN0WD0SC – accessed 4 July 2018. 77 Wilf Wilde provides one of the most compelling theological critiques of British (and later American) imperialism and its relationship to global capitalism. See Wilf Wilde Crossing the River of Fire: Mark’s Gospel and Global Capitalism (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2006). 78 Wilf Wilde Crossing the River of Fire, pp. 91–151. 79 See Dwight N. Hopkins Head and Heart: Black Theology – Past, Present and Future (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 127–152. 80 T.J. Gorringe Furthering Humanity, pp. 177–204. 81 R.S. Sugirtharajah Postcolonial Reconfigurations: An Alternative Way of Reading the Bible an Doing Theology (London: SCM Press, 2004), p. 148. 82 R.S. Sugirtharajah Postcolonial Reconfigurations, p. 148. 83 See the following link for further information on this issue: www.theguardian. com/politics/2013/oct/10/immigration-bill-theresa-may-hostile-environment  – accessed 4 July 2018. 84 Andrew Brown and Linda Woodhead That Was the Church That Was: How the Church of England Lost the English People (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). 85 Andrew Brown and Linda Woodhead That Was the Church That Was, pp. 135–156. 86 This issue is explored more fully in chapter 4, where I reflect on the development of a cultural adherence to Christianity as a repository for sublimated Whiteness. 87 The importance of Black Christianity to the multicultural nature and expression of the faith in historic churches has been expressed in a number of reports and publications. See Faithful Cities  – a Call for Celebration, Vision and Justice (Peterborough and London: The Methodist Publishing House and Church House Publishing, 2006); Anthony G. Reddie, Hudson Roberts and Gale Richards (eds) Journeying to Justice: Black Contributions to the Baptist Tradition Across the Black Atlantic (Milton Keyes: Paternoster Press, 2017), www.urc.org. uk/about-us/global-and-intercultural/197-global-and-intercultural-ministries. html – accessed 4 July 2018; Tessa D. Henry-Robinson ‘Qualitative Account of a Relationship Story Between the URC and BME Women’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.12, No.1, 2014, pp. 58–79. See also David Isiorho ‘A Tale of Two Cities: Implicit Assumptions and Mission Strategies in Black and White Majority Churches’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.10, No.2, 2012, pp. 195–211. 88 For helpful texts outlining the growth in Black Pentecostalism in the United Kingdom, see Israel Olofinjana, Joel Edwards and Ram Gidoomal Turning the Tables on Mission: Stories of Christians from the Global South in the UK (London: Instant Apostle, 2013); Israel Olofinjana African Voices: Towards African British Theologies (Carlisle: Global Christian Publications, 2017). See also Joe Aldred and Keno Ogbo (eds) The Black Church in the 21st Century (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010). 89 See David Isiorho’s critical analysis of the treatment and experience of Black priests in the Church of England for a recognition of this. See David Isiorho ‘Black Clergy Discontent: Selective Interviews on Racialised Exclusion’. Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol.18, No.2, 2003, pp. 213–226. See also n ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, pp. 195–211. 90 See Anthony G. Reddie ‘Anti Black Problematics in Imperial and Contemporary British Christianity’. In R. Drew Smith, William Ackah and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Churches, Blackness and Contested Multiculturalism: Europe, Africa and North America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 11–29.

Setting the scene 37 91 Anthony G. Reddie Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity (Basingstoke: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 1–30. 92 See the following link for first-hand accounts of the experiences of the Windrush Generation – www.timeout.com/london/news/hear-the-stories-of-the-windrushgeneration-from-the-people-who-were-part-of-it-062618 – accessed 4 July 2018. 93 John M. Hull Towards the Prophetic Church. 94 John M. Hull Towards the Prophetic Church, pp. 67–160. 95 This is perhaps a sharp reminder that the prophetic gift of Black theology is its analytical focus on race and racism, which consequently both sees and names the privilege and alleged superiority of Whiteness for the aberrant, anti-Christ heresy it has always been. Sadly, it remains so in an age of Donald J. Trump and the outbreak of popular White, ethnocentric nationalism across Europe, including Brexit of course. See Darrius Hills ‘Back to a White Future: White Religious Loss, Donald Trump, and the Problem of Belonging’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.16, No.1, 2018, pp. 38–52. See also Josiah Ulysses Young III ‘Making America Great Again? An Essay on “The Weightier Matters of the Law: Justice and Mercy and Faith” ’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.16, No.1, 2018, pp. 53–60. 96 John M. Hull Towards the Prophetic Church, p. 199. 97 John M. Hull Towards the Prophetic Church, pp. 202–205. 98 John M. Hull Towards the Prophetic Church, pp. 209–234. 99 Alison Webster offers a deceptively simple analysis of the ways in which power is invariably wrapped up in the stories we tell and whose stories are heard and whose are ignored or dismissed. See Alison Webster You Are Mine: Reflections on Who We Are (London: SPCK, 2009), pp. 42–79.

2 Courting controversy The anti-Blackness problematic of mission Christianity

Introduction The roots of this essay go back some ten years, so well before Brexit emerged in our contemporary consciousness. As I hope to illustrate in the forthcoming pages, it is the long-held internalised colonisation of Black minds and hearts by means of imperial mission Christianity1 that explains why significant numbers of Black people2 voted for Brexit, often as a means of defending ‘Christian Britain’.3 This defending of Christian Britain, as I have outlined in the previous chapter, has its substantive underscoring based on British imperialism, in which there is a dialectical nexus of Christianity and Whiteness. The roots of this chapter can be found in an earlier iteration of this work, in which I began the tentative exploration of the anti-Blackness that lies at the heart of imperial mission Christianity.4 This essay is an expansion of that earlier iterative exploration of colonial Christianity and anti-Blackness. In short, this essay argues that Black people who self-identity as Christian, and for the corporate edifice of Black Christianity itself, Black Christian faith must always be contextualised so that it speaks to our existential realities and does not simply reinscribe the blandishments of empire and both White privilege and entitlement.

Where does this begin? I had the privilege of being invited to attend and indeed sit on one of the panels at the first State of Black Britain Symposium held at the Commonwealth Club in London on 17 October 2009. The event brought together a number of prominent Black British spokespeople, personalities, politicians, entrepreneurs and educators to discuss the current state of Black people in Britain. At an earlier juncture in the meeting, as the conversation addressed the issue of the rise of the ‘far right’ and the implications of this apparent growth in support from Black people in Britain, a leading Black Christian minister rose to his feet and declared that “Black people should join the [British National Party] BNP and so attempt to undermine them from

Courting controversy 39 within”. There was a moment of silence, followed by a wave of clapping and general nods of agreement. Several minutes later, I overheard two older Black people discussed the possibility that while they might not go as far as attempting to join the BNP, they would certainly vote for them as, and I quote one of them directly at this point, “They are at least standing up for Christian Britain. This country is not what it once was”. Suffice it to say that I was stunned at what I had just heard. Voting for the BNP as a Black person is akin to turkeys looking forward to Christmas. A fascist party whose stated raison d’être is the removal of all non-AngloSaxon people from the country is not one that seems to even want Black support, let alone admit the absurd idea that Black people should vote for them and possibly even join the party to undermine from within. Although this view remained a minority one, during the subsequent break for lunch, I  was conscious of the number of people who quite consciously intended to support UKIP, as the more acceptable and less toxic version of British, particularly English, nationalism. While Brexit was not on the immediate horizon in 2009, the seeds of that phenomenon were being sown, and colonial Christianity had already watered those seeds and given sustenance to a conservative, reactionary and internalised form of self-negation. I  wonder how many Black Christians who voted for Brexit are now lamenting the Conservative government’s treatment of the Windrush Generation and the deportation of members of this community. I wonder how many of the Windrush Generation themselves voted to safeguard a Christian Britain that later wished to deport them. What intrigued me most, however, as a Black religious scholar, was the notion that voting for this party was a means of defending Christian Britain. In more recent times, I wonder how many people at that meeting back in 2009 subsequently voted for Brexit on the same basis. At the time of the referendum debate, I had several conversations with Black Christians, a number of whom expressed their intention to support the Leave campaign. When I asked why they were doing so, most spoke less about Europe and more about wanting to ‘keep the Muslims and other dodgy people out’ and, most crucially, wanting to maintain Britain’s Christian heritage or to support the notion of ‘Christian Britain’. This is the same Christian Britain of empire that gave us the transatlantic chattel slavery of African people; it is the same Christian Britain of empire, that gave us colonialism and the exploitation of peoples’ lands, their bodies and their very selves.5 Is this the construct that these individuals were hoping to defend by voting for a fascist political party? More importantly, is this also a construct that convinced many that aligning themselves with the Leave campaign of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage was one that had their best interests at heart? In this essay, I  intend to address how my own scholarship and teaching has sought to address the often inhibited and internalised colonisation of the mind that has bedevilled and continues to impact Black people in

40  Behind the scenes postcolonial Britain. I am interested in how a participative model of Black theology, influenced by notions of transformative pedagogy, can be the means by which ordinary Black people of faith can be enabled to reflect more critically on the implication of the underlying theological constructs they hold. In what ways do the confessional belief structures that arise from particular theological themes become harmful and even detrimental to the Black self? How can these elements be challenged, resisted and even overcome?6 I must clarify that this work offers only a small snapshot, a microcosm if you will, of what is undoubtedly a large and significant social phenomenon. I am not writing about or speaking for or against every Black Christian in Britain. I write as someone who is a confessional believer within the very code I am critiquing. My insider status is not meant to offer me any sense of being ‘authentic’ or providing greater veracity for my account than that provided by many others.7 Rather, this work is based on two initial personal and experiential encounters, which are then juxtaposed with wider theoretical material drawn from the literature to provide a richly textured account of how the critical consciousness of Black Christians in Britain is impacted by the false consciousness of imperial mission Christianity. As I hope to demonstrate in the context of this work, Black theology in Britain can be best exemplified as the critical, intellectual and discursive practice that has attempted to offer a more politicised conception of Christianity for the expressed purposes of Black existential liberation.8

Defining Black Christianity in Britain Black Christianity in Britain provides the overarching phenomenon out of which this essay is drawn. In using the term ‘Black Christianity in Britain’, I  am speaking of the broad phenomenon of Black people of African and Caribbean descent who are domiciled in Britain and who, within this context, can be said to believe in the God revealed in Jesus Christ and seek to give expression to the central tenets of the Christian faith in myriad forms of sociocultural practices. Central to the existence and development of Black Christianity in Britain is the development of different modalities of church in which this phenomenon is housed. As a confirmed Black liberation theologian whose concerns are for all and for every manifestation of Black Christianity in Britain, this work is focused on all aspects and facets of Black Christianity in Britain. In my analysis of the internal colonisation of faith within Black Christianity, I  am writing for and critiquing every aspect of this phenomenon and not favouring some at the expense of others, which to my mind represents the constrictive exclusivity expressed by many Black Pentecostal scholars in the United Kingdom.9 In many different contexts, the Church, particularly, the Black Church, has proved to be the most durable of locations from which and in which the nascent practices of Black Christianity have flourished. At the heart of Black

Courting controversy 41 Christianity is the positionality of Black theology in Britain, which like all branches of the family termed ‘theologies of liberation’ is often characterised by its commitment to liberative praxis. The ongoing development of Black theology in Britain has operated largely within the parameters of the Black Church, as opposed to the formal structures and scholarly hinterland of the academy. At the time of writing, there is only one academic institution presently teaching Black theology in its curriculum.10 In using the term ‘Black Church’, I suggest two differing foci for locating an operative centre for the practice and theorising of Black Christianity in Britain as a potential model for providing a decolonial critique of the blandishments of imperial mission Christianity and the stultifying impact on the critical consciousness of Black Christians vis-à-vis Brexit. The first category and by far the most visible comprises Black-led Pentecostal churches. These churches owe their origins to Black migrants travelling from the Caribbean in the post-war (post–Second World War) mass movement of the last century. The first churches were offshoots of predominantly White Pentecostal denominations in the southern states of the United States. These churches were first planted in the United Kingdom in the early 1950s. The largest and most established of these churches are The New Testament Church of God and The Church of God of Prophecy.11 The second strand is Black majority churches in White historic denominations.12 These churches are demographically determined, as their Black majority membership has grown out of Black migrants moving into inner-city urban contexts, coupled with the White flight of the middle class.13 Within the literature of Black religious studies, particular emphasis is placed on the role of the Black Church as the major (in some respects, the only) institution that has affirmed and conferred dignity on the inhibited and assaulted personhood of Black people.14 Black churches have provided an important – one might even argue necessary – repository for Black agency across the African Diaspora. Within the British context, the early work of Joe Aldred and his “With Power” edited texts provide an excellent conduit for assessing the important of Black churches (of various guises) as a religiocultural and social receptacle in which Black existential concerns have been housed.15 In terms of my analysis of the internalised colonisation of Black Christianity that has affected Black people’s collusion with Brexit, I  look more closely at differing manifestations of Black Christian faith in Britain.

Classical Black British Pentecostalism as an expression of Black Christianity in Britain While some adherents of these churches came as communicant members of historic (White) denominations,16 many of these individuals arrived as members of established Pentecostal denominations in the Caribbean. For many, their arrival in the United Kingdom was born of an intense missionary desire to plant and establish their own churches in this new cultural and social

42  Behind the scenes context. A detailed history of this largely untold narrative can be found in the work of Black British scholars such as Joe Aldred,17 Mark Sturge18 and Doreen McCalla.19 There is no doubting the important contribution that Black British Pentecostalism has made to the development of Black Christianity in Britain, particularly if we locate this phenomenon as operating as a form of resistance to the worst excesses of imperial mission Christianity. In the works of such individuals as Joe Aldred and Robert Beckford, Black British Pentecostalism has been able to assert the importance of religio-cultural aesthetics and codified forms of sanctified worship – highlighting the emotive power of Black worship as a countercultural phenomenon to counter racism.20 In the last 20 years or so, we have witnessed the growth of newer forms of Pentecostalism. These newer forms of Pentecostalism have their origins in the continent of Africa as opposed to the Caribbean. These newer forms, unlike the Caribbean versions that preceded them, have little to no engagement with anti-colonial or marked forms of religio-cultural resistance to the toxic tentacles of imperial mission Christianity. Like Caribbean Pentecostalism, however, these newer African expressions of Black Christianity are still predicated on charismatic worship, with a strong emphasis on pneumatology, coupled with Black musicology, which characterises the distinctive contribution to British Christianity of many of these churches.21 Some of the more well-known examples of churches in this particular modality of Black Christianity are Kingsway International Christian Centre,22 Glory House,23 and Redeemed Christian Church of God.24 What is significant about these churches and many others, for the purpose of this work, is that they have largely failed to deconstruct the edifice of imperial mission Christianity. As we will soon see, in their attempts to re-evangelise Britain or to act as ‘reverse missionaries’, African Pentecostalism is often attempting to reinscribe the neo-colonial tenets of imperial mission Christianity.25 As we saw in the previous chapter, given the extent to which British Christianity is underpinned by an unexplored form of White exceptionalism, one has to question the relevance of or at least ask the critical question whether Africans can undertake mission and evangelism amongst White Christians. This is especially the case, when for the most part, White British theologians have yet to acknowledge the existence and admit the consequences of ‘White flight’, which helped to create Black churches in White historic denominations. Given that White people left inner-city churches when Black people moved into them in significant numbers (and barring one or two notable exceptions, this has gone unacknowledged),26 one has to ask whether White British Christians want to be in the same space as their Black brothers and sisters in the faith. The weakness in Black British Pentecostalism as a conduit for the development and sustenance of Black Christianity in Britain can be detected in its seeming inability to engage explicitly with the central tenets of Black hermeneutical thought, particularly in interrogating the Bible. This weakness has

Courting controversy 43 been highlighted in a previous piece of work and will be explored in greater detail in Chapter 6, when I look specifically at how we read the Bible.27 The perceived weaknesses of Black majority Pentecostal churches in Britain rest on the churches’ historical relationship with White Southern American fundamentalist Christianity. The two leading Pentecostal churches in Britain, The New Testament Church of God and The Church of God of Prophecy, both have their roots and formative development in the southern states of the United States, in the heartland of the Confederacy. It is the collusion between religio-Caribbean cultural practices and unreconstructed White Euro-American fundamentalism that has given Black British Pentecostalism a form of theo-psycho schizophrenia that has been a distinct liability to Black Christianity in Britain. This underlying reification of racist, imperialistic White mission Christianity explains why some Black Pentecostals in Britain bought into the Brexit phenomenon. One of the defining characteristics of Black Pentecostal churches is their worship style, which draws on a range of Black diasporan (and continental) African traditions, some of which are often African American in style. The invocation of the spirit within Black Pentecostal worship, for example, is fused with an expressive, informal liturgy has been one of the defining hallmarks of Black religiosity. Robert Beckford offers a carefully constructed Black British Pentecostal perspective on this creative dynamic in which participation and movement are important means by which the liberative impulse of Black life is expressed.28 As I will show, however, Black Christianity in White majority churches in Britain has its own forms of theo-­psycho schizophrenia, which has limited the liberative praxis of this particular modality of Black Christianity in Britain.

Black Christianity in White majority churches in Britain The second broad typology is that of Black churches in White majority historic churches in Britain. The majority of the Black members in White majority historic churches in Britain can trace their roots to Africa and the Caribbean. The greater number of Black people in these other churches live in predominantly inner-city urban contexts, which defines the majority of Black life in Britain.29 These churches operate, in effect, as Black enclaves within the overall White majority structure and membership of the Church as a whole. The development of Black Christianity within these White majority historic bodies has emerged due to demographic changes in innercity areas within the larger cities and towns in Britain, not through a selfconscious separation along the lines of ‘race’, as has been the case in the United States. Black Christianity in Britain that has emerged from White majority historic churches has been notable for its commitment to challenging racism and White ethnocentric sociocultural norms. Whether in Barton’s work on critiquing Anglican ecclesiological practices,30 my own scholarship that has

44  Behind the scenes challenged the Eurocentric epistemological frameworks for Christian learning31 or Michael Jagessar’s postcolonial critique of liturgy and culture,32 our respective scholarship has arisen from within the White majority historic church tradition. The weakness of the historic churches as a site for the development of Black Christianity lies in its ongoing relationship to the hinterland of postcolonial cultural norms. In short, Black people in these Christian traditions have to negotiate with an alternative form of theo-psycho schizophrenia, because operating as Black enclaves within White-dominated contexts necessitates a form of double vision that can be psychologically destructive. While British Pentecostalism provides the emotional and liturgically cathartic space in which the Black self can seek repose in experiential worship and African and Caribbean religio-cultural aesthetics,33 the theological underpinning in such settings remains studiously wedded to White EuroAmerican fundamentalism. Conversely, Black Christianity that emerges from within White majority historic churches such as the Anglican Church, Methodists, or United Reformed Church, possesses a greater alacrity to engage with deconstructive and radically prophetic models of hermeneutics. The gains of these traditions, however, sit in dialectical tension with the unreconstructed Whiteness and colonially informed norms of their ecclesial practices and liturgical formations. In terms of the latter, one only has to witness the formal operations of pre-modern White European worship traditions and the sense of cultural dissonance felt by Black people in these settings to gain some sense of the weakness of these ecclesial paradigms in offering an effective repository for the development and practice of Black Christian faith in Britain.34

Black religio-cultural-theo-dissonance The roots of this phenomenon The often unstated subtext of Black Christianity in Britain has been the prevailing influence of imperial mission Christianity. The pervasive influence of this phenomenon can be detected in two ways in the practical expression of Christianity amongst Black people in Britain. The malaise that afflicts Black Christians in Britain can be described as ‘religio-cultural-theo-dissonance’. In using this term, I am pointing to a historical phenomenon where Black Christians have imbibed the blandishments of imperial mission Christianity to such an extent that the operative basis of their Christian faith proceeds as a form of negated Blackness or even anti-Blackness. This has negative consequences for Black Christian faith when we think of Brexit. I believe that ‘religio-cultural-theo-dissonance’ explains why many Black people voted for Brexit and why some continue to want to pledge their allegiance to the construct of ‘Christian Britain’.

Courting controversy 45 It is my contention that greater attention to Black theology, informed in turn by postcolonial theory, would enable Black Christians in Britain to be better equipped to deconstruct the debilitating effects of internalised oppression and self-negation that has remained a constant feature of imperial mission Christianity on the psyche of some Black people in Britain. In using the term ‘postcolonial Britain’, in the context of this essay, I am seeking to problematise the overarching political, economic and cultural frameworks that have circumscribed and constrained Black subjectivity and life in this country since the 18th century. In a previous piece of work, my colleague Michael Jagessar and I argue that ‘postcolonialism’ is not about the demise of colonialism as “post” since it embodies both “after” and “beyond”. It is not about historical chronologies, but more about a critical stance, oppositional tactic or subversive reading strategy.35 Postcolonialism is a critical, intellectual and methodological approach to deconstructing and unmaking the surreptitious, hegemonic power of colonialism, which arises from the toxic residue of empire. It is worth quoting R.S. Sugirtharajah at length here. Sugirtharajah, reflecting on the nature and purpose of postcolonialism as a counter imperial discourse writes, First, in a historical sense, it encapsulates the social, political and cultural conditions of the current world order, bringing to the fore the cultural, political and economic facts of colonialism, and aiding the recognition of the ambiguities of decolonialization and the ongoing recolonialization. Secondly, as a critical discursive practice, postcolonial criticism has initiated arresting analyses of texts and societies. It provides openings for oppositional readings, uncovers suppressed voices and, more pertinently, has as its foremost concern victims and their plight. It has not only interrogated colonial domination but has also offered viable critical alternatives. Thirdly, the term applies to the political and ideological stance of an interpreter who is engaged in anti-colonial and antiglobalizing theory and praxis. Applied to biblical studies, it seeks to uncover colonial designs in both biblical texts and their interpretation, and endeavours to read the text from such postcolonial concerns as identity, hybridity and diaspora.36 Black Christianity in its various guises has been ‘infected’ by the viral strain of imperial mission Christianity that has exerted a form of cultural dissonance on the colonised mind of the Black Christian subject in the United Kingdom, to such an extent that many are unable to incorporate their own material realities and existential needs alongside that of their faith. What one often sees exemplified in some Black Christians in Britain is a decontextualised faith which incorporates at a subterranean level all the traits

46  Behind the scenes and hallmarks of a form of self-negation of Blackness. This, as a corollary, manifests itself in a religio-cultural ‘turkeys looking forward to Christmas’ type of syndrome when people choose to follow the xenophobic rhetoric of Brexit while believing that their Christianity inoculates them from the damage wreaked by an incendiary form of White British/English nationalism. In effect, this form of faith is one that cares more about abstract theologising as opposed to any contextual analysis that deconstructs the colonial, missionimparted notions of White British Christianity. Postcolonial theory Central to developing theories of postcolonial discourse is the notion of hybridity. Hybridity is the realisation that at the heart of all colonial and postcolonial epochs and religio-cultural milieux is the sense of an ongoing dialectical contestation between notions of insider versus outsider, centre versus the margins, pure versus miscegenation and perhaps most crucially of all the struggle for the meaning of so-called authentic language.37 Catherine Keller, Michael Nausner and Mayra Rivera in their co-edited text on postcolonial theologies (a specific subset of postcolonial theory) state that this Labyrinth of identities winds through an intriguing space: the space of postcolonial theory, an “in between space” in which the boundaries between identity and difference, between cultures, nationalities, and subjects, are called into question. . . . Postcolonial theory offers guiding insights into the mazes: zones of mixture and confusion, threat and discovery.38 In this most helpful text, Keller et  al. argue that one of the compelling strengths of postcolonial theory is its ability to engage with the sheer messiness of postmodern life and the reality that such binaries as oppressed and oppressors, Black and White, believer and non-believer, insider and outsider, are constructs too monolithic to battle against the challenges presented by multiplicity and hybridisation.39 In the context of this work, one has to reflect critically on what it means to identify as a Black Christian. Can the simple nomenclature of ‘Christian’ meaningfully encapsulate the complexities of being Black in a postcolonial nation in which the indices for what constitute British Christianity are founded on tacit Whiteness? What does it mean for me to be a Black subject in postcolonial Britain, who is at once an outsider in terms of ethnicity and the constructs of ‘race’ in terms of my Blackness and yet a privileged subject in terms of my gender, as a male, more specifically a heterosexual male?40 To be even more precise, however, I am a middle-class, postgraduate-educated, Christian male at that! While all theologies of liberation have provided us with much-needed models of situational analysis,41 often grounded in the apparent essentialism of identity

Courting controversy 47 politics, they have nevertheless been less successful at engaging with the contested multiple subjectivities of postcolonial subjects in the heart of the former British Empire. This can be seen in my critique of the imperial mission Christianity that many Black Christians in Britain have imbibed, which also provides the subtextual underscoring of their religious subjectivities in this country. First, it should be noted that Christianity is itself a hybridised, colonial phenomenon. Keller et. al. write that Christianity, after all, offers as its central doctrine the symbol of a divine/human hybrid, at once mimicking and scandalizing the operative metaphysical binaries of the time. And what is Christianity but a great hybrid, comprised at the urban crossroads of the Roman Empire? It cannot be understood apart from the extraordinary creativity of its high-risk hybridities – for instance its “neither Greek nor Jew” – that is, both Greek and Jewish, which let it spread like wildfire. Yet neither can it be understood apart from its early acquiescence in empire, discernible according to postcolonial hermeneutics already in the gospels, a mimicry that prepares the way for its imperial-and monolingual-appropriation of multiple cultures after Constantine.42 The religio-cultural and political struggles within Christianity as a whole around what were the essential markers defining normative postures of faith, faithfulness and cultural expression were often exemplified in the struggles of the early church in the acts of the Christian apostles. These become refracted in a more acute form when we apply this form of contestation and dialectical struggle to the relationship of this Jewish-GreekGentile hybridised accommodation alongside that of Black bodies, already degraded and traduced during the epoch of slavery. Anthony Pinn, perhaps more so than any other contemporary Black religious scholar, has charted the contested relationship between the existential, material realities of Black bodies and the overarching construction of Christianity into which so many of the former were both herded and socialised of their own volition.43 In Terror and Triumph, Pinn outlines the long hinterland of demonisation and virulent denigration that provided the essential backdrop to transatlantic chattel slavery.44 Outlining the apparent ease and the complicity with which Christianity colluded with epistemological frameworks that underpinned the machinery of slavery, Pinn writes, In short, Scripture required that English Christians begin their thinking on Africans with an understanding that Africans had the same creator. Yet they were at least physically and culturally different, and this difference had to be accounted for. As we shall see, a sense of shared creation did not prohibit a ranking within the created order, one in which Africans were much lower than Europeans.45

48  Behind the scenes The sense of a deep prevailing anti-Black sentiment replete with notions of Greek antiquity46 and practised in English imperial mission Christianity was given added piquancy in the deliberate attempt to use the developments of early Christian theology as a means of reinforcing the essentially depraved and base status of the Black body.47 Kelly Brown Douglas demonstrates how a particular outworking of Platonised influenced understanding of Pauline theology (one that downplays the concrete materiality of the body in favour of the abstract and the spirit) was used as a means of demonising Black bodies.48 Kelly Brown Douglas writes that Accordingly, it is platonized Christianity that gives rise to Christian participation in contemptible acts and attacks against human bodies, like those against Black bodies. Not only does platonized Christianity provide a foundation for easily disregarding certain bodies, but it also allows for the demonization of those persons who have been sexualised.49 One can amplify the prevailing sense of an incipient anti-Black strain within the corporate edifice of imperial mission Christianity when one considers how Black Christianity has imbibed the strictures against the Black body in its own corporate operations of religiosity. Anthony Pinn, drawing on a similar analysis of Platonised Pauline theology, argues that Black Christianity has imbibed the prevalent suspicion surrounding the Black body and has taught many Black Christians to remain at best indifferent to the material needs of the Black body or to seek to transcend the despised nature of the Black body as depicted in all its demonised images of European demagoguery.50 Is it any wonder, then, that sitting in the room of the Black Britain Symposium, one should hear a number of Black Christians speaking in favour of supporting postcolonial Christian Britain (whose foundations lie in the conflation of imperial mission Christianity and the aggressive outworking of British triumphalism grounded in empire) at the expense of their own Blackness? And as a corollary, we have witnessed some Black people voting for Brexit in support of Christian Britain.

Black religio-cultural-theo-dissonance Contemporary examples of this phenomenon I am aware that some will argue with the basis on which I am premising my arguments. Surely the snatched overheard conversation at a large corporate event in London is not sufficient grounds on which to launch such a polemical attack on Black Christianity in Britain!51 In reply, I would point to the following incidents, all of which have been documented in my previous work: 1 I am taking part in a Christian radio gospel show in 2007 talking about Black theology. During the radio phone-in section of the show, I  am

Courting controversy 49 responding to the question posed by the host: which comes first, being Black or being Christian? My response is to say the former. The first three replies from Black Christian respondents are acerbic attacks on my ‘unchristian’ and ‘aberrant response’.52 2 I am speaking at a major event in London to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain. One of the speakers, a major Black Christian spokesperson in Britain, suggests that as descendants of enslaved Africans living in Britain, we have to engage with the ‘Joseph Paradigm’: the account in the Hebrew Scriptures53 of Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers and the event being seen in ‘providential’ ways by God for the deliverance of Joseph’s family. The speaker, a well-known Black evangelical church spokesperson opined that ‘perhaps’ the transatlantic chattel slavery of Africans might be understood as part of God’s providential way of working in the lives of Black people in history. The question I posed in my original analysis of this story was “The horror for me . . . is that this theological account is prepared to countenance God as a divine sadist in order to preserve the sanctity of our inherited theological systems”.54 3 While leading a workshop on Black theology for a group of Black Christians, looking particularly at theological anthropology, a Black Christian in his 20s responds to the question, “What does it mean to be a Black human being” with the words “I stopped being Black when I was saved!” My stated response was, “What was it about being Black that necessitated you being saved from it?”55 Each of the three examples I have cited, which supplement the anecdotes I provided at the outset of this work, shows Black Christians in Britain sublimating their Blackness to accommodate inherited, learnt religious rhetoric that is not consonant with their existential realities as Black people. Why, for example, would you want to be saved from Blackness, unless your faith had simply reified the demagoguery of anti-Blackness previously asserted by imperial British life in the Caribbean and Africa, in addition to the racisminformed media in Britain? As a Black British scholar, I am aware that Black people are more than adept at signifying, described by Beckford as The ways in which African Caribbean cultures “play”, “manoeuvre” and “conjure” a subject, issue or event so as to arrive at “direction through indirection”. Signifying can be a form trickery that enables oppressed people to negotiate or manipulate the dominant power.56 I am willing, to an extent, to concede that the examples I have given may not necessarily represent the ‘whole truth’ of the religio-cultural discourse of these individuals. As Beckford suggests in the excerpt, they could represent the trickery and forms of subterfuge of Black people in their semantic play

50  Behind the scenes with Black religious authority. What dissipates my own contested presumption around the notion of these examples being ones of collective and corporate signification lies in the context in which each event occurred. These Black Christians were not engaging with White authority figures, nor were the accounts as they came to life located in social settings in which Blackness was either concealed, traduced or rendered aberrant or transgressive. On the contrary, each of the events was predicated on an explicit evocation of Blackness, in which the manifestation of Black religio-cultural apparel and aesthetics was readily on display. Why would these Black people need to signify in a context when they were given licence to make manifest that which is often demonised and attacked within the broader, White-dominated spaciality of postcolonial Britain?57 While not dismissing the signifying thesis, I believe that what was taking place in the experiential framework of these Black Christians was an explicit manifestation of religio-cultural-theo-dissonance. Unlike my previous work on cultural dissonance,58 where the phenomenological basis of this socially felt facet was restricted mainly to ‘White majority spaces’, I am now arguing that religio-cultural-theo-dissonance also finds expression in Black majority settings, where Black Christianity in Britain has flourished, often in Black majority churches in both modalities. Here, the utility of postcolonial theory becomes readily apparent. Whereas my previous work argued in favour of such binaries as ‘Black majority’ cultural contexts and the notion of ‘safe space’ versus those social settings that represent the antithesis of the former, I am now of the view that the relationship between these differing modes of spatial and emotional resonance are much more closely aligned. Just as postcolonial theory calls for the constant renegotiation of space, power and sociocultural norms, including notions of insider and outsider, similarly, aspects of these modalities can be detected in how Black Christians engage in their particular ecclesial spaces. Whereas a purely liberationist discourse will assert the necessity of familiarised base communities in which the assaulted personhood of marginalised Black postcolonial subjects can find repose and sources of empowerment, there is no doubting the validity of the claim that even in these settings, notions of familiarity and unfamiliarity still abound. We are all ‘at home’ and feel ‘alienated’ in a variety of social settings. So even in Black majority settings, a sense of cultural dissonance may still find expression, and that expressions of negation and even alienation from notions of Blackness may still come to fruition. In a previous part of this work, I referred to the major traditions in which Black Christianity in Britain had developed, namely in Black Pentecostalism and in White majority historic churches. Both perspectives reveal ‘gains’ and ‘losses’ as each seeks to develop a form of Christianity that speaks to existential struggles of most Black people in Britain. In the White majority historic tradition, the gains of a more liberally orientated theology  – underpinned by an engagement with a historical,

Courting controversy 51 critically based form of hermeneutics – are nevertheless lost in the struggle to engage with the ‘White-dominated’ imagery of imperial mission Christianity on which such churches are based. Black Christianity in these ecclesial traditions continues to be hampered by the overarching blandishments of White hegemony. Black-run initiatives, for example, continue to be overseen by White control, where the budgetary power and authority reside in the hands of the White majority. Without the possibility of Black autonomy and self-determination, Black Christianity is forced to operate through the prism of White paternalism and patronage, which in effect reifies an internalised negated sense of Blackness in the psycho-social processes of Black Christians. If effective control rests (for the most part) in the hands of White Bishops, chairs of districts, moderators or general secretaries, then to what extent will Black Christians in White majority historic churches manifest examples of self-negation – in effect, adopting positions that speak against their own material self-interests? Conversely, in Black-run Pentecostal churches in Britain, Black Christians do not contend with White leadership. As I have described previously, the religio-cultural aesthetics are not dominated by – indeed, one may even argue, are barely touched by – White European socially constructed norms.59 Yet, alongside the gains that arise from Black Christian self-determination and autonomy lies the restrictive strain of Southern American biblical literalism and even fundamentalism. Interestingly, the second of the two examples I cited a short while ago involved a leading Black Pentecostal church leader who possesses postgraduate qualifications in theology (so he is hardly an inconsequential figure on which to mount my polemical attack). Clearly, whatever the merits or otherwise of his advanced theological learning, he and many others remain unable to unite the Black religiocultural aesthetics of their church worship practices and ecclesial life with any serious attempt to deconstruct the inherited imperial mission theology that was bequeathed to the Americans via the Confederacy.60 The latter emerged as a learnt facet from English colonial Christianity in the years before American independence in 1776.61 Each case, whether in religio-cultural practices and norms in the life of the Church (in the case of White majority historic churches) or in their underlying theological disposition (as in the case of Black Pentecostalism), has elements of this religio-cultural-theo-dissonance. In either case, Black Christians are unable to create a holistic religio-cultural framework that can wholeheartedly and unreservedly embrace Blackness and then use that Blackness as the primary hermeneutical lens by which to reinterpret their faith in order to engage with the existential realities that they face in postcolonial Britain.

The importance of transformative pedagogy and learning In the next section of this work, I  highlight the means by which models of transformative learning, when coupled with Black theology, can assist

52  Behind the scenes in enabling Black Christians in Britain to deconstruct the pernicious blandishments of imperial mission Christianity and its concomitant offspring, namely religio-cultural-theo-dissonance. The development of this mode of decolonial education will be featured in several of the essays that follow, most notably in chapters 4, 7 and 10. In developing this approach to participative, decolonial education, I seek to do more than create new forms of epistemology purely for their own sake. Rather, this approach to scholarship creates new knowledge through the participative engagement of ordinary people in an interactive process of learning in which participants are challenged to juxtapose personal experience drawn from the dialectical encounter with a broader set of reflections that emerge from the corpus of Black theology. Participants are offered embodied, activity-based exercises, games and role-play material that serve to move them from passive imbibers of knowledge to cooperative r­ e-creators and critical dialectical disseminators of new epistemologies. As I will demonstrate shortly, this nexus of Black theological reflection and transformative, experiential learning has been developed to enable ordinary people to become cognitively and affectively caught up in the liberative dimensions of the gospel. This dialectical exchange between intellectual reflection and emotional change – which constitutes the very heart of transformative, experiential learning  – seeks to ground Black theological reflections in the critical perspectives of the human encounter with the imagination, the mind and the inner resources of emotion. The dynamics of this theological and educative encounter is one that finds echoes in the theological formation of many Black theologians. Dwight Hopkins writes about his formative, autobiographical engagement with Black theology that From my parents’ life and the formal mentoring of James H. Cone, I learnt that a theology of liberation without heart is callous intellectual generality. And a theology of liberation without the head is mindless, empty emotionalism. I want my children, and their children, and this new generation to realize that to be free, we need the strengths of both heart and head – that is, the spirit of liberation theology from the black perspective.62 Central to this work is the notion that we have to provide ways in which ordinary Black Christians can be enabled to engage with their confessional Christian beliefs in a critical and inquiring manner. This requires the educator to provide a supportive and informal learning environment in which the learner has the freedom and the cathartic space in which to reflect on and imagine new ways of being and knowing. The heart of this work is a challenge to the inherent conservatism of Black Christianity in Britain to move beyond the internalised adherence to thought forms and doctrinal assumptions created by White pre-­ Enlightenment thought. In the preparation of this essay, I have recounted a

Courting controversy 53 significant number of conversations with Black Christians of all theological and ecclesial persuasions, who have expressed concern at the challenge of contextualising Black Christian faith as it is expressed and lived out in the United Kingdom. One of the critical issues has been the distinct uneasiness with notions of syncretism. I  have lost count of the number of occasions during which Black Christians have rejected incorporating ‘African cultural practices’ into their religio-cultural frameworks  – as outlined by Jawanza Eric Clark, for example.63 Even when one can point to respected scholars such as Gayraud Wilmore, one of the architects of African-American Black theology, as evidence of the legitimacy of such an approach, many ordinary Black people of faith remain steadfastly unconvinced.64 Yet when I have then informed them (some at least) and told others (for the first time) that much of John’s gospel, particularly the opening sections, which describe the cosmic Christ as the ‘Logos’ is in fact a Greek philosophical idea – which represents the very kind of syncretism they claim to despise – many remain silent.65 It would seem that syncretism is not really that appalling when the dictates of White orthodoxy sanction it. Perhaps, more critically, the issue may be more concerned with not whether Christians can tolerate syncretism (clearly all of us can, to some extent) but, more pertinently, what kind of syncretism some of us can live with.66 While the inclusion of White Euro-American religious thought that enables us to culturally appropriate the Christian faith seems acceptable, the inclusion of Black African traditions seems not to be.67 In more recent times, one can point to the considerable work of Michelle Gonzalez, who has looked into the relationship between Afro-Cuban religious traditions and Roman Catholicism on that particular island.68 For the most part, Black Christianity in Britain is often locked into literalistic readings of the Bible, in which many adherents claim to believe the whole of the canon as being divinely inspired and the supreme authority in all matters.69 My concern in assisting Black Christians in Britain to reflect on and to reassess the implications of their Christian faith arises from the dangers of reading subliminal Whiteness into their overarching hermeneutical frameworks for interpreting truth. When some Black Christians claim to be defending ‘Christian Britain’, what they are in effect stating in covert ways is a desire to protect normative Whiteness. If one wants to see the dangers of normative Whiteness at work, one need do nothing more gruelling than to think back to the Leave campaign and the entitled voices of White conservatism that led it. When some Black Christians sided with Brexit, citing a desire to protect Christian Britain, such protestations simply reminded us of the internalised form of self-negation arising from imperial mission Christianity that has always contained a particular penchant for reinscribing White supremacy. Sadly, as seen with the more recent furore around the deporting of members of the Windrush Generation and their descendants, this reinscription of White supremacy is often undertaken at Black Christians’ own expense.

54  Behind the scenes White imperial mission Christianity does not need Black subjugated minds and bodies to defend it. As later chapters will demonstrate, a model of Christianity infused with Black theology is the best guarantor for a prophetic expression of Black faith that will ward off the dubious blandishment of imperial mission Christianity. The development of a participative model of Black theology seeks to enable ordinary Black people to critique and challenge a form of Christianity that is a disembodied abstraction from their existential realities. This work is necessary because it offers a means by which this specious artefact from colonial history and empire, namely imperial mission Christianity, on which Brexit was based, can be truly resisted and hopefully deconstructed. The importance of deconstructing imperial mission Christianity can be evidenced in being able to invoke a number of alternative metaphorical ways of seeing and embodying expressions of the Christian faith. In the context of this work, I have developed a plethora of embodied, metaphorical activities to create subtle nuances in, multiple meanings for and new interpretations of how we understand and assess the meaning of Christian faith in the context of postcolonial Britain. In this particular method for engaging with ordinary Black people, I have sought to enable participants to become proactive agents in the reconstruction of Christianity in the experiences of Black communities across the United Kingdom. In effect, Black people become part of a process that provides them with opportunities to enter into the performance of theological activity.70 The performance is one that encourages individuals and groups to reflect critically on the parameters of what constitutes Christian faith in Britain and to challenge their often inhibited subjectivity when it is placed in relation to assumed revealed truth as dictated by their respective ecclesial traditions. In effect, this process is one that challenges the assumed normativity of religious and political authority, invoking a hermeneutic of suspicion about the claims for truth and truthfulness made by their supposed superior, whether ecclesial or secular. It should be clear by now that in this second essay, I  am mounting a critical, postcolonial and liberationist critique of British Christianity and the way it has become an accomplice in the continued neo-colonial tendencies of Brexit. This work stands in clear distinction to the thrust of work emanating from White and Black scholars that is seeking to provide a less tendentious and more emollient reading of Black Christianity and its attendant growth and development in Britain.71 In my postcolonial analysis of Black Christianity in Britain, I have outlined a critical dialectic that has remained an inherent quality of Black peoples’ adherence to and expression of Christian faith since the epoch of slavery. There has always been an uneasy relationship between Black Christian faith that operates as a form of resistance to White hegemony and that same faith construct that leads to the internalisation of forms of self-negation and the colonisation of Black people’s minds. The classic work that first explicated

Courting controversy 55 this to great effect was Gayraud Wilmore’s 1972 book Black Religion and Black Radicalism.72 This critical impasse between resistance and collusion with colonial Christianity has been explored more recently by Robert Beckford.73 Beckford’s analysis of Black Pentecostalism in Britain adopts a more critical and subversive mode of engagement than that found in some of the alternative modalities mentioned previously in this chapter. For example, in juxtaposing the revolutionary praxis of Haitian Vodou with Black Pentecostalism, Beckford is critically enlarging the gaze by which we can assess the efficacy of the latter as a means of promoting a holistic form of agency for Black people in Britain. Beckford also critiques the epistemological foundations of Black Pentecostalism: However, body knowledge episteme, while potentially revolutionary and meaningful, fails to acknowledge a deeper historic and problematic undercurrent, which is the inability of black Pentecostals to combine the affective with critical thinking which as I have suggested at the beginning of the chapter, leads to unethical practices amongst some clergy.74 My critique of Black Christianity in this chapter will be balanced in many of the essays that follow this one, where I will outline a more resistant form of Black Christian faith that lends itself to a more subversive critique of Brexit and the underlying values of this phenomenon. The epistemological basis of this work will be drawn from this continued dialectic within Black Christianity, in which one also finds the creative energies of dialectical spiritualities, which I argue is a common feature of oppressed peoples, which various forms of liberation theologies have attempted to harness.75 In effect, Black Christianity has always possessed the ability to collude with White hegemony on the surface while going beyond and subverting the latter, operating within a framework of a form of dialectical spiritualities that can lead to new ways of seeing and being.76 The new ways of seeing and being, I argue, represent Black liberationist and postcolonial models of Christian discipleship that are committed to subverting the axiomatic normativity of Whiteness and entitlement that underpinned Brexit. My ongoing work with ordinary Black people in Britain has been undertaken from within a framework of practical theology, in which I have used workshops and follow-up plenary to document the new learning that has accrued.77 This work will be highlighted in the chapters to come. In this essay, I have sought to critique the workings of Black Christianity in light of Brexit, demonstrating through postcolonial reflections the extent to which this phenomenon has internalised an anti-Black ethic that seeks to inhibit the agency of Black people. As a result, this form of internalised colonisation manifests itself in Black people seeking to defend or promote ‘Christian Britain’ – without ever deconstructing the toxic residues of imperialism and White hegemony housed within the edifice of imperial mission Christianity.

56  Behind the scenes Given that part of the rhetoric of Brexit was a culturally calibrated explication of Christianity as a synonym for White privilege, entitlement and superiority, one has to question the efficacy of forms of Black Christian faith and practice that have aligned themselves with the frameworks of imperial mission Christianity. The sustained critique that I have provided in this essay is one that seeks to encourage Black Christianity to not only deconstruct the stultifying effects of colonial Christianity on Black bodies and minds but also challenge us to read our Black existential realities of marginalisation and othering into how we formulate the frameworks of what constitutes holistic faith. Combining contextual analysis with postcolonial reflections hopefully counters the inane discourse of wanting to defend imperial mission Christianity, the very framework that has often been the cause of Black Christians’ estrangement from ourselves. Similarly, the desire to want to support UKIP, Christian Britain and the wider phenomenon of Brexit, as a defence of ‘Christian Britain’, will be disregarded as the arrant nonsense it so plainly is.

Notes 1 In using this term, I am speaking of a historical phenomenon in which an interpenetrating relationship between European expansionism, notions of White superiority and the material artefact of the apparatus of empire existed (and continues to exist today). This form of Christianity became the conduit for the expansion of Eurocentric models of Christianity in which ethnocentric notions of Whiteness gave rise to notions of superiority, manifest destiny and entitlement. For a helpful dissection of this model of Christianity, particularly the British version of it, see T.J. Gorringe Furthering Humanity: A Theology of Culture (Basingstoke: Ashgate, 2004). See also John M. Hull Towards the Prophetic Church: A Study of Christian Mission (London: SCM Press, 2014). 2 Most of my assertions in this chapter are based on anecdotal evidence, which I must concede is admittedly speculative and imprecise. Conversely, even only one Black person voting for Brexit and so siding with right of centre, nationalistic impulses driven by the Tory right and UKIP is sufficient to be a point of concern for theologians and religious commentators. 3 An early and, to my mind, naïve version of this assertion can be found in Wale Babatunde Great Britain Has Fallen: How to Restore Great Britain’s Greatness (London: New Wine Publications, 2002). See also his follow up Awake! Great Britain: A Call to the Church in Great Britain to Rise Out of Slumber (London: New Wine Press, 2005). In both texts, the author is arguing for the reassertion of ‘Christian values’ and an unreconstructed notion of British (in my view, read as imperial mission) Christianity as a means of bringing back the glories of Britain’s imperial past – a past when Britain had an empire and colonised the author’s birth nation of Nigeria and great swathes of Africa and the Caribbean. 4 See Anthony G. Reddie ‘Anti Black Problematics in Imperial and Contemporary British Christianity’. In R. Drew Smith, William Ackah and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Churches, Blackness and Contested Multiculturalism: Europe, Africa and North America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 11–29. 5 The central tenets of colonial Christianity are addressed in deft fashion by Robert Beckford. See Robert Beckford Documentary as Exorcism: Resisting the Bewitchment of Colonial Christianity (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

Courting controversy 57 6 Aspects of this work can be found in Robert Beckford Documentary as Exorcism. 7 I have sought to problematise the notion of the privileged voice as the subjective insider in theo-ethnographic work in a previous piece of research. I argue that such discourse is often nothing more than a simplistic device to attain a form of ‘authentic’ authorial voice that tries to attain unchallenged authority in the recalling of any sociocultural accounts of reality. I am not questioning the importance or indeed the efficacy of insider accounts in any absolutist sense; rather, I am critiquing its usage as a shorthand descriptor for that which is supposedly more authentic. See Anthony G. Reddie Dramatizing Theologies: A Participative Approach to Black God Talk (London: Equinox, 2006), pp. 10–25. Aspects of this work have been addressed in previous work: see Anthony G. Reddie Is God Colour Blind? Insights from Black Theology for Christian Ministry (London: SPCK, 2009). 8 This work is exemplified in a number of the significant texts in the British context. See Robert Beckford Jesus Is Dread: Black Theology and Black Culture in Britain (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1998); Robert Beckford Dread and Pentecostal: A  Political Theology for the Black Church in Britain (London: SPCK, 2000); Robert Beckford God of the Rahtid (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2001); Robert Beckford Jesus Dub: Theology, Music and Social Change (London: Routledge, 2006); Robert Beckford Documentary as Exorcism. See also Anthony G. Reddie Nobodies to Somebodies: A  Practical Theology for Education and Liberation (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2003); Dramatizing Theologies; Anthony G. Reddie Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Anthony G. Reddie Working Against the Grain: Re-Imaging Black Theology in the 21st Century (London: Equinox, 2008); Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Postcolonial Black British Theology (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2007); Michael N. Jagessar (eds) Black Theology in Britain: A Reader (London: Equinox, 2007); Anthony G. Reddie Is God Colour Blind? In Anthony Reddie (eds) Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity (Basingstoke: Ashgate, 2010); Anthony G. Reddie SCM Core Text: Black Theology (London: SCM Press, 2012). See also Black Theology in Britain: A Journal of Contextual Praxis (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998–2002); Black Theology: An International Journal (London: Equinox, 2002). 9 Two noted examples of this can be seen in the work of Joe Aldred and Robert Beckford, both of whom are guilty of writing almost exclusively about Black Pentecostalism in Britain as if it is the only expression of Black Christian faith or the more ‘authentic’ (however one measures this imprecise term) expression of Black Christian faith in Britain. See Joe Aldred Pentecostals and Charismatics in Britain: An Anthology (London: SCM Press, 2019); Joe Aldred and Keno Ogbo (eds) The Black Church in the 21st Century (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010). See also Robert Beckford Jesus Dub. In contrast my book SCM Core Text, addresses all Black Christians and does not privilege a particular manifestation at the expense of others. 10 At the time of writing, I believe this to be the Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education in Birmingham, although it should be noted that the extent to which what is being taught there is an authentic Black theology of liberation – or, more accurately, what I would term ‘Black Christian ­experience’ – remains a moot point. For my articulation of the differentiation between ‘Black theology’ and ‘Black Christian expression’, see Anthony G. Reddie Working Against the Grain, pp. 20–25. 11 For further details, see Joe Aldred Respect: A Caribbean British Contextual Theology (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2006); Mark Sturge Look What the Lord Has Done! (Milton Keynes: Scripture Union, 2006); Joe Aldred and Keno Ogbo The Black Church in the 21st Century.

58  Behind the scenes 12 These denominations include the Church of England (the Anglican Church), the Roman Catholic Church, the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church and the United Reformed Church. 13 For further information, see John L. Wilkinson Church in Black and White: The Black Christian Tradition in ‘Mainstream’ Churches in England: A White Response and Testimony (Edinburgh: St.  Andrews Press, 1993); Anthony G. Reddie Nobodies to Somebodies; Anthony G. Reddie, Wale Hudson Roberts and Gale Richards Journeying to Justice: Contributions to the Baptist Tradition Across the Black Atlantic (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2017). 14 For classic texts on the Black Church, see C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1990); Peter J. Paris The Social Teaching of the Black Churches (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1985). See also Anne H. Pinn and Anthony B. Pinn Black Church History (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002), For more contemporary articulations on this topic see Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Juan Floyd-Thomas and Carol B. Duncan (eds) Black Church Studies (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007); Alton B. Pollard and Carol B. Duncan (eds) The Black Church Studies Reader (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 15 See Joe Aldred (ed.) Preaching with Power: Sermons by Black Preachers (London: Continuum, 1998); Joe Aldred (ed.) Praying with Power (London: Continuum, 2000); Joe Aldred (ed.) Sisters with Power (London: Continuum, 2000). 16 See John L. Wilkinson Church in Black and White. 17 See also Joe D. Aldred Respect: A  Caribbean British Theology (Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of Biblical Studies, The University of Sheffield, 2004). 18 See Joe D. Aldred Respect: A  Caribbean British Theology (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2005); Joe Aldred and Keno Ogbo (eds) The Black Church in the 21st Century; Mark Sturge Look What the Lord Has Done! An Exploration of Black Christian Faith in Britain (London: Scripture Union, 2005). 19 See also Doreen McCalla ‘Black Churches and Voluntary Action: Their Social Engagement with the Wider Society’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.3, No.2. July 2004; Doreen McCalla Unsung Sheroes in the Church: Singing the Praises of Black Women Now! (London: Authorhouse, 2008). 20 See Robert Beckford Dread and Pentecostal. See also J.D. Aldred Respect. 21 See Mark Sturge Look What the Lord Has Done! pp. 123–125. See also Robert Beckford Jesus Is Dread, pp. 103–107. 22 For further details, see Black Majority Churches UK Directory (London: African Caribbean Evangelical Alliance and Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, 2003), p. 67. See also Israel Olofinjana Reverse in Ministry and Missions: Africans in the Dark Continent of Europe: An Historical Study of African Churches in Europe (London: Authorhouse, 2010); Israel Olofinjana Turning the Tables on Mission: Stories of Christians from the Global South in the UK (London: Instant Apostle, 2013); Israel Olofinjana Partnership in Mission: A Black Majority Church Perspective on Mission and Church Unity (London: Instant Apostle, 2015). 23 For further details, see Black Majority Churches UK Directory, p. 59. See also Israel Olofinjana Reverse in Ministry and Missions; Israel Olofinjana Turning the Tables on Mission; Israel Olofinjana Partnership in Mission. 24 For further details, see Black Majority Churches UK Directory, p. 112. See also Israel Olofinjana Reverse in Ministry and Missions; Israel Olofinjana Turning the Tables on Mission; Israel Olofinjana Partnership in Mission. 25 Note the work of the Reverend Israel Olofinjana and his centre dedicated to the work of missionaries from the majority world. For further information on this work, see the following link: https://cmmw.co.uk/ – accessed 9 July 2018.

Courting controversy 59 26 The significant texts that have addressed this seemingly silent phenomenon can be found in the previous chapter. 27 See Anthony Reddie Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue, pp. 67–70. 28 Robert Beckford Dread and Pentecostal, pp. 176–182. 29 See Kehinde Andrews and Lisa L. Palmer (eds) Blackness in Britain (London: Routledge, 2016). 30 See Mukti Barton Rejection, Resistance and Resurrection (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005). 31 See Anthony Reddie Nobodies to Somebodies; Anthony G. Reddie Is God Colour Blind? 32 See Michael N. Jagessar and Stephen Burns Christian Worship: Postcolonial Perspectives (London: Equinox, 2011). 33 See Robert Beckford Jesus Dub, for an excellent theo-cultural treatment of Black Pentecostalism as a conduit for the aesthetics of Black Caribbean religious resistance in Britain. 34 See Anthony Reddie Nobodies to Somebodies, pp. 105–106. 35 Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Postcolonial Black British Theology (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2006), pp. xvii. 36 R.S. Sugirtharajah, Postcolonial Reconfigurations: An Alternative Way of Reading the Bible and Doing Theology (London: SCM Press, 2003), p. 4. 37 There is wealth of literature pertaining to postcolonial theory. The material that has most influenced this study includes the following: R.S. Sugirtharajah Postcolonial Reconfigurations (London: SCM Press, 2004); R.S. Sugirthartajah The Bible and Empire (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); David C.I. Joy Mark and Its subalterns: A Hermeneutical Paradigm for a Postcolonial Context (London: Equinox, 2008); Musa W. Dube Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (St.  Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2000); Fernando S. Segovia and R.S. Sugirtharajah (eds) A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings (London: T  & T Clark, 2007); Catherine Keller, Michael Nausner and Mayra Rivera (eds) Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2004). 38 Michael Nausner and Mayra Rivera (eds) Postcolonial Theologies, p. 3. 39 Michael Nausner and Mayra Rivera (eds) Postcolonial Theologies, pp. 1–19. 40 I address the issue of interlocking systems of oppression, power, privilege and normativity in one of my more recent books. See Anthony G. Reddie Is God Colour Blind? pp. 37–52. 41 Emmanuel Lartey offers a most helpful dissection of the methodological heart of theologies of liberation through the prism of ‘practical theology’. See Emmanuel Lartey ‘Practical Theology as a Theological Form’. In James Woodward and Stephen Pattison (eds) The Blackwell Reader in Pastoral and Practical Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 128–134. 42 Michael Nausner and Mayra Rivera (eds) Postcolonial Theologies, pp. 13–14. 43 See Anthony B. Pinn Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003). See also Anthony B. Pinn and Dwight N. Hopkins (eds) Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Anthony B. Pinn (ed.) Black Religion and Aesthetics: Religious Thought and Life in Africa and the African Diaspora (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 44 Anthony B. Pinn Terror and Triumph, pp. 1–80. 45 Anthony B. Pinn Terror and Triumph, p. 6. 46 This phenomenon and theme have been explored by Robert E. Hood Begrimed and Black: Christian Traditions on Blacks and Blackness (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994).

60  Behind the scenes 47 This idea is taken from Kelly Brown Douglas’s excellent study on Black bodies and how they have been policed and controlled within the religious framework of Christianity. See Kelly Brown Douglas What’s Faith Got to Do with It? Black Bodies/Christian Souls (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005). 48 Kelly Brown Douglas What’s Faith Got to Do with It? pp. 3–38. 49 Kelly Brown Douglas What’s Faith Got to Do with It? p. 37. 50 Anthony Pinn ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–8. 51 I am not seeking to attack every facet of Black Christianity in Britain, but as I will show, the basis of this religio-cultural-theo-cultural dissonance is premised on a number of closely observed examples and is also drawn from the prolegomenon that has its roots in British colonial history, particularly the epoch of slavery, empire and colonialism. 52 This account is detailed in Anthony G. Reddie Working Against the Grain, p. 90. 53 This account is to be found in Genesis chapters 37–50. 54 This account is detailed in Anthony G. Reddie Working Against the Grain, pp. 172–175 (Quotation found on pp. 175). 55 Anthony G. Reddie Is God Colour Blind? pp. 43–45 (Quotation found on p. 44). 56 Robert Beckford God of the Rahtid, p. 12. 57 Robert Beckford has reflected on how Black Christianity, particularly Black Pentecostalism, creates space in which Black bodies can find agency in ways that is often precluded in contexts dominated by White Eurocentric normality. See Robert Beckford Jesus Dub. See also Ashon T. Crawley ‘Let’s Get It on!’ Performance Theory and Black Pentecostalism’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.6, No.3, 2008, pp. 308–329. 58 See Anthony G. Reddie Nobodies to Somebodies, pp. 95–106. 59 Although the religio-cultural norms of Black Pentecostalism remain an important and vibrant facet of Black Christianity in Britain, Robert Beckford has critiqued the extent to which they, nonetheless, contain internalised elements of colonised theology and faith within them, which he has termed ‘zombie worship’. See Robert Beckford Documentary as Exorcism, pp. 101–116. 60 Robert Beckford’s work is the notable exception in the British context of Black Pentecostalism. See Robert Beckford’s Jesus Is Dread and Dread and Pentecostalism for excellent examples of a Black, Pentecostal based approach to Black Theology in Britain. 61 See Kelly Brown Douglas Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), pp. 1–47. 62 Dwight N. Hopkins Heart and Head: Black Theology, Past, Present and Future (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 22. 63 See Jawanza Eric Clark Indigenous Black Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 64 See Gayraud S. Wilmore Pragmatic Spirituality: The Christian Faith Through an Africentric Lens (New York and London: New York University Press, 2004), pp. 87–152. 65 This issue is raised in Robert E. Hood in his landmark Must God Remain Greek? Afro-Cultures and God-Talk (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990). 66 As Hood reminds us, it would appear that so long as ‘White’ European cultures and thought forms are being intertwined with ‘pure’ Christianity, any notion of syncretism (often rarely admitted as such, however) can be tolerated. But when Black African traditions are being used like Vodou in Haiti or Santería in Cuba, the dictates of White Euro-American hegemony are brought to bear, often at the expense of the latter. See Robert E. Hood Must God Remain Greek? pp. 43–102. 67 Robert Beckford notes aspect of this dichotomy in his critique of colonial Christianity. See Robert Beckford Documentary as Exorcism, pp. 101–116.

Courting controversy 61 68 See Michelle A. Gonzalez Afro-Cuban Theology: Religion, Race, Culture and Identity (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2006). 69 See ‘The Statement of Faith’ of the Influential Council for Black-Led Churches. www.cblcuk.com/membership/index.php?pageID=429 – accessed 22 March 2010. 70 Some of my initial thinking has been inspired by Jose Irizarry and his notion of theology as ‘performative action’. Irizarry argues for a dramatic process of doing theology in which participants and the educator enter into a process of performance in which there is an inherent dialectic and from which new truths can be discerned. See Jose R. Irizarry ‘The Religious Educator as Cultural Spec-Actor: Researching Self in Intercultural Pedagogy’. Religious Education, Vol.98, No.3, Summer 2003, pp. 365–381. 71 See Andrew Rogers ‘Walking Down the Old Kent Road: New Black Majority Churches in a London Borough’. In D. Goodhew (ed.) No Secular City? Church Growth and Decline in London: 1980 to the Present (London: Routledge, 2018). Roehampton University oversaw the funded research project Being Built Together, which explored the growth and development of Black-majority churches in the London borough of Southwark. See the following link for details of the project.   www.roehampton.ac.uk/humanities/being-built-together/research/  – accessed 11 July  2018. See also the work of the Susanna Wesley Foundation that is a part of the Roehampton University for the research projects they are undertaking linked to Black Christianity in Britain, particularly as they pertain to newer Black Majority churches and related issues of religious and cultural diversity. See the following links for further details: http://susannawesleyfoundation.org/ 1483-2/ – accessed 11 July 2018 and http://susannawesleyfoundation.org/1493-2/ – accessed 11 July 2018. 72 See Gayraud S. Wilmore Black Religion and Black Radicalism: Interpretation of the Religious History of Black Americans – first published in 1972. Republished (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998). 73 Robert Beckford Documentary as Exorcism. 74 Robert Beckford Documentary as Exorcism, p. 111. 75 Robert Beckford God and the Gangs (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004), pp. 96–114. 76 See Anthony G. Reddie ‘Dramatic Improvisation: A Jazz Inspired Approach to Undertaking Theology with the Marginalized’. In Dawn Llewellyn and Deborah Sawyer (eds) Reading Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred (Basingstoke: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 51–64. 77 The development of a critically imaginative and participative mode for undertaking Black theology first emerged in a previous piece of work. See Anthony G. Reddie Dramatizing Theologies.

3 Mind games Decolonising mission Christianity

Teaching and learning the Christian faith in a postcolonial context One of the most common conceits bequeathed to us by White predominantly male theologians is the belief that there is little to discern between the knowing person who undertakes the theological task of talking about God and the theology that results from this process. Those of us who have entered the academy have learnt how to deconstruct, analyse and critique the latter but with little appreciation for the generative and formative power of the former. As I have argued elsewhere, the embodied positionality of the knowing subject engaged in the task of doing theology reveals a great deal about the kind of the theological work that ensues from their cognitive and affective processes.1 In the first part of this essay, I reflect for a short while on what it means to be a child of empire, as I intimated in the first two essays. My theological reading of Brexit makes no pretence to being neutral or objective, but I hope it is truthful. The theological underpinnings of Brexit, which have their roots in Britain’s colonial past, have exerted a visceral impact on my existential consciousness for as long as I have been a cognitively knowing self. Reflecting on this formative development will, I believe, give us a sense of the sociological and cultural issues at play as the Church seeks to respond to Brexit and its impact on mission and Christian discipleship in the years ahead. The problematics of Black agency In the previous essay, I outlined the means by which imperial mission Christianity has sought to colonise the minds of many Black Christians by means of an incipient anti-Blackness strain that has led to the ethics of self-­negation in the positionality vis-à-vis Brexit and safeguarding Christian Britain. In this essay, I look more closely at the minutiae of Christian education and how notions of Christian discipleship have led to the internalisation of the colonial edicts of imperial mission Christianity. This internalisation has had

Mind games 63 a corrosive effect on people who would consider and identify themselves as White and those who are constructed and identified as the other. As I have stated previously, I was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in 1964. I  am a child of the Windrush Generation. I  was baptised into and grew up in a White majority church setting. The significant aspect of this development was how I was subject to a number of constructs around what constituted ‘normalised existence’. A key moment in my formative development as a Christian occurred at the age of 16. In recounting this telling point in my subjective narrative, I am making no claims to its normative import as a repository for truth. Rather, drawing on the work of practical theologians such as Elaine Graham, Heather Walton and Frances Ward,2 Anne Wimberly3 and Evelyn Parker,4 I am seeking to use personal narratives as a way of exploring theological ideas and concerns that arise from the context of personal experience. In the context of my own learning, I have used reflection on subjective narratives as a mean of exploring my own learnt behaviour and the strictures that have given rise to forms of negation and the alternate ways of thinking that have been an important antidote to those elements that restrict agency. In accessing my own story, I am seeking to reflect critically on an important moment in time, which acts as a microcosm for the broader structural, metanarratives that confer meaning on individuals and the communities of which they are a part.5 As I reflect on the formative influences on my life, I  am reminded that there has been a constant and consistent dialectic at play in my consciousness, between the recognition of my academic abilities and scholastic potential, on one hand, and the Black body in which the former is housed, on the other. I will explore this dialectic more fully in the following chapter, when I look at the issue of theological anthropology and identity in light of Brexit. I was identified as a ‘bright boy’ quite early on in my life and was aware of how my academic gifts were held up as a kind of archetype, a symbolic totem for the possibilities of transcendence. Although it seemed commonplace for Black children, particularly young boys, to be often perceived as troublesome deviants,6 I was perceived somewhat differently. I was a loved and supported Black child who was perceived as gifted and so transcending the prevailing norms of negativity and projected deviancy. The counter narrative of work that has addressed Black children and young people as possessing the characteristics that give rise to progress and success has been an important antidote to the negativity surrounding Black communities in Britain.7 My subjective positionality within school and church was often as the archetypal signifier for transcendence and difference. I was not like the other Black boys, who were often perceived as transgressive in their posture and behaviour. Admittedly, alongside my two younger brothers and one other younger Black boy, my church was not overly populated by young Black males. I  was marked out as different. I  was introverted, studious, ambitious and gifted. Because my personality conformed to the ‘ideal’ passive

64  Behind the scenes non-threatening construction of Blackness that has always been the preferred archetype of colonial mission Christianity,8 I  was encouraged and supported, often held up as a role model to my seemingly more recalcitrant Black male peers. Undoubtedly, over the years preceding the incident I am about to retell here, I was guilty of believing the hype. I had grown accustomed and somewhat habituated to the belief that I was special. So the visceral shock that emerged in my developing consciousness was acute when I realised the White gaze on myself was not as I had always presumed to be the case. The incident itself is rather trivial and quite innocuous in many ways, and yet the memory of it caused me to retell this story over 35 years later to my widowed father as we sat on the veranda of his house on the eastern coast of Jamaica. Following the Sunday evening service in the church of which I  was a member, it was customary for the young people to attend a youth fellowship. The first Sunday of the month was usually held at the church, in the custom-made student coffee bar, between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. The remaining Sunday evenings in each month were spent in the homes of different members of the youth fellowship. The latter arrangement required that parents give lifts to the various young people and return them home at the end of the evening. Because my family did not own a car, I was always in need of a lift from one of the parents of my peers in the youth fellowship. On this particular occasion, I was waiting for the designated parent who had kindly agreed to transport me to the home of one of my peers in the youth fellowship. As I retell the story, I can still remember the existential nervousness with which I  routinely engaged in my social interactions with my peers in the church, particularly the adults, because we were the only Black family in regular attendance at this Methodist church and because at the time of the incident, I was the only Black member of the youth fellowship. Not only was my family the only Black one in the church, but we were also one of only a handful that might be described as working class. Most of the members and attendees were middle-class professionals. My father worked in a factory as a manual labourer, and my mother was a housewife and part-time cleaner. My interactions with my fellow church attendees, therefore, were always cautious and self-contained. I was conscious of being different from and, in all truth, inferior to the White members of the church. As I waited for my lift from the father of one of my peers in the church, I was approached by the peer’s mother. We had known each other for many years, with me and her child both growing up in the Sunday school from infants into now our mid-teens. Most of my conversations, however, had been with her child and husband and not often with her. On this occasion, we were alone waiting for the rest of her family to arrive from other parts of the church, so that we could travel to the home of another parent for the youth fellowship session that evening. As we killed time, the woman asked me how I was finding school. I replied that it was going well. I was busily preparing for my O-level examinations.

Mind games 65 After a short period of silence, she remarked that I was a bright young man and that she expected I  would do well. I  thanked her for the kind sentiments. The school I attended was a common entrance comprehensive school, and I was one of only two young people from the church in my age bracket to attend it. The other young people all attended grammar schools or comprehensive schools in more affluent parts of the city. The other young man from church who attended my school was not present that evening. He and I had also grown up in the church from infant years, and he too was considered bright. The two of us had been considered rivals and had often battled it out for the prizes in the yearly Scripture examinations held in the church. It was a keenly observed and good-natured rivalry, and the score between us in terms of victories was about even. So while I  felt socially inferior to most of the White people in the church, I did not feel that way academically. On the contrary, I felt myself to be the equal of every other young person my age in the church. Having been complemented on my scholarly achievements thus far, the woman then made what I still consider a dramatic revelation. She remarked that I had done well “considering my obvious challenges, and I should be grateful that people had made the necessary allowances for me”. Moreover, my rival was gifted, and he had done well on merit alone. Even to this day, the bombshell of that moment continues to reverberate through my consciousness. I remember falling silent as she continued to remark that my rival was gifted, and she imagined I did not see much of him at school as we would be in different classes, given that these were arranged according to ability. The fact of the matter was that my rival and I  were often in the same classes because we were evenly matched. He had the edge in the pure sciences like physics and chemistry, but I had his measure when it came to the humanities like history and English. Yet now I was suddenly realising that I was not his equal. This woman, a respected leader in the church, assumed that I was not his equal and, even more damming, that my excellent performances to this date had been the result of White leniency and not purely my abilities. The existential torture was over as soon as it had begun. The other two arrived, and we were whisked off in their well-apportioned new car to the home of another of the church members. I am sure that this conversation was not even a footnote in the text of this woman’s life, yet for me, it remained imprinted in my consciousness for the next 30 years. It is only one moment and a fleeting one at that. The encounter was with one person who did not represent the whole church by any means, and yet in so many ways, it also encapsulated the essential meaning of my life as a migrant (but born in Britain) who was the other in the body politic of the nation. As good as I was, I was still not as good as all the others. My socialisation in the church was supportive, well-meaning and kind, but I was still being marked as the other, not simply through the encounter

66  Behind the scenes but more significantly by the conflation of Whiteness with the Christian faith. The visage of a White Jesus and the Eurocentric teaching on the Christian faith9 have shaped the positionality of Black people and ethnic minorities as the other in the body politic of Britain. My story is, of course, only my story. But observing the hostile climate for immigration10 that has given rise to an increase in reported cases of racist incidents since Brexit,11 I believe that my incident provides a microcosm for the normalising effects of imperial mission Christianity on the body politic of the nation. I have encountered a number of migrants, particularly members of minority ethnic communities, many of whom are Muslims, whose collective experiences mirror my own narrative. Many of them have worked hard and contributed to British society, so they thought that they belonged in a possibly benign sense. Many spoke of being commended for their hard work, diligence and ambition. Many had ‘played the game’ and assumed a level acceptance, only to be informed that others had been making allowances for them all the while, that they had were viewed as less than and would never be considered with equal levels of esteem as their indigenous White counterparts. The visceral shock to some individuals in this community has caused levels of anxiety and physical and mental ill health. I will return to my story later in this essay. Next, I turn to the historical framing of imperial mission Christianity and the construction of Black people as the other.

Imperial mission Christianity and Christian formation The impulse to propagate the Christian faith is often attributed to the words found at the end of Matthew’s gospel, in the nomenclature often identified as ‘the Great Commission’. For the purposes of this essay, the relevant words of the Great Commission are to be found in Matthew 28:20: “teach them to do everything I have told you”. The teaching ministry of the Church has arisen from the mandate to ‘make new disciples’ of Jesus Christ. The establishment of new churches in the Mediterranean during the second half of the first century of the Common Era was often predicated on the replication of Christian ideas, combined with human socialisation in the power of the Holy Spirit. In this formulation, new initiates were placed in proximity with existing believers, within a powerful framework of an emerging Christian narrative in which meaning and truth were being defined.12 The teaching ministry of the Church that has often been used to make new disciples has been that of ‘Christian education’. The term ‘Christian education’ can be defined and understood in a variety of ways. Jeff Astley and Colin Crowder provide a helpful starting point for a definition of and a rationale for it: The phrase . . . often used quite generally to refer to those processes by which people learn to become Christian and to be more Christian, through

Mind games 67 learning Christian beliefs, attitudes, values, emotions and dispositions to engage in Christian actions and to be open to Christian experiences.13 In the context of this essay, we are looking at the practice of Christian education as a facet of the missio dei. In using the term ‘mission’, I am referring to the overarching activity of God in the world in which the Church seeks to participate in the saving work of Christ as it relates to all dimensions of the God-human encounter in various cultures and contexts across the world.14 Christian education is the central practice that has sought to teach the faith and inculcate desired notions of normative behaviour and necessary virtues into the laity of all ages.15 Central to the notion of Christian education as an expression of mission, in light of the Great Commission, is the importance of identity and self-esteem. In other words, what does it mean to be a human being created in the image and likeness of God, and what is the nature of our existence and worth in the world? Christian education is concerned not only with the narrow propagation of the Christian faith but also with wider questions of human growth and development. Mission attends to the holistic nature of God’s saving activity in the world and what makes for human flourishing. Christian education is the discipline that enables people to reflect on and actualise their experiences that contribute to the life of faith. The role of the Christian educator is a complex one in that it encompasses issues pertaining to the pedagogical aspect of the faith and the human dimension of maturation and self-actualisation. That is, not only is it concerned with the acquisition of knowledge, but it also contains a socialisation element in how that knowledge is applied in light of Christian truth claims and teaching.

The psychological damage arising from imperial mission Christianity As we have noted in the previous two essays and in my subjective narrative reflections at the beginning of this essay, the imperial mission Christianity that provides the subterranean hermeneutic for Brexit has exerted a corrosive impact on the psyche of British people. ‘The Great Commission’, when allied with Eurocentric notions of superiority complicit with European imperialism, gave rise to a form of mercantilist expansion.16 This resulted in the exploitation of non-White bodies. Womanist theologian Linda Thomas critiques the Matthean tradition of mission, arguing that the locus of power lies with those who are sent as opposed to those who are the recipients of such missionary activities.17 The missionary impulse of the Great Commission was interpreted as a means of imposing Eurocentric values on the cultures of non-European peoples across the world. John Hull analyses the nature of British mission activity in Southern Africa via an analysis of the diary entries of David Livingstone. Hull shows how the

68  Behind the scenes spirit of competition, in sociopolitical, cultural and economic terms, marked the presence of White people in Africa, who sought to propagate a Eurocentric faith in ways that often precluded African agency.18 Hull states that It is not even clear to what extent Livingstone regarded individual conversion as being the principal purpose of his mission strategy. Nearly every conversion involved a switch in power from that of the Chief to that of the British culture and government.19 It is undoubtedly the case that Western missionary agencies formed a collusive relationship with European hegemony, one that enabled the flourishing of White supremacy while delimiting the agency of Black people. Doreen Morrison explores aspects of this tendentious form of mission activity when she reflects on the role of the British in Jamaica in the 19th century.20 The significance of Morrison’s essay lies in her perceptive analysis of how British missionary agencies were content to compete with one another to build chapels and churches as opposed to building schools that would educate Black people to be self-determined and free.21 The churches were often an exercise in colonial control in that the propagation of the faith went hand in hand with Black subservience and White superiority.22 As has been stated previously,23 there has been a long hinterland of historical factors which give rise to the collusion between Black bodies (plus notions of othering) and the demonisation of the Black self.24 Robert Beckford explores the mission impulse of the Anglican society called The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in the Caribbean during the 18th century, in which this binary between Black subservience and White control was maintained.25 This binary was effected, in part, by the use of worship and liturgical space. Beckford writes, “Ideologically, this practice served to preserve a white English cultural superiority and moreover, ensure that worship space maintained black inferiority”.26 Michael Jagessar and Stephen Burns explore how liturgical studies are often replete with forms of symbolism and linguistic tropes that reflect the dominance of colonial ideas pertaining to notions of embodiment, respectability, power (and its absence), agency and subservience.27 As we have seen in the previous essay, the internalisation of imperial mission Christianity is expressed in White majority settings of the historic churches and Black majority settings of predominantly Black Pentecostalism, so that in each context, the agency of Black Christianity in Britain is traduced. What my initial subjective narrative demonstrated in experiential terms was the existence of an inherent anti-Black discourse that has its roots in Greek antiquity.28 The colonial model of Christianity, in which Whiteness was preserved as normative and the aspirant standard of excellence, was the framework that challenged the visible conscription of Black embodiment in the incident I retold earlier. In being perceived and objectified as the other,

Mind games 69 my Black body and, as a corollary, my abilities and projected potential were delimited and devalued when compared to those of my White peer. I have outlined how this form of subjugated Blackness has its roots in Platonic Christianity, as brilliantly dissected by Kelly Brown Douglas.29 Platonicized Christianity has been a constant source by which imperial mission Christianity has undermined and demonised Black bodies.30 The role of Christian education within the broader context of imperial mission Christianity as one that seeks to conscript Black bodies and to locate them within a framework of White normality is a facet that has been rarely, if ever, recognised by White British churches. It is in this regard that Black theology–related work has been necessary to foreground that which has often gone unspoken. That is, the constructs that underpin the teaching and learning of the Christian faith in postcolonial Britain are ones that necessitate the reimaging of Black bodies and the basic intent of Christianity so that the worst excesses of internalised demonised Blackness to which I referred in the previous chapter can be dissipated. As Anthony Pinn has reminded us, the lexicon of racialised discourse and practice that has impacted on Black bodies has had a long gestation period.31 One can juxtapose my subjective narrative with the macro discourses that framed the essential template for what constitutes normality within Christian anthropology.32 The historical antecedents for the colonisation of Black peoples through a tendentious form of Christian education is one that has taught Black people to view their Blackness in deleterious ways. This construct of the faith is often predicated on binary notions of Whiteness as the unmarked and yet fully constituted norm while Blackness becomes the disparaged and demonised other. In the context of imperial mission Christianity, British Christian educational work has largely failed to recognise that the whole process of formation and socialisation has been a colonially informed enterprise. In the first chapter, I  critiqued the nature of White British theological work that has largely ignored the very existence of empire and its collusion with Christianity and colonialism. But a few texts stand in marked distinction to the absence of any notable texts in the area of Christian education and the teaching and learning of the Christian faith in the United Kingdom.33 My subjective narrative illustrated the dialectical impasse within my psyche. I  continue to find myself reflecting on the semantic meaning of that moment, trying to elicit why the church in which I had been nurtured could not see me as an exemplar of Christian formation, to which they themselves had been witnesses. This is a reminder that the constructs for Christian education and formation into the faith need to be reimagined, because this task for Black people cannot ignore the continued battle for self-definition, which is the essential search for a form of Christian-inspired identity that is not an imposition of White normality coupled with Black negation.34 The relationship of White normality to Christian education helps to shape how the binary between acceptability and normativity on one hand and

70  Behind the scenes aberration and inferiority on the other are shaped, particularly in relationship to Blackness. The central issue remains: how we conceive Christianity in the body politic of Britain. As I  have demonstrated in the previous two chapters, Britain needs a better appreciation of how imperial mission Christianity has provided the subterranean bedrock on which notions of English/British exceptionalism was built, which in turn helped to give rise to Brexit. In the next section of this essay, I look at the classic work of George Kelly and personal construct psychology (PCP) as a means of critiquing the underlying frameworks of Christianity that convinced many people, particularly those on the political right, to see Christian faith as a synonym for Whiteness and Whiteness’s associated forms of privilege and entitlement. I believe that reordering the constructs of Christianity – that is, disavowing the blandishments of imperial mission Christianity – will assist in giving rise to a more generous form of Christian faith in the United Kingdom, a faith less susceptible to be coerced by the blandishments of White nationalism for the benefit of White privilege and the scapegoating of migrants and those marked ethnically as the other.

Personal construct psychology Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) has been used by practical and pastoral theologians as a tool for assessing how people, particularly those who profess to be Christians, make sense of God and so undertake their theology. PCP originated in the United States in the early to mid 1950s. The originator of PCP was a psychologist and clinical counsellor named George Kelly. Kelly, working at the University of Wisconsin, developed a theory pertaining to how people construct meaning and attempt to make sense of situations, experiences, images and events as they arise in life. Personal construing (construction of meaning) is a human, meaning-making device. Everyone’s construing is different and highly individualistic. Our personal constructs are ways of anticipating and interpreting the world around us.35 It can be argued, by drawing on Kelly’s work, that Christian faith is not a gift from God, as many believers have asserted, but rather itself a human construct. The human processes of attempting to create meaning and an interpretative framework for experiences is a human device onto which the overarching structure of Christian faith is placed for authoritative verification.36 In effect, drawing on Kelly, some scholars have argued that notions of God and Christian faith are nothing more than personal constructs that human beings have developed to provide an overarching framework for understanding and interpreting events in the world.37 Not surprisingly, a number of theologians and religious educationalists have found this contention deeply problematic. Given the strongly theistic nature of most Black communities in Britain, for example, this notion would be ridiculed and summarily rejected by a majority of people of

Mind games 71 African descent. Black scholars such as William R. Jones38 and Anthony Pinn,39 however, have argued that the assumptions in the Christian theism of Black people are unhelpful and are often based on an uncritical adoption of unsubtle Western supremacist notions of Christian imperialism. Jones, in particular, argues that Black Christian faith should be best understood as a human form of construction, in which human values and aspirations are used to construct a propositional hermeneutic for a God who, it is believed, responds to Black human need.40 In this way, Black religious faith is a form of ‘humano-centric theism’. Kelly also distinguished between constructs that were ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’. The former are those close to the centre of our whole being and which connote some sense of our humanity and individualistic notions of existence (e.g. a belief in God). The latter are of less importance and do not imply anything deeper than a particular phobia or some non-threatening neurosis. ‘Peripheral’ constructs can be termed ‘permeable’, because they can absorb a multitude of influences and are subject to change. Moreover, because they are located close to our conscious self, we can be aware of them, and as a result of this consciousness, they can be changed or amended. Counselling, numerous types of therapy and psychoanalysis are just three examples of a number of processes that can attempt to assist people to reflect on and even change their personal constructs. The corollary of this, however, is the difficulty – some would say impossibility – of even being aware of our ‘core’ constructs, let alone possessing the faculty to change them. Kelly devised PCP to enable individuals to become increasingly aware of the constructs that confer meaning on particular aspects of life. Kelly differed from Sigmund Freud in that he believed that people were not hostages to their past. Through a psychological process such as PCP, an individual could gain a greater understanding of a construct that may give rise to a particular problem or issue in their life and be assisted to find appropriate mechanisms to change that construct and so change their understanding and its resultant experience. Kelly believed that all people are personal ‘scientists’. We are regularly testing out new concepts, strategies and ideas, trying to find new, more appropriate ways of construing the meaning of events, experiences and roles. These meaning-making processes are taking place on a continuous basis every day of our lives, and we are barely conscious of them. Kelly wanted to find a means of making those processes more explicit, so that people could reflect on and mediate them, to develop new constructs that might provide greater flexibility and sustenance to their life. This process of attempting to change one’s construct is what Kelly called constructive alternativism – that is, actively engaging in a process of creating alternative forms of meaning.41 Following the early development in PCP, a number of psychologists, educationalists and more latterly theologians,42 have attempted to build on

72  Behind the scenes the pioneering work of Kelly. A  number of practical strategies have been deployed so that the theoretical underpinnings of PCP can be constructed into a useable framework for eliciting personal constructs in individuals or groups. Providing a thorough explication of the various methods available for using PCP in a practical educational and pastoral setting is not within the scope of this essay, but there are number of useful texts that offer ample instruction and guidance in this area.43

Why is personal construct psychology significant? The significance of PCP lies in how it has the potential to enable us to critique how Christian education that lies within the purview of imperial mission Christianity continues to perpetuate notions of truth that privilege Whiteness and demonise Blackness as the other. I  argue that at the heart of the teaching and learning enterprise of Christian education are a set of constructs that continue to reify the tropes of Whiteness as unmarked normality, from which migrants and those marked as the aberrant other are excluded. The challenge of this work, therefore, is to reflect on these underlying frameworks so that they can at least be better understood. Whether they can be changed is another matter. In the first instance, however, I critique the underlying concepts of Christian notions of faith identity in the United Kingdom, which in turn are related to the larger frameworks that govern notions of belonging, on which the discourse of Brexit was predicated. In this, the next section of the essay, I look at how one can apply PCP to examine the constructs of imperial mission Christianity to find out what constitutes Christian identity and normality in Britain. Scholars such as Philida Salmon have used PCP to investigate the conceptual limits of how we perceive truth.44 One technique she uses is called the Salmon line.45 The Salmon line operates based on individuals’ (or groups’) constructing working paradigms for truth in terms of delineating the extremes of any particular concept. It operates on the principle that people describe the extremes of any particular concept or phenomenon in terms of their polar opposites. So if one wanted to think in of one’s constructs of, say, the Bible, one might ask the respondent for two possible polar opposites for how we perceive biblical authority. At one end of the construct might be the phrase ‘The Bible is inerrant’. By definition, the other end of the construct would be the polar opposite to the first statement. The Salmon line works by asking individuals to analyse where they would place themselves on the continuum between the two statements (I have usually worked with a number scale of either 1 to 20 or 30). When they have placed themselves at a particular place in the continuum, they are then invited to reflect on the reasons for their location. If you are nearer the opposite end to the ‘inerrant’ pole (which might be exemplified in a statement like ‘The Bible is completely relative, like all other texts’), then what are the reasons for locating yourself at that point? If you were to move from

Mind games 73 that position to one further towards the ‘inerrant’ pole, what changes would have occurred in your thinking? Using this particular training approach to theological reflection within the framework of practical theology, participants can consider the factors that influence their particular constructs around certain concepts in Christian theology, such as what constitutes normality in terms of how we understand the nature of Christianity. The fact that we all have myriad constructs means that one could use this method for eliciting our personal constructs for a wide variety of themes or theological concerns. One simply starts with an imaginary line at which there are two opposite poles. The theologian can either ask the participants to construct their own statements that determine the polar opposites for a particular concept or phenomenon (characteristics or attributes of God is a favourite one of many practical theologians and educationists) or propose the form of words themselves with which the group or individuals will work. PCP informed observations on Christian education In this section of the essay, I reflect on my subject narrative in light of PCP, using the Salmon line to explore the semantic meaning of this event in light of imperial mission Christianity, as a subtext of Brexit. Other scholars have used PCP in empirical research to unearth constructs in a scientific manner, but unlike their work, the following is a result of my more theoretical and reflective work as opposed to replicable forms of empiricism. The following, therefore, is by necessity tentative and approximate and is by no means the final word on this particular concern. Conversely, given that little, if any, work has been done on how our gaze on the normativity of Christian faith has been affected by our perceptions of ‘race’ and ethnic difference (outside of that undertaken by Black theologians and Black religious scholars), this work is still useful and perhaps of some import. Reflecting on my subjective narrative In reflecting on the semantic meaning of my subject narrative, I am curious as to the constructs at play in this incident. Having been a part of the church from the age of four and having progressed through Sunday school and the youth departments in an exemplary fashion, I was still largely not afforded any normative status in my church as an exemplar of Christian discipleship. Up to that point, I had regularly been commended for my diligence in living out my Christian discipleship and was noted for enthusiasm and compliance in the church. I was not a rebel by any means, and the iconoclastic nature of Black liberation theology that was to capture my imagination in the 1990s was some way off. At that point in my life, I was an uncritical imbiber of imperial mission Christianity and everything it represented of White patrician control.

74  Behind the scenes It seems to me now that one obvious hermeneutic of this story is the extent to which the normativity around what constituted archetypal excellence resided in a White body and not a Black one. When asked to imagine what constituted excellence, my White peer was selected, and I  was not, even though at that point there had been little to separate us in cognitive ability or spiritual maturity in the life of the Church. At one end of the Salmon line for this woman was a White figure, ideally middle class, well behaved, conservative and socially aspirant.46 While there were class-based notions of what constituted an acceptable norm for this woman, there was no doubt that what undercut her consciousness around class was a visceral construction of that embodied ideal being housed within a White and not a Black body. James Perkinson’s groundbreaking White Theology remains the foundational text for confronting the theological spectre of Whiteness.47 Perkinson demonstrates how Whiteness provides the substructure on which Enlightenment rationality is predicated, onto which imperial mission Christianity happily colluded as a means of constructing notions of normality versus deviance in the application of the faith across the ‘new world’.48 Perkinson argues that “Whiteness was born of the European encounter with people, places and things that fit no clear category on the map of Christian cognition”.49 Perkinson develops his thesis vis-à-vis the conflation of Whiteness as Christianity: But the attachment of this superiority to skin color was a gradual process. The concourse between self and the other, identity and difference, the subject of gaze and the object gazed upon, is always double, leveraging effects on both sides.  .  .  . The theological meanings invested in epidermal appearances served the function of theodicy, legitimizing the exploitation of both (indigenous) native and (imported) slave labor for European colonial and later imperial enterprises.50 Although I was not viewed or treated as a slave in this church, I argue that the underlying theological framing of imperial mission Christianity remains largely untroubled and had certainly not been deconstructed by the time my family found themselves in this context in the 1970s and 1980s. By the time I was confronted with the axiomatic certainty of this woman in the early 1980s, her gaze had located me towards the opposite end of her Salmon line for what might constitute Christian normativity in terms of the idealised paradigms for exemplary youth discipleship. In my othering, it was clear that I could not be perceived to be an archetype for Christian discipleship. Alison Webster’s exploration of theological anthropology offers some useful insights as I have sought to rethink the possible constructs of imperial mission Christianity in Britain and their links to the theological substructure of Brexit. Webster reminds us that we are all the sum of the stories we tell about ourselves, the metanarratives that confer identity and one’s concomitant engagement with the wider world.51 Webster, one of the few White

Mind games 75 British theologians to have explored Whiteness, does so by examining her own positionality in order to challenge and deconstruct the alleged normative subjectivity she possesses and its potential gaze on the other.52 Reflecting on my generative story, I am curious about the constructs this woman from my long distant past held when looking at me and to what extent she was working within the prism of a metanarrative regarding the civilising intent of imperial mission Christianity on the heathens?53 Willie James Jennings explores the construct of ‘race’ in the body politic of Christianity in exemplary fashion, using several generative stories of how the world of Europeans collided with that of Africans, and it is in this combustible nexus that the new, toxic order of Christian thinking emerges.54 There is no doubt that in my encounter with this woman, White middle-class Britain was encountering Black Caribbean Britain. In being othered, my fellow member of the Christian family may have seen me in more emollient terms than might have been the case if our respective ancestors had met in the 18th century, for example, but despite this progress, she did not see me as her equal or the equal of my competitive peer at school. This sense of subordination in the body of Christ speaks to the critical Black theology–inspired, reader-response hermeneutic that Carol Troupe deploys in her reading of Paul’s body metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12.55 Troupe critiques the surface reading of the author’s account of the body and many parts working together: although it may be seen as promoting a healthy notion of diversity, it can be also be read as a means of reinforcing the status quo.56 Troupe writes, This leads into v. 18, which states: But in fact God has arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. Looking again at this v. 18 alongside v. 13 causes me to question my reading once again. Could it be said that, as well as encouraging unity, this passage could be used to promote an acceptance of the status quo in regards to social and economic marginalization and injustice? Rather than challenging a system that dictates where people are placed, and perpetuates the oppression of some, this reading suggests that the system is indeed God sanctioned, and that God has placed all people in conditions where God meant them to be. There is no suggestion that part of the coming together in Christ should entail questioning of or overturning unjust social or political practices. It suggests, rather, that these practices and divisions can be overlooked as inconsequential when we become united in belief in Christ, since that is the way God made the world.57 Troupe continues by stating that such a reading can be viewed as unproblematic if seen through the lens of bourgeois acceptability but can be read in more deleterious terms if seen through the vista of the subaltern.58 Reflecting on my

76  Behind the scenes experience in light of Troupe’s critical rereading of this text (often used as a paradigm for talking about diversity and inclusion within ecclesial contexts), one can assert that I did belong to the body, but I was not equal to the White people who constituted the normative value of the Church. The framing of imperial mission Christianity was always predicated on the differentiation between people on the grounds of ‘race’ and ethnicity.59 I was never treated badly by the church in which I was socialised into the faith, but I was not seen as equal to others. The constructs for what constituted an authentic Christian exemplar was not to be found within a Black body. I was on the other end of the Salmon line, in the opposite direction to the positive side of the construct. I believe that the constructs governing the theological underpinning of Brexit are a macro distillation of the micro articulation that was my subjective narrative. The ease with which the Leave campaign could traduce migrants, particularly minority ethnic communities, as the dis-ease in the body politic of the nation can be found in the constructs that govern what constitutes normality and archetypal embodiment. That is, no matter how well socialised some of us have become, we remain the other.

Transformative Black Christian education – a riposte to mission Christianity Since the late 1960s, Black religious educators have sought to provide an alternative means of understanding the Christian faith. This counter-­ proposition has refuted notions of White entitlement and privilege and the constructs that are predicated on White normality. These models of Christian socialisation and formation seek to affirm Black experience and embodiment, focusing on Black identities and the existential quest for selfdetermination. What has underpinned these radical counter assertive models of Christian-inspired teaching and learning is the prophetic stance of Black liberation theology, the model of theological articulation that underpins the entirety of this book. Black theology When speaking of Black theology, I  am referring to a specific self-named enterprise of reinterpreting the meaning of God as revealed in Christ, in light of existential Black experience. The point of departure in Black theology is the existential and ontological reality of Blackness and the Black experience: how does it feel to be a Black body in the world, and what is the theological meaning of this experience? Where is God amid the existential crisis as Black bodies seek to feel and to be whole in a world where authentic being is often denied to them?60 Black theology is a theology of liberation and is not simply any theology undertaken by Black people. From its earliest iterations, Black theology was conceived as a theology of liberation.61 Like all forms of theologies of

Mind games 77 liberation, Black theology focuses its concerns on ortho-praxis rather than orthodoxy. The commitment to the former as opposed to the latter is partly a result of a form of existential pragmatism, in which the practical challenges of resisting racism and trying to fight for Black self-determination have taken precedence over historical arguments on what constitutes correct understandings of God.62 Traditionally, Black theology’s interest in, say, doctrine has been rooted in the extent to which particular teachings about God in Christ lend themselves to praxiological struggle. Or do they promote passivity or, even worse, utter indifference?63 The additional reason why Black theology has eschewed a concern for orthodoxy results from the historical realisation that there has been little evidence in White Euro-American Christianity that authorised a supposedly ‘correct’ teaching that has any substantive relationship with ethical, nonracist behaviour.64 Black theology, therefore, has often adopted a deontological modus operandi that has critiqued White Christianity for its collusion with slavery, racism and colonialism while challenging Black Christianity to critical forms of resistance to White hegemony, promoting Black selfdetermination and radical agency as an ethical riposte. Transformative Christian education in the Black experience Arguably, the single most important voice in the development of this tradition has been the late great Grant S. Shockley.65 Shockley was one of the early pioneers of Black liberative approaches to Christian education and the socialisation of African Americans. His work, which began in the 1960s and extended into the early 1990s was one of the first substantive attempts to reorient the very conceptualisation of Christian socialisation and formation. Shockley outlined a five-stage implementation programme for a liberative model of Christian education for Black people.66 In the ongoing development of this work, Shockley asserts The center of education for liberation occurs when persons are able to utilize their capacities of self- transcendence to evaluate reality, and as subjects, of naming the world instead of being named by it.67 An important and indeed necessary riposte to the bounded and restricted parameters set out by imperial mission Christianity has been the fusing of Black theology and Christian education in the Black experience. Inspired by Shockley, my earliest pastoral and scholarly work was an attempt to combine Black theology and Christian education to create a radical model of Christian learning that was predicated on liberative pedagogical principles.68 Shockley argues that the process of learning about and being nurtured into the Christian faith for, predominantly, diasporan Black people should be concerned primarily with their holistic development, linking existential concerns with a liberative biblical hermeneutic.69

78  Behind the scenes Shockley, taking his cue from Black theology, argues that the formational process, by which Black people learn to become Christians and the ideological framing of this pedagogical task, is one that should eschew the abstractions of doctrinal purity. Rather, it must emphasise inculcating life skills, enabling Black people to navigate the perilous terrain created by White hegemony.70 Shockley clearly asserts that for many, if not most, Black people in the United States (and in the United Kingdom also, regarding the Windrush Generation), our experience has been one of responding to the existential travails that have marked our troubled existence.71 Shockley’s determination that any model of Christian-inspired teaching and learning should be contextual, liberative and relevant to the needs and realities of Black people leads to his arguing for the essential link between transformative models of pedagogy and Black theology, Shockley writes, Black theology has been instructive at the point of letting us know that any Religious education programme that might be constructed, must grow out of and center around the experiences, relationships and situational dilemmas that Black people face in their day to day struggle to survive, develop, and progress in an often hostile, uncaring majoritydominated society.72 In the context of this work, I believe that rethinking the seminal work of Grant Shockley is imperative, because he charts the essential building blocks for this modality of socialisation into the Christian faith. In effect, Shockley offers alternative constructs by which we might define the very nature and intent of Christianity.73 He asserts an ideological framework in theological and educational terms for the Christian education of Black people. This approach envisages a radical alternative reconfiguring of the present world order. Beginning with an analysis of the historical experiences of Black people, Shockley proceeds to outline the sociocultural foundations for a specific cultural teaching and learning strategy for the Christian education of Black people.74 Shockley’s work is pivotal because it highlights the significance of selfdefinition as an essential core component of any model of transformative pedagogy aimed at the development of African peoples across the globe. The theological intent of Shockley’s conception for Christian education is rooted in the paradigm of Black theology.75 This particular understanding of Christian education is one whose constructs are focused on God’s preferential option for the poor and marginalised in the world.76 The influence of Shockley and my own existential ruminations (as have been explored in this chapter) provide the basis for the rearticulation of the Christian faith, drawing on alternative constructs, such as a the upside-down kingdom that is characteristic of the gospel of Jesus, as opposed to the dictates of White entitlement and privilege.77 The development of Christian education for Black people that is focused on personal development and social transformation has responded to their

Mind games 79 wider sociopolitical ferment, marginalisation and oppression. Its birth was as a direct consequence of racism and colonial subjugation. Delores H. Carpenter argues that the Christian education of Black people in America has been a struggle against the historical forces of oppression. This Christian education struggle is linked to the fight for relevance and affirmation and to the parlous nature of this enterprise within an overall context of poverty and marginalisation.78 In reconfiguring the nature and intent of Christianity Brexit, I am indebted to the inspirational work of Olivia Pearl Stokes, who, along with Grant Shockley, is one of the pioneers of this transformative movement in liberative education. Stokes argues that the social tumult of the 1960s was the impetus that gave rise to the development of liberationist modes of Christian learning and socialisation:79 Thus education in the Black Church, with insights from Black theology, must become a part of that indispensable structure for survival and transformation that ameliorates these societal ills Christian faith is committed to remedy.80 Stokes’s genius lies in her appreciation that religious education needed to be aligned to liberation theology, particularly the Black theology of liberation, to enact the necessary liberative praxis in Black churches. At a time when the temptation was to see Christian religious education in purely pietistic terms, which emphasised the inculcation of Christian doctrine and behavioural virtues, Stokes’s brilliance was to re-envisage the very form and intent of religious pedagogy. Stokes believed that the significance of Christian religious education lay in its ability to conscientise Black people, helping them, like the emerging Black liberation theology, to see the gospel as indispensable to and consistent with their social condition.81 Stokes’s towering importance to this field, as the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate in religious education in the United States can be found in the link she created between religious education and social analysis.82 Olivia Pearl Stokes arguably remains the unheralded architect of a liberative model of religious pedagogy that sowed the seeds for what was to emerge as liberationist approaches to Black Christian socialisation and formation, alongside Grant S. Shockley.83 Given our present epoch of rising White nationalism in the United States and across Europe, not forgetting Britain’s challenge of dealing with Brexit, we need alternative constructs for conceiving the normative posture and archetypal exemplars for what constitutes Christianity. In the final section of this essay, I aim to provide an alternative vista for this task. Rather than predicating Christian normality on the concealed and tacit notions of White normativity, in which Whiteness comes to represent the embodied ideal for notions of belonging, I focus our semantic gaze on marginalised Black bodies. In particular, I focus on the Windrush Generation and their

80  Behind the scenes seemingly problematic presence in the body politic of the nation. I believe that the Windrush Generation represents an alternative embodied archetype for envisioning the representational ideal for what constitutes Christianity in Britain.

Refuting borders and walls: the legacy of the Windrush Generation in Christianity in Britain Witnessing the indefatigable strength, generosity and loving Christian commitment of my mother, I am in no doubt as to the generative power of the Windrush Generation.84 I believe that these ageing, many deceased, people who came from the Caribbean in the post–Second World War epoch of Britain offer a more constructive, expansive and inclusive model of Christianity than the restrictive constructs served to us by imperial mission Christianity. One of the gifts bequeathed to us by the Windrush Generation has been the development of Black Christianity in Britain. The Windrush Generation helped to create communities of Black Christians in a variety of churches in the United Kingdom, be they in White majority historic churches like Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, United Reformed or Adventist churches or in Black majority Pentecostal and Holiness churches, such the New Testament Church of God, the Church of God of Prophecy, Assemblies of God or Wesleyan Holiness.85 One of the key characteristics of Black Christian faith is the importance of personal experience, perhaps more so than intellectual knowledge of or formal training in or indeed any in-depth, historical understanding of the faith.86 The role of personal experience in assisting Black Christian believers to gain a sense of their assurance of salvation has been part of the bedrock that has enabled many Black people of the Windrush Generation in Britain, for example, to fight for social justice. This commitment to social change has been undertaken on the firm belief that the security of ‘everlasting life’ meant that such activists felt that they had nothing to lose in fighting for justice in the ‘here and now’. Black Christianity in the wake of the Windrush Generation has offered either implicit or explicit models of Black selfaffirmation and identity in the continuing struggle against racism and White supremacy in the British context. Theological and spiritual legacies of the Windrush I would interpret the legacy and the importance of the Windrush Generation in light of the biblical story of Pentecost. In Acts 2, we see the explosive power of the Holy Spirit that energises the first disciples and see how the manifestation of the powerful work of the Holy Spirit gave rise to the gift of speaking in tongues, or glossolalia. What has always inspired me has been the radical challenge that results from the transformative life in the spirit,

Mind games 81 namely the common life of cooperation, mutuality and sacrificial living that results from such spirit-filled forms of praxis. I continue to believe that the narrative of the first Pentecost has much to teach us as we struggle with the continued challenge of embracing and affirming difference in our Brexit life in 21st-century Britain. Given my scholarship as a Black liberation theologian, much of whose work has been critiquing and challenging White norms and assumptions of superiority, I  affirm how Pentecost demolishes any notion of cultural superiority or government-inspired attacks on multiculturalism in favour of the mantra of sameness and integration.87 Pentecost has a special resonance for our increasingly plural and complex nation, because any materialist reading88 of this text affirms notions of cultural difference. If physical and linguistic differences are themselves part of the problem for many people who voted for Brexit, then what are we to make of a text in which these differences are visibly celebrated? Part of the legacy of the Windrush Generation is the very form of physical and linguistic differences that one sees in the Pentecost event  – which is the distinct contradiction of and riposte to Brexit. In the Pentecost narrative, we hear of people speaking in their mother tongue. There is no presumption of pre-eminence in terms of a particular language, culture or expression. The ability to have visions and dream dreams is the preserve of all humankind, irrespective of class, ethnicity or culture. The God of all, in Christ, has called all humanity into an unconditional relationship with the divine, in the power of the Holy Spirit.89 The reaction inspired by the Black theological Windrush Generation to the exclusionary tactics of the British government and the attempt to deport Black British citizens emerges from the God who challenges us to seek the good of our neighbour and encourages us to find human fulfilment in radical hospitality, in community with others and in communion with God, revealed in Jesus. I  love the way in which this text counters all our polite notions of Christian faith as an expression of self-centred, middle-class patrician Englishness – the underlying construct that represents the subliminal modality of representative Christian identity in Brexit Britain. The transformation brought about by the Holy Spirit leads to a renewed commitment to live for and to serve others in the name of Christ. This sense of living for others, creating community and expressing a generosity of faith is all exemplified in the examples of faithful living of the Windrush Generation.90 The Windrush Generation, I believe, offered this nation a new way of living  – a new model of faith, one that was not overlaid with racism, colonialism and White entitlement. This new expression of faith can be seen as a culturally religious expression of Pentecost. The Windrush Generation’s implicit living out of the central tenets of Black theology finds its biblical resonances in the twin themes of the collective dimension and the social dimension of faith, as seen in the early

82  Behind the scenes believers in Acts 2. Through sharing resources like the ‘pardna’91 and in creating a whole new model of Christian faith, borne out of the crucible of Caribbean culture,92 the Windrush legacy for Britain has been the creation of a Pentecost for post-war Britain. Crucially, the Windrush Generation’s faith, anchored in a Pentecost sensibility that is underpinned by the epistemological insights of an implicit Black radicalism, has provided an explicit multicultural optic that refutes the monocultural logics of the bounded nature of British identity, predicated as it is on White supremacy and entitlement. The Windrush Generation’s critique of the boundaries and walls of White privilege that seeks to deport legally constituted Black bodies is predicated on a suffering Jesus who stands alongside Black people on our side of the epistemological and semantic divide for what constitutes belonging and acceptability. Blackness is the site of divine revelation that critiques the exclusionary tactics of the powerful and challenges the questionable logics of Whiteness and its concomitant sense of entitlement and superiority. In short, Black bodies, particularly those of the Black proletariat of the Windrush Generation represent the alternative constructs for what constitutes Christian normality is Britain. In their evocation of the politics, faith and the theology of difference, they embody a critical resistance ethic to the blandishments of empire and its toxic memory and the neo-colonial constructs of imperial mission Christianity that underpinned Brexit. They offer a truer vision of Christianity than the tendentious, narrow and restricted version that was all too happy to collude with White English nationalism and Brexit. The importance of the Windrush Generation lies in their embodied riposte to all of the worst socioreligious indicators that underpinned Brexit. Given the critical challenge I  issued to Black Christianity in the previous essay, I offer a more emollient and supporting analysis of this wider phenomenon, asserting the significance of the Windrush Generation as an embodied Pentecost. This embodied Pentecost represents the gifts of multiculturalism and the grandeur and beauty of difference. Black Christianity, for all its limitations in imbibing too many of the blandishments of imperial mission Christianity and the folly of many of the Windrush Generation voting for Brexit, remains an essential form of resistance to the bounded limitations of White English nationalism. This essay has argued for inventing alternative constructs for assessing the normative posture of Christian archetypes in Brexit Britain. Through the medium of Black Christian education, we have a template for alternative constructs for effecting Christian formation and socialisation. The Windrush Generation remains the embodied exemplar that remind us that Christianity’s identity must remain as the religion of the marginalised and dispossessed and not the conduit that massages the fragility of White privilege and entitlement.

Mind games 83

Notes 1 See Anthony G. Reddie ‘People Matter Too! The Politics and Method of Doing Black Liberation Theology’. Practical Theology, Vol.1, No.1, 2008, pp. 43–64. 2 See Elaine Graham, Heather Walton and Frances Ward Theological Reflection: Methods (London: SCM Press, 2005). 3 See Anne Streaty Wimberly Soul Stories: African American Christian Education (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994). 4 See Anne E. Streaty Wimberly and Evelyn L. Parker (eds) In Search of Wisdom: Faith Formation in the Black Church (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002). 5 See N. Lynne Westfield Dear Sister: A Womanist Practice of Hospitality (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2002), pp. 1–39. See also Yolanda Y. Smith. 6 Two of the most significant texts in this growing field are Bernard Coard How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System (London: New Beacon Books, 1971) and Tony Sewell Black Masculinities and Schooling: How Black Boys Survive Modern Schooling (Stoke-OnTrent: Trentham, 1996). 7 See Yvonne Channer I am a Promise: Achievement of British African-Caribbeans (Stoke-On-Trent: Trentham, 1995) and more recently Cheron Byfield Black Boys Can Make It: How They Overcome the Obstacles to University in the UK and USA (Stoke-On-Trent: Trentham, 2008); Trevor W. Adams A Black Hero’s Journey (Unpublished Professional Doctorate, Anglia Ruskin University, 2014). 8 Black British theologian R. David Muir explores how Black people have often been constructed along the binary of acceptable and unacceptable in the reporting on Black agency and activism within the context of mission Christianity. This, he argues, explains the absence of Sam Sharpe, the progenitor of the largest slave revolt in the English-speaking Caribbean, in the historiography of White British Baptists’ reporting on the history of their tradition in the era in which Sharpe lived. See R. David Muir ‘Abolition, Diasporan Memory and the Curious Invisibility of Sam Sharpe from the Baptist Centenary Historiography’. In Anthony G. Reddie, Wale Hudson Roberts and Gale Richards (eds) Journeying to Justice: Contributions to the Baptist Tradition Across the Black Atlantic (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2017), pp. 139–148. 9 See Josiah Young ‘Envisioning the Son of Man’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.2, No.1, 2004, pp. 11–17. 10 See the following link for a helpful precis on the ‘hostile climate’ against immigration that preceded Brexit and informed the phenomenon since the referendum vote in 2016: http://theconversation.com/hostile- environment-immigrationpolicy-has-made-britain-a-precarious-place-to-call-home-95546 – accessed 17 July 2018. 11 See the following link for a brief summary on the rise of religious and racists incidents since the EU referendum: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/14fb d88d7ce8e594 – accessed 17 July 2018. 12 See Stanley Hauerwas, ‘The Gesture of a Truthful Story’. In Jeff Astley, Leslie J. Francis and Colin Crowder (eds) Theological Perspectives on Christian Formation: A Reader on Theology and Christian Education (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), pp. 97–105. See also Craig Dykstra ‘No Longer Strangers: The Church and Its Educational Ministry’. In Jeff Astley, Leslie J. Francis and Colin Crowder (eds) Theological Perspectives on Christian Formation: A Reader on Theology and Christian Education (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), pp. 106–118. 13 Jeff Astley, Leslie J. Francis and Colin Crowder (eds) Theological Perspectives on Christian Formation: A Reader on Theology and Christian Education (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), p. x.

84  Behind the scenes 14 Arguably, one of the most important and influential texts in our understanding of Christian mission is David J. Bosch Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991). 15 See John M. Hull What Prevents Christian Adults from Learning (London: SCM Press, 2011). 16 See John M. Hull Towards the Prophetic Church: A Study in Christian Mission (London: SCM Press, 2014), pp. 88–137. 17 See Linda E. Thomas ‘Anthropology, Mission and the African Woman: A Womanist Approach’. Black Theology, Vol.5, No.1, 2007, pp. 11–19. 18 John M. Hull Towards the Prophetic Church, pp. 151–160. 19 John M. Hull Towards the Prophetic Church, p. 156. 20 Doreen Morrison ‘Reparations: A Call to Fulfil the Promise of Education Made by Baptists to the Enslaved and Their Descendants Through the 1835 Negro Education Act’. In Anthony G. Reddie, Wale Hudson Roberts and Gale Richards (eds) Journeying to Justice: Contributions to the Baptist Tradition Across the Black Atlantic (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2017), pp. 149–166. 21 Doreen Morrison ‘Reparations’, pp. 149–166. 22 Doreen Morrison ‘Reparations’, pp. 149–166. 23 Robert Beckford Documentary as Exorcism: Resisting the Bewitchment of Colonial Christianity (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 78–86. 24 One can see this in terms of how biblical texts were used to construct notions of depraved Africans and the bestial nature of Black bodies. See Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). See also Sylvester A. Johnson, The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). For example, one can see the tensions between religion, faith, ethnicity, and nationality and how they were exploited through ‘specious’ forms of biblical interpretation. A significant proof text that explained the lesser status of Black bodies, which sought to justify the enslavement of Africans within a Christian framework, arose from Gen. 9:18–25, ‘The Curse of Ham’. Noah punishes his son Ham by cursing his own grandson Canaan (the son of Ham), condemning him and all his descendants to slavery. See the aforementioned scholarly texts as excellent sources for the explication of the misuse of the Bible in Christian mission. 25 Robert Beckford Documentary as Exorcism, pp. 78–86. 26 Robert Beckford Documentary as Exorcism, p. 83. 27 See Michael N. Jagessar and Stephen Burns Christian Worship: Postcolonial Perspectives (London: Equinox, 2011), pp. 33–50. 28 This phenomenon and the theme have been explored by Robert E. Hood, Begrimed and Black: Christian Traditions on Blacks and Blackness (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994). 29 This idea is taken from Kelly Brown Douglas’s excellent study on Black bodies and how they have been policed and controlled within the religious framework of Christianity. See Kelly Brown Douglas, What’s Faith Got to Do with It? Black Bodies/Christian Souls (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005). 30 Ibid., 3–38. 31 Anthony B. Pinn and Dwight N. Hopkins, Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 1–8. 32 This issue will be addressed in greater detail in the following chapter, where I  will investigate a more intersectional model of Christian anthropology that draws on Black theology and practical theology as helpful modalities for deconstructing privileged Whiteness in the body politic of Britain. 33 One of the few pieces of scholarly work in Christian education that recognises the existence of alternative forms of faith-based notions of formation and socialisation is Esther Fenty’s doctorate via the University of London. See Esther Fenty

Mind games 85 Shades of Faith Formation: Black Christian Faith Formation Within Holiness/ Pentecostal Churches in the UK (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, King’s College London [University of London], 2017). 34 See the work of the great African-American historian Carter G. Woodson for work that reflects on the notion of the identity struggle of Black people that often arises from various forms of miseducation organised and perpetrated by White power. See Carter G. Woodson The Mis-Education of the Negro (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990 [1933]). 35 See George A. Kelly The Psychology of Personal Constructs (New York: W. W. Norton, 1955). 36 Those who would assert this argument have often drawn their ideas from the American practical theologian James Fowler. Fowler’s model of faith development theory while not asserting that Christian faith is an absolute construct does nevertheless understand faith as generic to all human beings (and that Christian faith is not qualitatively different from other modes of faith construction) and is best understood not as a form of revelation but as a human meaning-making device. See James W. Fowler Stages of Faith (San Francisco: Harper, 1991). 37 See James W. Fowler, Friedrich Schweitzer and Karl Ernst Nipkow (eds) Stages of Faith and Religious Judgement (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1991). 38 See William R. Jones Is God a White Racist? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973). 39 See Anthony B. Pinn Why Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology (New York: Continuum, 1995). 40 William R. Jones Is God a White Racist? pp. 4–6. 41 See Fay Fransella George Kelly (London: Sage, 1995), p. 13. 42 For a number of years, there was a small research group at the University of Birmingham School of Education, of which I was a member, who were attempting to look at the theological imperatives of PCP and its usage in practical theology and Christian ministry. The group was chaired by Professor John M. Hull, who was then professor of religious education in the School of Education at the University of Birmingham. The group was disbanded a number of years ago, although some of the scholars in that group have used PCP in their doctoral theses. See Peter Hammersley Adult Learning Problems and the Experience of Loss: A Study of Religious Rigidity (Unpublished PhD thesis, the School of Education, The University of Birmingham, 1997). See also Howard Worsley The Inner-Child as a Resource to Adult Faith Development (Faith in Transition) (Unpublished PhD thesis, the School of Education, The University of Birmingham, 1999). 43 For the definitive rendering of PCP, see George A. Kelly The Psychology of Personal Constructs. Practical, worked examples of PCP can be found in P. Dalton and G.A. Dunnett A Psychology for Living (Chichester: J Wiley, 1992); A. Landfield and F.R. Epting Personal Construct Psychology (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1987); P. Reason (ed.) Human Inquiry in Action: Developments in New Paradigm Research (London: Sage, 1988); P. Salmon Psychology for Teachers: An Alternative Approach (London: Hutchinson, 1988); D. Schon The Reflective Practitioner (New York: Basic Books, 1983). 44 See Phillida Salmon Psychology for Teachers. 45 See Phillida Salmon Psychology for Teachers. 46 Methodist theologian Theodore Jennings has reflected on the changing identity of Methodism from an ecclesial body rooted in the socially marginalised and economically poor to one that is now much concerned with a ‘preferential option for the middle class’. See Theodore W. Jennings Jr Good News to the Poor: John Wesley’s Evangelical Economics (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), pp. 181–198. 47 See James W. Perkinson White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

86  Behind the scenes 8 James W. Perkinson White Theology, pp. 151–184. 4 49 James W. Perkinson White Theology, p. 156. 50 James W. Perkinson White Theology, p. 157. 51 See Alison Webster You Are Mine: Reflections on Who We Are (London: SPCK, 2009), pp. 42–79. 52 Alison Webster You Are Mine, pp. 42–49. 53 See Noel Leo Erskine Plantation Church: How African American Religion Was Born in Caribbean Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 95–119. 54 See Willie James Jennings The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 55 See Carol Troupe ‘One Body, Many Parts: A Reading of 1 Corinthians 12:12– 27’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.6, No.1, 2008, pp. 32–45. 56 Carol Troupe ‘One Body, Many Parts’, pp. 32–45. 57 Carol Troupe ‘One Body, Many Parts’, pp. 40–41. 58 Carol Troupe ‘One Body, Many Parts’, pp. 40–44. 59 See Lorraine Dixon ‘The Nature of Black Presence in England Before the Abolition of Slavery’. In Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Black Theology in Britain: A Reader (London: Equinox, 2007), pp. 29–39. 60 See Delroy Hall ‘The Middle Passage as Existential Crucifixion’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.7, No.1, 2009, pp. 45–63. 61 James H. Cone, who is acknowledged as the founder of the systematic articulation of Black theology, has argued convincingly that the discipline and its accompanying practice is committed to human liberation. See James Cone A Black Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990). 62 Gayraud S. Wilmore, one of the early titans of Black theology, has argued that the discipline and practice is essentially pragmatic in its orientation. See Gayraud S. Wilmore Pragmatic Spirituality: The Christian Faith Through an Africentric Lens (New York: New York University Press, 2004). 63 James Cone asserts that most White theology that has emerged from White Christianity has led to indifference to the existence of racism and the suffering that this has exerted on Black people. See James H. Cone ‘Theology’s Great Sin: Silence in the Face of White Supremacy’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.2, No.2, 2002, pp. 139–152. 64 See Anthony G. Reddie ‘Not Just Seeing, But Really Seeing: A Practical Black Liberationist Spirituality for Re-interpreting Reality’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vo.7, No.3, 2009, pp. 339–365. 65 For the best scholarly appraisal of Shockley’s life, see Charles R. Foster and Fred Smith Black Religious Experience: Conversations on Double Consciousness and the Work of Grant Shockley (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2004). 66 Grant S. Shockley ‘Christian Education and the Black Religious Experience’. In Charles R. Foster (ed.) Ethnicity in the Education of the Church (Nashville, TN: Conference Papers/Scarritt Graduate School, Scarritt Press, 1987), p. 31. 67 Grant S. Shockley ‘Christian Education and the Black Religious Experience’, p. 31. 68 See Anthony G. Reddie Growing into Hope: Christian Education in MultiEthnic Churches  – 2 Volumes [Vol.1: Believing and Expecting, Vol.2 Liberation and Change (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House, 1998). See also Anthony G. Reddie Nobodies to Somebodies: A Practical Theology for Education and Liberation (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2003). 69 Grant S. Shockley ‘Black Pastoral Leadership in Religious Education’. In Robert L. Browning (ed.) The Pastor as Religious Educator (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1987), pp. 195–197.

Mind games 87 70 Grant S. Shockley ‘Black Theology and Religious Education’. In Randolph Crump Miller (ed.) Theologies of Religious Education (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1995), pp. 315–323. 71 Grant S. Shockley ‘Black Theology and Religious Education’, pp. 315–321. 72 Grant S. Shockley ‘Black Theology and Religious Education’, pp. 315–321. 73 Grant S. Shockley ‘Christian Education and the Black Religious Experience’. Charles R. Foster Ethnicity in the Education of the Church (Nashville, TN: Conference Papers/Scarritt Graduate School, Scarritt Press, 1987), pp. 31–35. 74 Grant S. Shockley ‘Christian Education and the Black Religious Experience’, pp. 33–34. 75 See Grant S. Shockley ‘Black Theology and Religious Education’. 76 James Cone, ‘Black Theology and the Black Church: Where Do We Go from Here?’ In Gayraud Wilmore and James H. Cone (eds) Black Theology: A Documentary History, 1966–1979 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), pp. 350–359. 77 See Growing into Hope, Vol.1, pp. 29–32 for an early explication of this approach to undertaking Black experientially led forms of education and socialisation. 78 Delores H. Carpenter, ‘A Response to Brian Tippen’. Religious Education, Vol.88, No.4, Fall 1993, pp. 622–626. 79 Olivia Pearl Stokes ‘Education in the Black Church: Design for Change’, Religious Education, Vol.69, No.4, January–February 1974, pp. 433–445, 438. 80 Olivia Pearl Stokes, ‘Education in the Black Church’, p. 438. 81 Olivia Pearl Stokes, ‘Education in the Black Church’, pp. 433–445. 82 See Barbara Anne Keely Faith of Our Foremothers: Women Changing Religious Education (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997). 83 See Kenneth H. Hill Religious Education in the African American Tradition: A Comprehensive Introduction (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2007), pp. 83–84. 84 For a brief sociocultural, historical and theological appraisal of my mother, Lucille Reddie (28 June 1927–23 February 2014), as an embodied riposte to Brexit, see Anthony G. Reddie ‘Introduction’. In Anthony G. Reddie, Wale Hudson Roberts and Gale Richards (eds) Journeying to Justice: Contributions to Baptist Tradition Across the Black Atlantic (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2017), pp. 1–10. 85 See Mark Sturge Look What the Lord Has Done! An Exploration of Black Christian Faith in Britain (Milton Keynes: Scripture Union, 2005). See also JD Aldred Respect: Understanding Caribbean British Christianity (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2005). 86 Robert Beckford Jesus Is Dread (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1998), p. 5. 87 For a Black theological reading of Pentecost, see Cain Hope Felder ‘Commentary on the Apostles’. In Cain Hope Felder (ed.) The Original African Heritage Study Bible (Nashville, TN: James C. Winston Publishing Company, 1993), p. 1572. 88 This form of reading is one where attention is focused on the social, cultural, political and economic factors that shape biblical texts and not just our customary spiritual interpretations of them. See Oral Thomas Biblical Resistance Hermeneutics Within a Caribbean Context (London: Routledge, 2014). For the purposes of this essay, perhaps the most important and generative text is Itumeleng H. Mosala Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans and Company, 1989). 89 James H. Cone Risks of Faith (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), pp. 130–145. 90 I have outlined a theo-cultural anthropology of and for the Windrush Generation in a previous piece of work. See Anthony G. Reddie Faith, Stories and the Experience of Black Elders (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2001). 91 The Jamaican pardna is an informal savings scheme devised by migrants to the United Kingdom. It works based on a group of people committing to save a

88  Behind the scenes regular amount of money every week or every two weeks, with one individual collecting the pool of monies at the end of that week. The pardna was an indispensable form of a ‘self-help’ savings scheme that was used by Black migrants to create capital to enable them to purchase houses and pay for relatives and younger forbears to travel to the United Kingdom from the Caribbean. For further details on the pardna, see the following links: www.contributoria.com/ issue/2014-07/537111f530d0f1ab0f000010.html and www.voice-online.co.uk/ article/pardna-still-helping-hundreds-reach-their-savings-goals 2 In the final essay of this book, I will further explore the theological import of the 9 Windrush Generation as repositories of a counter-narrative thrust and socioreligious resistance to Brexit.

4 Now you see me, now you don’t Subjectivity, Blackness and difference in practical theology in Brexit Britain

Being visible and invisible Several months ago, I experienced the contradictory dialectical experience of being both invisible and conspicuously visible at the same time while I was sitting in a church meeting. I should stress, quite quickly, that this was neither an unusual nor a surprising experience. It is one I have experienced all my life, having been born in this country. It is an experience that countless Black people have experienced in our living in White majority, heavily racialised contexts. In the meeting, which for the purposes of ecclesial niceties shall remain nameless, I sat as the only non-White person in the room. The meeting proceeded based on normative Whiteness, meaning that our ‘generic’ conversation around issues of mission and the dislocation of our church from the broader cultural context of the nation proceeded based on what was true for White people was indeed the only truth. So as we spoke about church decline and why people – meaning White people but never stated as such – were not going to church and why we (again meaning White people but again not stated) needed to find new ways of re-engaging with the broader nation, my mind drifted to the plethora of Black churches of all ecclesiological and theological descriptions who are growing and for whom there is no cultural dislocation. I  remember a Black Pentecostal friend saying to me wryly, “I see many White churches now have messy church, cafe church, pub church, emerging church. . . . Black people still have church church”. Nowhere in the conversation in this church meeting was there any cognisance of how invisible Whiteness was shaping the discourse of this meeting. And crucially, as the only non-White person in the room possessed of a wealth of alternative epistemological insights, I was invisible as the White people spoke with authority about the wider truths as they knew them, not once recognising other perspectives let alone the fact that they might have something to learn from them. This remained the situation until the conversation unexpectedly turned to how we could integrate migrants and asylum seekers into our church? Suddenly, my hitherto invisibility was broken as if a giant refracting light

90  Behind the scenes had been placed on me. Now, suddenly, I was visible as a plethora of White heads turned in my direction to ask for my opinion on the experiences of ‘these asylum seekers and migrants’. Naturally, I  was somewhat startled and a little taken aback, as in truth my mind had wandered far away from the mundane realities of the meeting, and I had not been paying attention. So quickly regrouping my faculties and, in Jamaican speak, ‘doing my best to style it out’ and disguise my embarrassment, I concocted some form of erudite, long-winded response to look a tad less dozy than I  felt at that particular juncture. In the famed words of Harry S. Truman, U.S. President at the end of World War II, “If you can’t convince them, then confuse them” – the dictum of many a scholarly book, particularly in the field of systematic theology. I have shared this story because it marks a commonplace existential moment in the adult life of many Black people. My Blackness was conversely invisible and visible at different moments in the meeting.1 But the Whiteness of my compatriots was never visible, nor the concomitant assumptions that accrued from their generic, surreptitious White Eurocentric forms of epistemology. What struck me at that moment was the apparent anonymity of my White peers and my marked visibility, but only for a specific moment, when the topic turned to one that marked the visibility of assumed racialised difference. White invisibility and White normality remain crucial sociocultural and political signifiers in the construction of Britishness and Englishness in the body politic of the nation.

Whiteness, belonging and English identity Full belonging in Britain has always been connected with the normative power of Whiteness. Paul Gilroy’s landmark seminal text (There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack) has proved pivotal in helping to create the overarching framework for outlining the philosophical construct of normative Whiteness and Britishness in Black British cultural studies  – sadly, not in theology. Paul Gilroy’s text is predicated on the normative assumptions between belonging, English identity and notions of Whiteness. Whiteness as a concept is a complex and contested phenomenon. A number of scholars have explored the nature of Whiteness and its concomitant relationship to notions of privilege, entitlement and superiority.2 Some scholars have argued that the seeming homogeneous construct of Whiteness as being one of privilege, entitlement and superiority does not take account of the realities of dispossessed and disaffected White working-class and underclass communities, often on outer city estates in Britain.3 It is argued that the privileges of Whiteness, particularly in the economic advantage of societal acceptance,4 do not extend to all White people in Britain.5 Extreme poverty, disadvantage and marginalisation now no longer have any colour, and White people are as caught up in the complexities of post-industrial melancholia as are Black and minority ethnic people.6

Now you see me, now you don’t 91 The transcendent impact of Whiteness, however, finds its most corrosive power in the nature of its symbolic rendering as a signifier for that which is normative and acceptable. As the Black British theologian David Isiorho has suggested, there has long been a symbiotic relationship, for example, between Englishness and Whiteness within the nation state of ‘Great Britain’.7 Whiteness is actually a fragile phenomenon whose agency is predicated on entitlement, exceptionalism and notions of superiority. Whiteness has become such an unobserved norm that it lacks any functional agency outside of notions of advantage when juxtaposed with culturally and ethnically marked others. This is especially the case when Whiteness is allied with notions of nationalism, buttressed by empire, colonialism and mission Christianity. In effect, Whiteness is predicated on entitlement, so much so that when equality is thrown into the mix, I believe that White people think they are losing out. The relationship between the British Empire, colonialism and Christianity, in many respects, remains the unacknowledged ‘elephant in the room’. Empire and colonialism found much of its intellectual underscoring based on White, Eurocentric supremacy, infused within the theological import of Christianity, which marked the clear binary between notions of civilised, acceptable and saved against uncivilised, transgressive and heathen.8 The continued paucity of theological texts written by White British theologians that address the legacy of slavery, colonialism and racism on the British psyche remains troubling. As we have seen in the previous essays, the power of being White is simply the privilege of not having to think about it or to seek to rehabilitate it from centuries of deleterious and pejorative stereotyping.9 Whatever the privations that poor marginalised White people face (which I do not dispute, I hasten to add), these do not include a historical set of symbolic associations surrounding the unacceptability of being White in and of itself. Nor do such negative symbolic associations find expression in right-wing groups demanding their removal from the country so that such specious notions of ‘purity’, ‘civilisation’ and ‘our way of life’ can be maintained – again, often synonyms for covert ways of speaking of the normativity of Whiteness. One of the most recent and penetrating critiques of Whiteness written by a White British theologian comes from Steve Latham, who not only critiques the normative moorings of White theology but also explores the subjective, anthropological hinterland of Whiteness that provides the axiomatic, epistemological weight that anchors this phenomenon: One of the greatest obstacles to the White person realising their own culpability is that our own “Whiteness” is so invisible to us. The problem is always other people. “They are Black; we are ordinary.” “They have a culture; we are normal.” “They are ethnic; but we don’t have an ethnicity.” We consider to be “commonsense” what is actually part of

92  Behind the scenes our culture. However, when anything appears natural or ‘neutral’, then we know we are in the presence of a particular ideology.10 So Whiteness operates based on stealth, holding a pivotal central place for that which is considered normative and axiomatic, the neutral terrain on which and by which all other perspectives are judged and their epistemological insights assessed for their concomitant worth. As we have seen in previous essays in this book, Whiteness has become the ontological and epistemological grounding on which White, English and British Christianity is operated and on which matters of doctrine, mission and pastoral practice has been predicated.

Historical formulations Documentary research reveals that England housed a significant community of Africans as early as 1500. From that time, the existence of a substantial African population was erased from contemporary histories to suppress knowledge of England’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade.11 Two generations into the Tudor reign of Elizabeth I saw the growing preoccupation with overseeing the belief in English homogeneity that was predicated on protecting the Protestant English state as its primary concern. Tamara Lewis’s research has revealed how, despite national and theological differences, English monarchs and law courts appropriated Roman Catholic pronouncements on the relationship between Blackness and religion. The resultant formula, a forerunner of Enlightenment racialised essentialism, implicitly associated dark or Black skin with evil in defining the African nature as godless.12 Lewis’s research illustrates the extent to which Whiteness as an unmarked signifier for axiomatic normativity became grounded in the body politic of the nation, with Blackness becoming emblematic as the embodied, transgressive other, much as Catholicism represented the abstract, sociopolitical, disembodied other.13 In this sociopolitical and cultural framing, White English Anglicanism becomes the archetypal, embodied ideal that defines authentic notions of being in the body politic of the nation. It is why, for example, in the reactionary, incendiary bombast aimed at Islam, otherwise non-religious figures on the political right invoke a cultural version of nominal Anglicised Christianity as a part of their rhetoric for defending ‘Christian Britain’.14 Christian Britain becomes a synonym for normative White conservative Britain, which really means Englishness. Sorry those of you who are Scots and other Celts: you don’t really count!15 The form of Christianity evoked by rightof-centre White heteronormative males is one that is not predicated on a lived relationship with a radical ‘Jesus of history’ who comes to us as the radical ethnic other living as he did as a Galilean Jew. Rather, ‘their faith’ is a religio-cultural construct that is embodied in and buttressed by a form of subliminal Whiteness, in which truth as revealed in Jesus, as the Christ, is

Now you see me, now you don’t 93 predicated on his relationship to and contextualisation as a White man.16 In effect, Jesus becomes a symbolic Englishman who reaffirms empire, colonialism and British superiority. The constructions of belonging in the body politic of Englishness is predicated on notions of Whiteness, Protestantism and homogeneity under the paradigm of the Church of England. Kumar Rajagopalan has argued for a greater commitment to racial justice from British Baptists (and other Free Church nonconformists), for example, given that they have been recipients of Anglican-inspired notions of superiority, anchored in a legislative supremacy dating back to Restoration England.17 The monarch still has to be a communicant member of the Church of England. In short, Whiteness has been embedded within the signifying triumvirate of Englishness, Anglicanism and conservatism. Is it any wonder, then, that the trigger for the referendum vote emerged from the discontentment of English nationalism from within the Eurosceptical wing of the Conservative Party  – historically, one-third of the religio-political repository of the establishment of English nationalism, the other two-thirds being the monarchy (coupled with the landed gentry and the Shires), alongside the Church of England?18 To recap, historically, the rise of White English (as opposed to wider British) nationalism has its roots in the 16th century. The rise of the ‘fortress islander’ mentality that sees ‘us’ as different from ‘them’ really begins during the reign of Elizabeth 1 (1558–1603). The later wars with Napoleon give rise to the triumphant slogan ‘Rule Britannia’ – Britons never shall be slaves  – while making slaves of Africans and colonising approximately a quarter of the world. All the aforementioned is based on notions of being different from and better than others. Underpinning the aforementioned is a subterranean theology of election that identifies Whiteness as the defining emblematic construct of righteousness and as a signifier for salvation and religious acceptability. This is why, when the Windrush Generation arrived in Britain in the post–Second World War epoch, the majority as communicant members of the Church of England, they were often not welcomed into the church into which they had been formed and socialised in the 18th and 19th centuries under the aegis of slavery and colonialism.19 English and British notions of acceptability and belonging in the church were not focused on faith in God, revealed in Jesus Christ and the transnational markers of sanctification and spiritual renewal; rather, faith adherence was relegated behind subliminal Whiteness. It is the subterranean focus on Whiteness as a marker for belonging which explains why erstwhile British subjects, socialised and schooled in English cultural norms via the blandishments of empire, colonialism and missionary endeavour, were still rejected as the other by the visceral hostility of racism. In other words, being Christian, British and socialised into English religio-cultural norms did not guarantee any sense of belonging or conviviality within most White majority historic churches in post-war Britain for Black Caribbean people of the Windrush Generation.

94  Behind the scenes

Subjectivity and being human The major thrust of this work is my contention that Whiteness can be rethought and rearticulated if it is given opportunities to learn from the complexities of Blackness as understood from within the prism of Black liberation theology. This work is a contribution to practical theological anthropology and is intended to enable Whiteness to become a more nuanced and complexified phenomenon, capable of promoting greater agency for White people beyond the often facile and fragile notions of privilege, entitlement and exceptionalism that appear to be its default signifiers across the world, certainly in Brexit Britain. The defining aspect of being a human being is arguably that of subjectivity. The gift of subjectivity finds its substantive underscoring in the Christian doctrine of creation, where Christian teaching asserts that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God.20 God’s freedom to act and to be an infinite, transcendent being is bestowed on humanity, who also possess these same qualities of self-definition, transcendence and agency.21 To be a human subject is to possess the gift of creating meaning, through art, culture and science, and to reimagine one’s world through the prism of religion and its concomitant association with the divine. Subjectivity is the ability to create meaning and be a constructive being in creating and remaking one’s world. Objects are acted on and named, but subjects name themselves (something to which I will return at a later juncture in this chapter) and create internalised meaning, seeking to express agency, self-actualisation and transcendence. Part of the complexity of being human lies at the heart of this work, and I  seek to use it in my practical Black theological work with participants, which I will describe shortly. An important aspect of being human is captured in Anthony Pinn’s work and his notion of ‘complex subjectivity’.22 Complex subjectivity is the attempt by humans to become more than the simple, objectified, fixed entity that oppressive structures try to make them become. Subjectivity is in contradistinction to being an object. An object has no internal meaning in and of itself. The only meaning it has is that which the owner or possessor of it gives it. Objectification is the process of delimiting the power of a subject and so reducing their agency and ontological value so that they are in effect reduced to becoming an object, with no internal, self-defined meaning-making capacities. In effect, they become what others say they are. The privations of ‘fixed identity’, which is the dangerous offspring of objectification, is the imposition of unchanging and unmediated forms of imposed constructions of self onto marginalised and oppressed peoples.23 One sees fixed identity in how racist societies ‘fix’ Black and other minority ethnic people as being ‘less than’ and of ‘limited agency’ in their capabilities and potentialities.24 A particular pathology of fixed identity can be found in the casual tendency to construct notions of ‘repressive representation’,25

Now you see me, now you don’t 95 as I have termed it in a previous piece of work, in which minority ethnic people are deemed to be representative of all persons with whom they share some sense of identity. For example, Barack Obama, as the 44th President of the United States of America had to endure the repressive representation of all African Americans in his capacity to lead the country as commander in chief, in ways that were not imposed on the previous 43 incumbents, all of whom were White men. To see White privilege writ large, simply observe the welter of academic and electoral experience Obama needed to become president compared to the lack of any demonstrable experience in the current president. And I can guarantee that whatever the shortcomings of the current president, his apparent failings will not besmirch the wider phenomenon of Whiteness and the subjectivity of rich White men who have hitherto seen it as their entitlement to run the United States.26 Drawing on Pinn’s notion of complex subjectivity provides an important model for challenging Black people to wrestle with their multiple forms of subjectivity. Complex subjectivity provides critical insights into how we name ourselves and how those various forms of subjectivity give rise to differing perceptions of self. How we name ourselves also indicates how selfhood and subjectivity are also linked to issues of gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality and, of course, religious belonging.27 Complex subjectivity has been integral to Black people because it has been our determined attempt to resist being reduced to mere objects and treated as chattel.28 The first part of Pinn’s theoretical work outlines the nature of ‘fixed identity’ and the constrictions of being objectified in vicious, racially humiliating ways, which contradicts the very nature of human freedom and the impulse to be a complex human subject. Complex subjectivity is a helpful model for challenging Black people to wrestle with their multiple forms of subjectivity. Pinn argues that Black religion is the deepest expression and yearning of Black people to want to express their sense of being complex subjects: I would like to define religious experience, in the context of black America, as the recognition of and response to the elemental feeling for complex subjectivity and the accompanying transformation of consciousness that allows for the historical manifest battle against the terror of fixed identity.29 To embrace complex subjectivity is to acknowledge that multiple ways of belonging have always been parts of the religio-cultural repertoire of being a diasporan African human being. We have always been complex in our religious and cultural imagination and configuration. Complex subjectivity provides an important framework for understanding the expansive impulse within diasporan African people to seek in religion a means of constructing an elaborate, richly intricate means of being human.30 Pinn outlines the

96  Behind the scenes material, religio-cultural repertoire of practices and artefacts that African Americans have developed as indices for Black selfhood.31 One of the challenges for Black people is how we seek to name ourselves in ways that do not conform to the external imposition of racialised identities.32 The struggle to name oneself, taking into account the dual struggles of internalised subjectivity and external, fixed identity imposition is nothing new. The notion of competing realities is not a new phenomenon for Black people. This was first detailed by the great W.E.B. Dubois in his now classic text The Souls of Black Folk, first published in 1903. Dubois detailed a phenomenon he termed ‘double consciousness’. In using this term, Dubois was speaking of the struggle Black people have in reconciling two opposing realities at war within the Black psyche.33 Part of the internalisation of the demonisation of Blackness to which Black liberation theology has been drawn finds expression in the crude hierarchies of acceptability in many Black communities across the world. In a great deal of the early Black theology work, there was a tendency to see Black communities as monolithic. Black theology must show greater intent to deconstruct the inherent class bias between middle-class and workingclass Black people, particularly when it comes to respectability politics and who is affirmed and who is disparaged. My reflections on the development of Black theology as a middle-class academic highlights the need for solidarity amongst Black peoples. Black theology needs to reflect more deliberately on the middle-class norms of respectability that continue to weave their way through the discipline, often unintentionally evoking the normative positionality of White bourgeois sensibilities. The challenge for Black theology is expressed in the extent to which it has reified the middle-class-based concerns of legitimation and respectability. Black theology has often worked on the presumption of homogeneity. Much less effort has been spent looking at questions pertaining to class, gender, and sexuality or differences in political outlook, amongst a few of the concerns in this area. Black theology has often ignored class differences and the internalised, middle-class bias that is often secreted in the body politic of Black communities in the United Kingdom and the United States. We can see this particularly in the case when scholars have spoken about Black and Black majority churches.34 The lack of critical insight into the middle-class pretensions of Black churches and the inherent anti-Blackness and working-class prejudice remains prevalent in Black theological discourse. One of the notable exceptions in this regard is Kelly Brown Douglas’s monumental Black Bodies and the Black Church: A Blues Slant.35 Douglas’s work provides an unflinching, critical gaze on the Black Church in the United States and the internalised racism of many of its leading branches, particularly those in the so-called progressive north. One can see this exemplified in her analysis of Southern Black Christianity, where the author establishes an existential, tripartite operational basis for Black bodies in relationship to the Black Church, moving from aspirant middle-class-orientated churches that eschewed the

Now you see me, now you don’t 97 alleged emotionalism of Southern Black Christianity to the religious formation of the latter in all its African retentive guises. The third formulation was the blues, which shared the unfortunate distinction of being hated by both sides of the Black Christian divide.36 Perhaps the most telling example is the internalising of racialised hierarchies, what Douglas calls ‘colorism’, in many Black churches, particularly those in the northern United States. Consider this indictment on the sensibilities of churches supposedly providing an alternative socioreligious arena representing the countercultural values of the kingdom of God. Douglas, writing on the absurdities of a pernicious colorism and the ingrained antiBlack ethic in some churches, states, Still other black congregations hung a fine tooth comb at the entrance to be used. If the comb could not pass through the potential black worshipper’s hair, then he or she would be denied entrance37 Our tendency to view Black communities as monolithic has meant that the diverse range of experiences and values in the overall whole tends to be either downplayed or ignored altogether. An uncomfortable truth that is noticeable in particular types of Black religio-cultural discourse is a type of hierarchy of ‘Blackness’. This often takes its cue from the prevailing concerns in many Black communities themselves, where some people are judged as belonging more completely than others. So we must remember that the struggle for complex subjectivity in many Black communities and to which Black theology attests is one that has been undertaken from within a prism of the legacy of slavery, empire and colonialism. This continued struggle is one that must continue to recognise the complexities, diversity and interclass conflicts in Black communities across the African Diaspora. Ironically, it is these forms of complexity and diversity that provide hope for my belief that Whiteness can be remade and rethought. If Whiteness were able to learn from the struggle for complex subjectivity evinced by Blackness, then the monological diversions and distractions accomplished by the Leave campaign, which fooled poor White British people into thinking that their Whiteness provided a common link with patrician, conservative White men of power, would have been broken and thus been harder to achieve. That is, just as aspirant middle-class Black people have not always been in solidarity with their poorer and less-educated Black compatriots simply because they share similar ethnic or African-informed cultural roots, the same is true of Whiteness and the relationship between rich conservative White politicians and poorer disaffected White people.

Participative-practical Black theology and complex subjectivity Participative-practical Black theology seeks to distil the central ideas of this liberative movement into teaching and learning strategies for the

98  Behind the scenes emancipation of all people. Participative-practical Black theology is the nexus of Black theological reflection and critical pedagogy, in which the latter is understood as a form of transformative knowledge. My engagement with transformative knowledge has its roots in my commitment to the work of Paulo Freire,38 Ira Shor39 and James A. Banks.40 The latter describes transformative knowledge as that which challenges the dominant theories and paradigms that constitute normative frames of epistemology.41 Transformative knowledge proceeds from a critical, dialectical inquiry into the basis of what constitutes knowledge and truth.42 Central to the epistemological framing of transformative knowledge is challenging the alleged objectivity of Western scholasticism. Banks asserts that “The assumption within the Western empirical paradigm is that knowledge produced within it is neutral and objective and that its principles are universal”.43 Its universality is in turn a product of its axiomatic relationship to Whiteness and the privileges accrued through the hegemonic power of White epistemology.44 Perhaps the central task of this work is that of using the frameworks of transformative knowledge as a form of practical theology, coupled with Black theology, to critically re-evaluate the complex meaning of Blackness as it is juxtaposed with the monological reified construction of Whiteness. Perhaps the centrality and import of this task can be found in the following quotation from Gayraud Wilmore: If I had a choice before I was born to be one color or the other, which would I prefer and why? The pejorative connotations continued in the English vocabulary where we continue to speak of “blackmail”, “blackguards”, “black sheep of the family”, or of having one’s reputation “blackened”. All these and many more found in the dictionaries, are negative images that reflect on Africans and their diasporic descendents. On the other hand, whiteness has been consistently presented to the world as something positive – something connoting goodness, cleanliness, beauty, holiness, and purity. It would be much fairer to make the case that we are all somehow “obsessed” with color than to single out the psychology of black people as unfortunate. As much as we may deplore it, the color symbolism of our language in Great Britain and North America gives the whiteness/blackness dichotomy ontological significance – at least, up to the end of the twentieth century. We must wait and see what happens now in the twenty-first, but not look for any startling changes.45 At the heart of participative-practical Black theology is the use of exercises and games that seek to enable participants to reflect critically on the self, and through this central activity, they are enabled to explore aspects of the theory and practice of Black theology. To provide an embodied reality for the practice of performative action at the heart of participative-practical Black theology, I have created a number of experiential exercises in which

Now you see me, now you don’t 99 adult participants can explore the dynamics of encounter within a safe learning environment. The thrust for this work has emerged from previous pieces of research.46 This particular piece of performative action operates within a defined learning environment in which religious participants are asked to complete a series of 20 identical sentences. Each sentence starts with “My name is _______, and I am _______”. Each person is asked to fill in the two blanks. The assumption is that the first space remains the same for people as they largely use their given and familial name as a preferred form of personal identifier.47 So in my case, my name is Anthony George Reddie. The second space is somewhat more complicated because each person is then invited to insert into it anything they wish as a means of describing themselves. In effect, they are offering a quintessential ‘I am’ statement. The test is for each person to put down 20 different ‘I am’ statements on their sheet as a means of defining themselves as a person in terms of their human subjectivity. The point of the exercise is to help people make sense of their complex subjectivities. Challenging how we live across our tangled and complicated lines of ethnic and cultural differences is essential if human beings are going to be enabled to hold in dialectical tension the intercultural notions of self that resound within each individual.48 In the exercise, the different participants are challenged to determine their individual agency as they name themselves using ‘I am’ statements. The exercise juxtaposes the seeming fixity of their name with the mutating and shifting ways each person names themselves, whether in terms of role, gender, activities, religious belonging, characteristics, personal traits or some other identifier. The exercise invites participants to reflect on and interpret their different ‘I am’ statements for meaning and truth. What does it mean to say that ‘I am a man’ or ‘I am a woman’? How does one understand what it means to say ‘I am a Christian’ or for the few that do so, to understand ‘I am White’ alongside other ‘I am’ statements such as ‘I am British’ or ‘I am English’? In using this exercise, reflecting on the challenge of complex subjectivity over and against the limitations of fixed identity, it has enabled me to hold in tension my various ‘I am’ sayings that exist in my lived consciousness, in terms of ‘I am a Christian’, sitting alongside ‘I am Black’, ‘I am male’, ‘I am a Methodist’, ‘I am a descendant of Africans’, ‘I am the child of Jamaican parents’, ‘I am British’ or ‘I am from Yorkshire’, amongst others. How do all these sit together, and how do they make me similar to or different from others? In what ways am I similar to some White people who are also of working-class backgrounds in West Yorkshire and are also Methodists? When I am naming my ‘I am’ statements in light of complex subjectivity, how am I  expressing my transgressive self that disrupts notions of fixed identity, particularly in my Protestant evangelical Christian upbringing and the often narrow doctrinal frameworks that are often bound up in this form of Christianity? For example, is ‘Jesus the only way’ as understood in an evangelical reading of John 14:6?49

100  Behind the scenes When using this exercise with mixed groups, it challenges all participants to reflect critically on their naming strategies in relation to others, particularly if the other is someone from another continent. How do predominantly White people from the Global North learn from and engage with the self-naming strategies of those from the margins of the Global South? In what ways do White working-class people have more in common with migrants from the Global South than they do with rich, privileged White people who run the country? I shall return to this point at the conclusion of this essay, because this speaks to the very heart of the Brexit phenomenon. A model of participative-practical Black theology as I have just described it, linking Black liberation theology to practical theology, is one that can challenge ordinary people taking part in the exercise to go beyond the often limiting constrictions of ‘race’, ethnicity and cultural identification. This approach is one that challenges participants to own the multiple ways they name and define themselves, using the concept of complex subjectivity to overcome the old colour-blind adage of steadfastly refusing to see ‘race’, ethnicity and difference,50 but it does not essentialise these notions into unhelpful and restrictive boundaries and borders.51 One of the outcomes of the exercise has been how many White participants often fail to name the contextuality of their Whiteness. I  have not encountered many White people whose self-naming refers in any significant sense to their Whiteness. This emotional and psychological failure reflects the wider failings of most White British theologians, practical theologians or otherwise, to write about Whiteness. White practical theologians may reflect on the fluid complexities of what it means to be a human being, but they rarely foreground their own embodied reality as a White person as they do so. For too long now, many White theologians have written as if their very Whiteness (or maleness) carried no ethical or epistemological weight in their attempts to undertake constructive God-talk. In practical theology, the two exceptions in more recent times have been the work of Alison Webster52 and the work of Tom Beaudoin and Katherine Turpin.53 Tom Beaudoin and Katherine Turpin’s essay, which looks at White practical theology, is an important critique of the generalised, universalism and normative ubiquity of Whiteness in much practical theological work in the field, particularly in the United States. Their essay draws on the groundbreaking theo-ethical work of James Perkinson and his major tome White Theology.54 Beaudoin and Turpin’s essay is excellent in terms of exposing the axiomatic epistemological privilege that underpins White practical theology. Unlike Webster’s work, however, the implications of Whiteness on their own embodied subjective self are not interrogated. Webster’s work, constructed around a series of reflective narrative vignettes, outlines the implications of her own subjective understanding of her Whiteness as a child of the Methodist manse, an LGBTQI+ activist, lay theologian and Christian. Her work does not make the common mistake of many well-meaning White progressive theologians, who are content to name and articulate the

Now you see me, now you don’t 101 subjectivity of the other with whom they are seeking to be an ally without ever deconstructing their own Whiteness and its concomitant reflexivity, in terms of the privilege that allows them to undertake their scholarly work in the first place. Many Black and minority ethnic people stood back as we watched ourselves continually racialised while our White colleagues and peers had the luxury of writing as disembodied spectres. Most of the Black participants have consistently found naming strategies that speak to the constructive challenges of being a full human being in a world that has rarely accorded them that status. This form of theological undertaking is based on a liberative Black theological ethic that calls on White people to look critically at their Whiteness and to reflect on how White supremacist thought and action has exerted a profound and corrosive influence on the Christian faith. The historical thought forms that have arisen from White normativity have not only advantaged White people but also exerted unimagined pressures and negative traits on Black people.55 In this work, the privileges of Whiteness are called into question, both in the interpretation of the Christian faith56 and also in the correlation between Christianity and sociopolitical analysis.57 This work, conversely, also challenges Black people in their subjective agency and concomitant critical consciousness. Through engaging in the exercise, Black participants are challenged to reflect on the extent to which they have engaged in essentialised discourses around issues of race and culture if they are on the political left or have fallen into abstracted, contextless, colour-blind forms of Christian identity if they adopt a more conservative sociopolitical position. To what extent have some Black people become hostages of the restricted notions of forced identity and homogeneity as the White people they often charge with forcing such dictates on themselves?58 That is, might not some Black people have internalised notions of essentialised Blackness in a manner not dissimilar to how White people have constricted them in terms of fixed identity? I say this in the knowledge that significant numbers of Black and minority ethnic people also voted for Brexit.

So what does this mean for Brexit Britain? The Brexit vote clearly demonstrated the thinly veiled exceptionalism and sense of entitlement of predominantly White English people. The clear xenophobia underpinning the Leave campaign reminded many of us that ‘true Britishness’ equals Whiteness and that those who are deemed the ‘other’, be it ‘migrants’ living in the United Kingdom or ‘foreigners’ in Europe are distinctly less deserving in the eyes of many White British people. The nostalgic push for the mythologised romanticism of the past (when Britain had the biggest empire the world has ever seen) is predicated on the intrinsic value of Britain being superior to others, often seen in terms of groups such as Britain First or other groups on the political right who want to ‘make Britain

102  Behind the scenes great again’. To quote the Black British social commentator Gary Younge, “Not everyone, or even most of the people who voted leave, were driven by racism. But the Leave campaign imbued racists with a confidence they have not enjoyed for many decades and poured arsenic into the water supply of our national conversation”.59 The vote for Brexit was largely based on the presumption of White normality and the belief that the needs of poor, disenfranchised White people would be better served if the numbers of other poor minority ethnic people and others from outside of the United Kingdom were reduced. The fact that so many poor White people believed such blandishments can be explained by the belief that Whiteness remains a site of privilege for notions of belonging, and its concomitant subjectivity is one embedded in paradigms buttressed by superiority and entitlement. The exercise is designed to help participants see that all human beings are sites for complex subjectivity. For Black people, this means that our notions of self are ones that are transcendent of the privations of fixed identity and the constrictions of objectification. For the White participants, the exercise is an invitation to see their own subjectivity as a complex and nuanced set of constructions that transcends the illusory paradigms of superiority and entitlement that have often bedevilled Whiteness. In effect, all people are subject to some form of fixed identity and objectification. Looking at the complex ‘I am’ statements of poorer, marginalised and disaffected White people often reveals responses that demonstrate the illusory characteristics of Whiteness and entitlement that are a reminder of the obfuscated nature of the rigged and biased construction of British society that has never served them well.60 Conversely, the ‘I am’ statements of some rich White people reveal responses that are ensconced in entitlement and social advantage. Given these experiential subjective constructions, one has to query the extent to which we can believe the veracity of accounts that assert that rich White conservative politicians are in solidarity with their disenfranchised White counterparts. I find this to be a risible, ridiculous and insulting proposition. The reasons why many poor White people are poor has little do with other poor people from the Global South or from Eastern Europe. Rather, it is a result of a skewed system that was never set up for many of them to succeed in the first place. In short, poor housing or even the shortage of it is not the fault of migrants or minority ethnic people. There has always been a shortage of affordable and acceptable housing for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. The paucity of skilled, accessible jobs is, again, not the fault of migrants. Neo-liberal forms of capitalism are at fault, and this economic paradigm has never been concerned to confer dignity on those at the bottom of the social ladder, whether they be White British or the other.61 It is interesting to note that any casual observance of British history before 1945 shows the illusory nature of the anti-immigration discourse of Brexit. In the novels of the great British writer Charles Dickens, one sees laid bare

Now you see me, now you don’t 103 the deleterious conditions in which poor White people lived in the thenemerging industrial cities of 19th-century Britain, particularly the capital, London. The characters that populate his novels are largely the disaffected, marginalised, alienated and dispossessed poor White working-class British people whom one now sees as the electoral fodder of the political right, in whose name Brexit was engineered, as a means of safeguarding their supposedly diminishing rights and positionality in Britain. Yet, any serious analysis of his novels, often seen as a brilliant evocation of the zeitgeist of the age, reveal a proud, confident nation, experiencing the apex of its imperial power, in which there is a tiny non-White non-British community but also in which there is still rampant poverty, homelessness and unemployment amongst indigenous White people. So how do we explain the presence of these alienated and marginalised communities given the paucity of migrants to blame for the crack in the edifice of Britain as a nation of generosity and fair play to all, including poor White people? The truth is, it has always been easy to blame migrants for the social ills that plague the body politic of the nation. Rather than permitting ordinary people to see the rigged system of British society for what it is, namely one built on White middle-class and often public school–based privilege, it is easier to blame minorities and ‘foreigners’. Tapping into a historical framework of xenophobia and scapegoating of those who are othered is far easier than critiquing a biased and discriminatory system of neo-liberal economics.62 The use of scapegoating to blame those who are different is not new. Black scholars have shown the extent to which the White establishment on the right have always used the presence of those not seen to be part of the mainstream as a means of deflecting attention away from those with power and privilege for whose benefit Britain has largely been run.63 So the success of Brexit was a carefully orchestrated piece of political theatre that convinced many ordinary people not to look at the rigged system of British social, economic and political life that has always been run for the benefit of a few. The ‘winners’, the predictable figures such as Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage, succeeded in this, as they do in many other aspects of British life, by deflecting attention away from themselves and onto the scapegoats, namely minorities, especially those who have migrated to this country. The exercise at the heart of this paper uses a model of participativepractical Black theology (the combination of Black theology and practical theology) that creates a process of assisting White participants in deconstructing their often unmarked, subliminal modes of Whiteness. In this context, the exercise provides an experiential bridge between experience and theoretical analysis. Can a participative-practical Black theology become a resource for assisting Whiteness to become a more nuanced ally for those who are the objectified other? The exercise and the reflections that emerge from it are a form of

104  Behind the scenes practical theological work that attempts to enable White participants to tap into the complex and nuanced ways in human subjectivity, which has been explored in terms of Blackness and the contested ways in which Black bodies have been represented for centuries. Blackness as understood within the confines of Black theology has been the natural riposte to White privilege. But can a participative-practical Black theology enable White participants to understand their own Whiteness as a fluid construct that resonates with notions of a complex subjectivity that transcends the illusory fixed identity of entitlement, normativity and superiority that has imprisoned White people, just as racism has objectified Black people? Brexit emerged, in part, due to a subterranean, unmarked construction of Whiteness, which in its post-imperial melancholy needed a scapegoat to blame for its palpable fragility.64 The exercise at the heart of this paper and the broader work of participative-practical Black theology cannot pretend to have all the answers: no theory or practice can attain that level of perfection. I will argue that this worked example is one that can see the potential for seeking to educate and empower ordinary people to see the world more clearly, so that, in the salient words of Pete Townsend of The Who, we ‘won’t get fooled again’.65

Notes 1 The notion of Black people being rendered invisible has been explored most notably in Ralph Ellison’s towering fictional account of Black life in the United States, titled Invisible Man. See Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (New York: Penguin Classics, 2001–1st Published in 1952). 2 Some of the key theological texts in this emerging discourse include the following: James W. Perkinson White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). See also James W. Perkinson Shamanism, Racism and Hip Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Laurie M. Cassidy and Alex Mikulich (eds) Interrupting White Privilege: Catholic Theologians Break the Silence (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007); Jennifer Harvey, Karin A. Case and Robin Hawley Gorsline (eds) Disrupting White Supremacy from Within: White People on What We Need to Do (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2004); Jennifer Harvey Whiteness and Morality: Pursuing Racial Justice Through Reparations and Sovereignty (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Jennifer Harvey Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014); Tom Beaudoin and Katherine Turpin ‘White Practical Theology’. In Kathleen A. Cahalan and Gordon S. Mikoski (eds) Opening the Field of Practical Theology (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2014), pp. 251–269; Sarah Azaransky ‘Citizenship in Jesus and the Disinherited: From Black Internationalism to Whiteness on the Contemporary Border’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.11, No.3, 2013, pp. 281–304; Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). 3 One of the best critiques of the homogeneous construct of Whiteness as privilege and superiority can be found in Chris Shannahan Voices from the Borderland: Re-Imaging Cross-Cultural Urban Theology in the Twenty-First Century (London: Equinox, 2010), pp. 140–142.

Now you see me, now you don’t 105 4 Note the increasing use of the pejorative term ‘chav’ with which to traduce White working-class people in Britain. 5 Note the factor of gender in this discourse. Although there are, undoubtedly, some powerful and privileged White women, the bulk of White people who experience the material and symbolic advantages of which I  speak are most often White Oxbridge men. See Ann M. Clifford Introducing Feminist Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001) for an excellent introduction to feminist theology and its concomitant critique of patriarchy and male privilege. 6 The challenge that confronts all forms of liberative, contextual theologies is the leviathan of the ‘global economy’. The global economy was one of the hallmarks of the age of modernity, although there is no doubting that in our present postmodern epoch, the characteristics of this phenomenon have been refined and indeed extended. It is now, in many respects, an archetypal postmodern phenomenon. As the boundaries of so-called sovereign nations have been traversed by the entrepreneurial ingenuity of those firmly committed to the process of profit maximisation, we are now witnessing the demise of fixed identities predicated on the parameters of national identity. This global economy often works hand in hand with neo-liberal models of political ideology, which assert the inviolate nature of the market, the necessity of free and unfettered trade, minimal governmental intervention and a basic revulsion to centralised planning or the collectivist control of the means of production. There is no doubting that poor, disenfranchised White people have been as severely impacted and reduced to consumerist objects as have Black people, Asian people and people from other ethnic and cultural groups. See Eric Williams Capitalism and Slavery (London: Andre Deutsch, 1983) and Sri Lankan liberation theologian Tissa Balasuriya ‘Liberation of the Affluent’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.1, No.1, 2001, pp. 83–113. 7 See David Isiorho ‘Black Theology, Englishness and the Church of England’. In Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Postcolonial Black British Theology: Textures and Themes (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2007), pp. 62–72. 8 For an excellent explication of the dialectical binary between saved versus unsaved, civilised versus heathen, see Kelly Brown Douglas What’s Faith Got to Do with It? Black Bodies Christian Souls (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005), pp. ix–xix. 9 See Robert Beckford God and the Gangs (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004), pp. 72–81. 10 Steve Latham ‘A White Guy Talks Race’. In Anthony G. Reddie, Wale Hudson Roberts and Gale Richards (eds) Journeying to Justice: Contributions to the Baptist Tradition Across the Black Atlantic (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2017), p. 84. 11 Paul Walker ‘Black British History: An Appraisal’. In Anthony G. Reddie, Wale Hudson Roberts and Gale Richards (eds) Journeying to Justice: Contributions to the Baptist Tradition Across the Black Atlantic (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2017), pp. 26–37. 12 See Tamara E. Lewis ‘Like Devils Out of Hell’: Reassessing the African Presence in Early Modern England’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.14, No.2, 2016, pp. 107–120. 13 Tamara E. Lewis ‘Like Devils Out of Hell’, pp. 107–120. 14 See the following website where the then leader of UKIP, Nigel Farage, clearly invokes a cultural interpretation of Christianity as a means of promoting a reactionary, homogeneous construct of Britain: www.secularism.org.uk/news/ 2015/04/nigel-farage-calls-for-muscular-defence-of-christianity-in-the-uk  – accessed 9 February 2017. 15 This point is addressed in a recent essay by Sivakumar Rajagopalan, who explores how Whiteness and Anglicanism became the markers for authenticating

106  Behind the scenes belonging in England, in the context of the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The ‘Anglican supremacy’, infused with tacit Whiteness, was enshrined in the Act of Uniformity that was passed in 1662. See Sivakumar Rajagopalan ‘Standpoint Theory as a Tool to Understand Baptist Resistance to Owning the Apology and as a Tool to Own and En-flesh the Apology’. In Anthony G. Reddie, Wale Hudson-Roberts and Gale Richards (eds) Journeying to Justice: Contributions to the Baptist Tradition Across the Black Atlantic (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2017), pp. 110–123. 16 See Anthony Reddie Nobodies to Somebodies: A Practical Theology for Education and Liberation (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2003), pp. 134–140. 17 See Sivakumar Rajagopalan ‘Standpoint Theory as a Tool to Understand Baptist Resistance to Owning the Apology and as a Tool to Own and En-flesh the Apology’, pp. 110–123. 18 Research by Linda Woodhead has shown that Anglicans in the Church of England were more likely to have voted for Brexit than any other Christian community or church in the referendum on the European Union. Given that the referendum emerged from within the discontent of the Eurosceptical wing of the Conservative Party, it would appear that the Church of England remains the Tory Party at prayer. For further insights on this, see the following link: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/09/20/how-anglicans-tipped-the-brexit-vote/ – accessed 21 September 2018. 19 See John L. Wilkinson’s now classic Church in Black and White (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew’s Press, 1993) for perhaps the first and still one of the best distillations of the complicity of the Church in England, particularly the Church of England in reinforcing and not rejecting notions of White supremacy. See also Mukti Barton Rejection, Resistance and Resurrection: Speaking Out Against Racism in the Church (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005). 20 Kate Coleman’s early work in Black British womanist theology explores issues of theological anthropology in which metissage (a French philosophical concept that emphasises notions of mixing and hybridity that disrupts ideas of purity and fixity) is used to posit postmodern expansive notions of Black human subjectivity that transcend any attempts to limit the human repertoire of Black people. See Kate Coleman ‘Another Kind of Black’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.5, No.3, 2007, pp. 279–304. 21 See Karen Baker-Fletcher Dancing with God: The Trinity from a Womanist Perspective (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2006), pp. 14–21. 22 See Anthony B. Pinn Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003). 23 See Dwight Hopkins Being Human: Race, Culture and Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), pp. 131–159. 24 This has been explored to great effect by arguably the ‘mother’ of womanist scholars in the United Kingdom, Valentina Alexander, who reflects on Onesimus’ plight in the Book of Philemon and sees parallels between his fixity as an objectified slave and the positionality of Black people in Britain, particularly the descendants of enslaved people. Alexander reimagines this encounter, giving voice to Onemisus’ plight and providing him with some limited agency in his spirited response to his slave master Philemon and the apostle Paul. See Valentina Alexander ‘Onesimus’ Letter to Philemon’. In Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Black Theology in Britain: A  Reader (London: Routeldge, 2007), pp. 187–190. 25 I explore notions of ‘repressive representation’ in a previous piece of work, where I argue that the politics of fixing Black people as ‘less than’ takes form in judging the capacities of whole groups of people on the unrepresentative shoulders of

Now you see me, now you don’t 107 individuals, irrespective of whether such individuals wish to take on this burden. See Anthony G. Reddie Dramatizing Theologies: A  Participative Approach to Black God Talk (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 89–91. 26 I accept that the ultra-paradigms of privilege and entitlement, specifically patriarchal and androcentric constructs, belong to White men and that White women do not automatically experience such privileged forms of normative advantage. This can be seen in the electoral failure of Hilary Clinton, who, despite a welter of experience in the political realm, lost out to a less than experienced ‘alpha male’. Womanist and Black feminist scholars have asserted that White women still experience a degree of privilege and entitlement: although they do experience sexism, their Whiteness protects them from the effects of racism. Perhaps the formational work that explored the experiential divide between White and Black women is Jacquelyn Grant’s White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1989). The relationship between middle-class White women’s privilege in comparison to the restrictions placed on Black women and men that hamper systemic progress of the former versus the latter can be found in Sivakumar Rajagopalan ‘What Is the Defining Divide? False Post-Racial Dogma and the Biblical Affirmation of Race’. Black Theology, Vol.13, No.2, August 2015, pp. 166–188. 27 This is explored according to womanist practical theology by Evelyn L. Parker Trouble Don’t Last Always: Emancipatory Hope Amongst African American Adolescents (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2003). 28 Anthony B. Pinn Terror and Triumph, pp. 1–80. 29 Anthony B. Pinn Terror and Triumph, p. 175. 30 Anthony B. Pinn Terror and Triumph, pp. 133–156. 31 Anthony B. Pinn Terror and Triumph, pp. 133–156. 32 See Kate Coleman ‘Being Human: A Black British Christian Woman’s Perspective’. In Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Black Theology in Britain: A Reader (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 160–166. 33 See W.E.B. Dubois The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: Dover Thrift, 1994), p. 3. 34 See Peter J. Parris The Social Teaching of the Black Churches (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985); Dale P. Andrews Practical Theology for Black Churches (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2002) and the more recent Dale P. Andrews and Robert London Smith, Jr. (eds) Black Practical Theology (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2015); Stephanie M. Crumpton A Womanist Pastoral Theology Against Intimate and Cultural Violence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 35 Kelly Brown Douglas Black Bodies and the Black Church: A Blues Slant (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 36 Kelly Brown Douglas Black Bodies and the Black Church, pp. 61–85. 37 Kelly Brown Douglas Black Bodies and the Black Church, p. 97. 38 See Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970); Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Continuum, 1973). 39 See Ira Shor Empowering Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). See also Paulo Freire and Ira Shor A Pedagogy for Liberation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987). 40 James A. Banks Race, Culture and Education (New York: Routledge, 2006). 41 James A. Banks (ed.) Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996), p. 9. 42 See Jurgen Habermas Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971). 43 James A. Banks Race, Culture and Education, p. 148. 44 Anthony G. Reddie Dramatizing Theologies, pp. 46–51.

108  Behind the scenes 45 Gayraud S. Wilmore Pragmatic Spirituality: The Christian Faith Through an Africentric Lens (New York: New York University Press, 2004), pp. 142–143. 46 See Anthony G. Reddie Acting in Solidarity: Reflections in Critical Christianity (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005); Dramatizing Theologies. 47 In the interest of space, I have not explored the complexity of self-naming for diasporan Black people whose antecedents fall within the epoch of chattel slavery. For such individuals, naming is a complicated factor, because the majority of our surnames are ‘slave names’ imposed on our forebears by plantation slave owners. This issue has been explored in Black theology in Britain by Robert Beckford, who wrestles with the nature, meaning and intent of his surname in the context of his articulation of a radical model of Black Pentecostalism in the United Kingdom. See Robert Beckford God of the Rahtid: Redeeming Rage (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2001), pp. 66–97. 48 I am indebted to my mentor Emmanuel Lartey for the notion of ‘interculturality’ in human subjectivity. See Emmanuel Y. Lartey In Living Colour: Intercultural Approaches to Pastoral Care and Counselling (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2003). 49 The constrictions of ‘Jesus Being the Only Way’ have been explored by Michael Jagessar in his ground-breaking essay in which he critiques the normative Christological posture of Black theology in Britain and its troubled relationship with other religious faith perspectives. See Michael N. Jagessar ‘Is Jesus the Only Way? Doing Black Christian God-Talk in a Multi-Religious City (Birmingham, UK)’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.7, No.2, 2009, pp. 200–225. 50 See Anthony G. Reddie Acting in Solidarity, pp. 98–108. 51 See Victor Anderson Beyond Ontological Blackness (New York: Continuum, 1995). 52 See Alison Webster You Are Mine: Reflections on Who We Are (London: SPCK, 2009). 53 See Tom Beaudoin and Katherine Turpin ‘White Practical Theology’. 54 See James W. Perkinson White Theology. 55 See Gay L. Byron Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature (New York: Routledge, 2002). 56 Robert E. Hood Must God Remain Greek? Afro-Cultures and God-Talk (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990). 57 For an excellent example of this form of synthesis in practical theology and its relationship to Black existential experience, see Mark Harden ‘Toward a Practical Black Theology and Liberation Ethic: An Alternative African-American Perspective’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.9, No.1, 2011, pp. 35–55. 58 See Victor Anderson Beyond Ontological Blackness, pp. 86–93. 59 For an insightful left-wing critique of Brexit that challenges class-based notions of privilege and explores notions of White entitlement and racism, see the following link: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/24/eu-vote-ukdiminished-politics-poisoned-racism – accessed 23 May 2017. 60 See P.W. Preston Britain After Empire: Constructing a Post-War PoliticalCultural Project (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 19–39. 61 P.W. Preston Britain After Empire, pp. 40–61. 62 The issue of scapegoating within religio-cultural contexts owes much to the pioneering work of Rene Girard and his notion of mimetic theory. See Rene Girard Violence and the Sacred (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). In the context of Black youth being seen as scapegoats for urban tension and violence in the body politic of White majority, neo-liberal economic, technocratic, democracies in the Global North, such the United States and the United Kingdom, see Fred Smith ‘A Prophetic Christian Education for Black Boys: Overcoming Violence’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.1, No.2, 2003, pp. 175–187.

Now you see me, now you don’t 109 3 See Tamara E. Lewis ‘Like Devils Out of Hell’. 6 64 The notion that Britain is in the grip of a postcolonial, post-imperial form of melancholia, is a conceptualisation of Paul Gilroy, who argues that this form of melancholia is one that sees multiculturalism as an emblematic marker of a problematic articulation of the world in the grip of postmodernity. See Paul Gilroy Postcolonial Melancholia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 65 See The Who ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. Written by Pete Townsend, from the album Who’s Next (London: Track, 1971).

5 Being the enemy within1

The moment of encounter My younger brother and I belong to the generation of Black people in Britain who were acutely aware of our ‘outsider’ status. By this I mean that the seeming avalanche of vituperation aimed at Black people in the media had led us to rejecting Britain because the country was rejecting us. By the time that Paul Gilroy had published his seminal text on Black positionality in post-war Britain,2 the dye had been cast for me and my younger brother. We were already postcolonial refuseniks. We were anti-colonial, socially discontented, critically sceptical young Black boys living in Britain. The die had been cast from the moment we had witnessed Viv Richards stroking the cricket ball majestically around the Oval in the final test of the scorching hot summer of 1976. My brother and I watched on in a state of unadulterated joy as we witnessed the West Indies cricket team – a team of all-Black Caribbean people like us – defeat an all-White English team captained by a White South African.3 It had never occurred to us that we should support England. It had never occurred to us that our allegiance might and should lie with the team of English men, even though we were and indeed remain English. And herein lies the rub, in that I am a British citizen. The Caribbean is my ancestral home, but Britain is my habitual home. I realise that I am a child of my times. I am aware that cultures are not static and that the oppositional stance I possess about Britain is rooted in an era of anti-colonial identity politics, which says as much about me as it does about the nation as a whole. As a British-born Black person, I do not support my country in any national sporting endeavour.4 In none of the major sports do I ascribe allegiance to the nation of my birth. I remain challenged to identify with the term ‘British’, even though I  know I  am. I  remained loath to confirm my connectionality to a context in which Black people continue to be denied the full rights of sociocultural belonging.5 The bulk of this chapter was written during the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. The nation and by that I really mean England, was gripped by World Cup fever, as a youthful English team, by a mixture of skill, tenacity

Being the enemy within 111 and a generous helping of luck progressed to the semi-finals, for the first time in 28 years. You know you are in the presence of something seismic and of great import when on the afternoon flagship Radio 4 news programme ‘PM’, the first ten minutes were occupied with the forthcoming semi-final game between Croatia and England, as opposed to any ‘hard’ news of other events occurring in the United Kingdom and across the world. In the midst of this somewhat exaggerated excitement at the possibility of England winning the World Cup for the first time in 52 years, I found myself reflecting, once more, on my inability to support the English football team, indeed any team associated with England or Britain. Why was I so antagonistic to English success? In one small measure, some of my ambivalence at best stems from the critical posture of my hitherto steadfastly non-political mother. My mother was a devout and strict Christian who was ordinarily one to adhere to the status quo and to accept the world based on the terms in which she experienced it. Her resistance to racism was largely by means of spiritual sustenance from God and belief that one should always do one’s best to refute the worst forms of disinformation and prejudice aimed at Black people. Only rarely would she outright voice her rejection of English social mores or attack the religio-cultural and political edifice of Britain. In many respects, she was the type of God-fearing Christian I  have reflected on in chapter 2 of this book. She loved Jesus, and her adherence to church was total and unapologetically steeped in the evangelical imperial mission Christianity that she had imbibed as a young girl in Portland, Jamaica. She was a studious conformist for most of her life – that is, save for the occasions when while busy in the kitchen cooking, she would observe the rest of the family watching some sporting event on the television. As she observed the commentators (usually cricket if it included my dad) waxing lyrical about England, she would retort “It’s really hard to like the English, because when they winning, they love to boast so much, always assuming that they are better than everyone else”. Because those words came from my usually pietistic, highly spiritual, non-political and non-controversial mother always struck me as being a crucial truth. Growing up amongst a sea of White working-class racism in East Bowling, Bradford, our closest White friend was an elderly Irish woman called Mrs Hargreaves, who was equally as anti-colonial as we were. My alienation from the tropes of English and British patriotism, given expression in sporting achievement, took hold in the summer of 1976. While one may more readily understand my ambivalence to an English cricket team consisting of 11 White men, it is harder and more complex to explain my continued ambivalence to an England football team in which five of the 11 were Black or partially so. And yet my alienation from the English football team of 2018 was every bit as visceral as was my reaction to their 1976 cricketing counterparts. Moreover, in our Brexit epoch, I am aware

112  Behind the scenes that there are other 50-something Black people who feel the same way I do about supporting England and Britain in various sporting activities. How do we account for their reactions and my own? In this essay, I  offer some experientially based personal reflections on the nature of Black detachment from living in postcolonial Britain. This chapter uses personal testimony and first-person narrative to reflect on the myriad metanarratives that have helped to shape our post-Windrush era in Britain. This experientially based, narrative-driven articulation of my own human subjectivity is influenced by the wider environment of postcolonial Britain that I have highlighted in the previous essays in this book. It is the juxtaposition of these macro and micro experiences that represents the root cause of the alienation and disaffection of some Black people both before and after the rise of Brexit. This chapter  does not purport to be a representative assembly of facts detailing the positionality of all Black people in Britain. I  confess, quite readily, that this chapter represents my own positionality vis-à-vis the British state and that, as outlined in chapter two, a significant number of Black people would be distinctly more conservative and accepting of the religious and theological status quo in the United Kingdom than I  am. What I  am trying to capture in this essay is the visceral and experiential dimensions at play when speaking of the experiences of some Black people in Britain. The sense of disaffection that leads to one thinking of oneself as the ‘enemy within’ emerges from the plethora of relatively minute experiences that create a form of metanarrative of not belonging. This case study was undertaken over a decade ago, but I have returned to it because it continues to capture the sentiments and posture of Black people who have responded to their sense of detachment and ambivalence with a form of defiant resistance, in effect identifying themselves as the ‘enemy within’ in response to often being perceived as such.

Case study – the enemy within? I have chosen this provocative title to highlight what for me is an unalterable truth in the British attitude to ‘foreigners’ or migrants. As we have seen in previous chapters, Brexit can be explained, in part, by the rejection of multiculturalism and the visible presence of non-White people. Britain has a distinctive way of ‘othering’ those who are deemed not one of ‘us’.6 As we saw during the British referendum on the European Union, the issue of immigration was used as a consistent ‘scare tactic’ with which to frighten the British people. Black and Asian people have to live with the tension of knowing that when the political climate so lends itself, the issue of those ‘foreigners’ will arise. In other words, we are the ones taking all the houses, swamping inner-city areas and overrunning the health service. We are the people who are spoiling state schools and those causing all the crime. This litany of ills will rear its ugly head and we get the blame once again.

Being the enemy within 113 In effect, Black and Asian people become the scapegoats for the collective, systemic ills that have plagued Britain, problems that existed long before non-White people were ever visible in significant numbers in this country. In this, the first part of this essay, I argue that to understand the many experiences of embarrassment, shame and isolation felt by some Black and Asian people, in our Brexit epoch, we need to reflect for a short period on the existential challenges that make living in Britain a less-than-benign experience. In the first of the two case studies, I show how a ‘hostile climate’ to immigration, instituted by Theresa May when she was home secretary, has led to an increase in the paranoia and dis-ease felt by some Black people, so that White people might feel better. This case study begins with my reflecting on an event that happened about a dozen years ago. In a former life, when I taught at an ecumenical theological college in the West Midlands, I was asked to teach a group of Anglican and Methodist students training for public, authorised ministry on a non-residential, part-time training course. Two Black colleagues and I  were asked to run the week’s Easter school. This was Easter 2007 and Britain was marking the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade.7 To mark this seismic anniversary in the life of the nation, it was agreed that the students should be asked to reflect on the ambiguous Christian response to the slave trade and the institution of slavery in Britain and its empire. Clearly, the bicentenary itself was a provocative and controversial event for many White people in the nation, and that was certainly the case for these trainee ministers. The tense atmosphere amongst the group that had lain dormant but had been a palpable presence in the room came to life when my colleague had the temerity to critique John Wesley’s Notes on Slavery.8 In popular parlance, my colleague’s critique led to ‘all hell being let loose’ as he began to challenge one of the few White church leaders from the 18th century that White people could hang onto as redemptive figures in their attempts to rid themselves of largely White English guilt. Unfortunately, my impact in this context was not helpful or particularly redemptive. I have long prided myself as a Black middle-class, scholarly academic on almost always being in control of my emotions, no matter the level of provocation from racist White students. But on this occasion, once again, in popular parlance, ‘I simply lost it’. The proverbial red mist descended and soon one of the more conservative Anglican trainee ministers and I were engaged in a shouting match. Suffice it to say that the session descended into chaos and could not be retrieved that day. I went home feeling terrible, as I felt I had betrayed my calling and vocation to be a cool and controlled, rational Black theologian. The next day, a particularly angry White woman training for the Methodist ministry confronted me to accuse me of being a ‘bad example of a Christian’ and an ‘enemy of Christ’ given my racist behaviour. I  did not respond. I looked at her and walked on past her to the dining hall for my

114  Behind the scenes first important intake of caffeine to keep me going through another long and harrowing day. As I met the remainder of the group that had assembled for the first session of the following day, I was struck by an air of negativity being aimed at me and my two Black colleagues. The mainly White group9 had clearly opted to be in solidarity with their peer and he clearly was the ‘injured party’, and the three Black tutors, me in particular as the visceral, angry Black man, were the villains. Students with whom I  had formerly had a good relationship were now wary and distanced from me. I was suddenly being seen as ‘a problem’. To be labelled as an ‘enemy of Christ’ was particularly hard to hear, even though I know that what was really meant was that I  was an ‘enemy’ to the comfortable settled sense of entitlement of Whiteness that was on display in this classroom. The conflation of White privilege with God’s own self, a central norm of imperial mission Christianity, perhaps explains why this woman, apparently speaking on behalf of her White peers, could state that I was an enemy of Christ, as that can be seen to be the same thing as being her existential enemy. My angry Black body that refused to be accepting of the resistant racism of the majority of these students was itself the problem, not their racism and insensitivity to those of us who are the descendants of enslaved Africans. As I  reflected at the time with my two other Black colleagues, we all reflected on what it felt like to be the ‘enemy within’. I was an enemy of Christ and clearly a bad negro for having the temerity to make these poor, innocent White students have to discuss racism and then accusing one of their number of being a racist. So I was a racist for calling someone else out as a racist! The oddness of this strange juxtaposition was perhaps tempered a little when a few days later I was in conversation with a Black friend who had recently come out as a gay man. After I told him of my woe at being labelled an ‘enemy of Christ’ by these White Christians training to be ministers, he retorted, ‘But I am the enemy within’. With these words, he then continued to explain what it had been like for him to have to move away from his Christian family and wider church family upon self-identifying as a Black gay man. A Black gay man who still loved Jesus but at that point was not sure that God loved him! My own self-pity was suddenly put into dramatic perspective when I considered that there were other ways in which certain Black bodies were othered. Not only was his Black body othered because he was Black, like me, but his transgressive sexuality added a layer of problematics. Suddenly, there sat the two us, both reflecting on the nature of being perceived as problems because we had strayed outside of the accepted norms of respectability in our respective Blackness. I was a bad negro, and he was a deviant. We were both, in our respective ways, ‘the enemy within’. In both contexts, a form neo-colonial conscription of Black bodies within a stultifying layer of conformist respectability politics was engendered by White imperial

Being the enemy within 115 mission Christianity, into which both White and Black Christians have been acculturated.10 Essentially, imperial mission Christianity, which had provided the parameters within which Black bodies have been policed since the epoch of slavery remained the hermeneutical conduit that defined our respective subjectivities as being aberrant. The conservative Black Christians who othered my friend as gay and the White ministerial students who had similarly treated me (and my two Black colleagues) in a similar fashion were both adhering to the constrictions placed on Black bodies by imperial mission Christianity, as I have outlined in the previous chapters of this book. I reflect on the experience of my friend, construed as the ‘enemy within’ in terms of his positionality in Black Christianity in Britain, before I look at the more obvious forms of othering that are often created around the dubious notions of race and White notions of normality and entitlement. Both of these constructs have their roots in the imperial mission Christianity that underpinned the Brexit phenomenon. But what kind of Black person are you? Before we continue in our reflections on the challenges of being Black in Britain and the problematics of belonging, we have to also consider the type of Black bodies we consider respectable in the nation. In talking about the ‘enemy within’, I need to address the insular, reactionary aspects of Black religio-cultural life in Britain, particularly the case given that our numbers are drawn from post–Second World War migration. So in talking about the ‘enemy within’, I want to reflect on some of the negative aspects of Black cultural values and life in Black Christianity in Britain. Enemies include those individuals who represent a transgressive positionality in the body politic of Black life in Britain, particularly in Black Christian communities. This chapter looks into the different positions adopted by various people in diasporan Black British communities. One of the challenges facing Black theologians and cultural commentators is the necessity to develop a more honest and holistic view of Black cultures and the practices in various Black communities. Too often, Black scholars (myself included) have concentrated our efforts (quite rightly, for the most part) on the external challenges that have confronted us, such as racism, but emphasising less the internal issues and struggles in our own communities. For example, when seeking to describe and illustrate Black community living, great emphasis has been placed on the examples of solidarity and community. The many examples of homogeneity have been highlighted. This is particularly the case when scholars have spoken about Black and Black majority churches.11 Our tendency to view Black communities as monolithic has meant that the diverse range of experiences and values in the overall whole tends to be either downplayed or ignored altogether. I have addressed

116  Behind the scenes some aspects of this tendency to mythologise or romanticise aspects of Black culture in one of my earliest books.12 On occasions, there is a type of hierarchy of ‘Blackness’ in Black communities, where some people are judged as belonging in more completely than others. There are many Black people who have been accused of not ‘really being Black’ or not being ‘Black enough’.13 Scholars such as Michael Eric Dyson,14 Kobena Mercer15 and, most notably, Victor Anderson16 have challenged us to see beyond the often-straightjacketed interpretations that we place on Black cultural expression and experience. Anderson, in particular, has challenged how Black religious, cultural critics have wanted to acknowledge only the ‘positive aspects’ of Black life and have often sought to overlook or ignore those elements of which we are not so proud.17 As Anderson reminds us, we cannot all be saints, heroes and ‘trailblazers’. Similarly, in the biblical witness, there are as many flawed examples of humanity and ‘fallenness’, through which God’s redemptive work is done, as there are so-called heroes and those of supposedly blameless character; King David is an obvious candidate that springs to mind for the former. Michael Eric Dyson’s honest account of the life of Martin Luther King Jr is an important example of dealing with the wholeness of human experience, and not just the edited highlights.18 In a later book, the same author attempts a critical reassessment of the life of deceased rapper Tupac Shakur. Dyson opens up new possibilities for us to see beyond the limitations of ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’, ‘good people’ and ‘bad’ ones.19 Life, culture and cultural expression are complex and often contradictory. As I  reflect on Black positionality in Britain, reflecting on our experiences as the ‘enemy within’, I am conscious of the ways in Black Christian communities have policed our internal lives, determining whose lives are worth celebrating and those who are to be overlooked and quietly ignored because of their transgressive presence within the larger edifice of Black Christianity in Britain. Can we legitimately say that church is an expression of the economy of God’s gracious love when only certain kinds of people are permitted to attend and be heard? How does our notion of ‘being church’ then compare with Jesus’s inclusive instructions for those attending the wedding feast in Luke 14? Are we guilty of being more prescriptive and concerned with correctness and acceptability than Jesus was – a man who kept company with prostitutes, tax collectors and other social undesirables? Who do we consider to be part of us, and who should not belong? The theological problematics of the aforementioned can be discerned in the specific plight of Black LGBTQI+ people in Britain and the lack of support given them by all-Black churches in Britain, particularly from African and Caribbean Pentecostal churches. These restrictive and narrow forms of Christian social ethics are often in evidence in Black churches in Britain. These forms of restrictions can usually be discerned in the areas concerned with acceptable sexual conduct,

Being the enemy within 117 with promiscuous heterosexual behaviour more readily tolerated than monogamous homosexual practices. What is often at play in many Black churches and the myriad forms of Black Christianity is a rigid form of heteronormativity that is often predicated on such binaries between those who are deemed as righteous (and saved) and those who are not.20 It is a form of Christianity that rigidly adheres to an us-versus-them paradigm, which clearly makes judgements on the worthiness of particular people. Being viewed as the ‘enemy within’ is about the positionality of Black bodies not simply against a White racist state but also in neo-colonial, heteronormative Black Christian communities that are somewhat ambiguous in their support of the subjectivity of those individuals and communities deemed to be ‘letting the side down’. One of the issues I address in this section of the essay is that concerning the question of intra-communal jealousies. This arises from the sense that in oppressed and marginalised groups, where racism and poverty are amongst the main factors that define the nature of community, it is often the case that petty rivalries and jealousies are clearly in evidence.21 To dare to be different or to be seen as different offers a dangerous challenge to the whole community and their notions of what is permissible or acceptable. To be different is to potentially bring shame on the whole family or community. Shame is a strong factor in defining the limits of behaviour, identity and action in many diasporan Black, African communities.22 One of my favourite writers in this respect is Audre Lorde, a Black feminist lesbian poet, whose work daringly pushes at the boundaries of what is considered ‘safe’ or acceptable.23 In contemporary life in the West, it is often believed that the sense of cohesion and continuity between peoples, particularly those who share similar backgrounds, has largely broken down. Part of the narrative of Brexit was arguably the assumption that part of the crisis that triggered the successful Leave vote was the sense of discontinuity between the self-identity of the nation as being a White country juxtaposed with the increased numbers of Black, Asian and other visible minorities in the United Kingdom. These assumptions are often made about communities and even whole societies sharing narratives that somehow define and link peoples together. The sense of difference and fragmentation that pervades many communities and societies makes the task of chronicling or commenting on cultural or societal issues difficult. And yet in African Caribbean cultural life, one is perhaps still able to make those kinds of generalised assumptions. For example, Black people are still more likely to go to church than their White counterparts. And those who attend church are more likely to share similar cultural and theological backgrounds and perspectives.24 Objectifying those who may be deemed as the ‘enemy within’ is often predicated on two dominant themes. These themes have contributed to the continuing sense of homogeneity that still appears in particularly Black Christian communities rather than other ethnic or cultural groups in the United Kingdom. I think these two themes are ones of ‘racism’ and ‘shame’.

118  Behind the scenes I believe that these issues of racism and shame continue to exert a powerful influence on African Caribbean people in Britain. As I have reflected on the growing challenge of exploring the nature of being a Black body that is othered within postcolonial Britain, I have noticed how issues of racism and shame have contributed to Black people using a powerful ‘internal regulatory system’ that polices and defines notions of acceptability and provides the framework in which communal values and social mores are determined. This internal regulatory system in African Caribbean communities has contributed to an often rigid set of ethics that has governed the lives of these people – myself included. Being the ‘enemy within’ is the realisation that in terms of racism, the externalised pressure of being labelled, ridiculed, constricted, oppressed and persecuted has led to many Black people finding it difficult to express healthy disagreement and criticism of internal forms of behaviour in many of their communities. I  have witnessed many Black people, for example, defend famous Black celebrities or prominent figures whose behaviour would appear to be indefensible. One sees this in the minutiae of independent Black-led Pentecostal churches who have defended the errant behaviour of Black pastors, offering levels of forgiveness that they would not offer to those deemed to be transgressive, those who represent the embodied presence identified as being inherently problematic.25 Racism often remains a restrictive pathology that inhibits some Black Christians in their attempts to criticise Black symbols of respectability, when in doing so, they may feel that they are ‘airing their dirty laundry in public’.26 In an effort to provide a solidifying, unified presence to counter the worst excesses of racism, many Black communities have been most reluctant to level any blame at those prominent figures whose behaviour is problematic. Commentators who have dared to break free from this seeming straightjacket of conformity have incurred the wrath of their peers. The issue of shame emerges as a knock-on effect from the existence of racism. The need to counter the worst excesses of racism has led to many Black communities becoming neo-conservative enclaves where the dictates of ‘doing the right thing’ or being seen to do it takes precedence over other concerns. One only has to witness the rigid conformity demanded by many Black majority churches to see the truth of this phenomenon. For example, personal ethics (particularly involving sexual ethics) are deemed more important than fighting for social justice.27 So in the pernicious realities in Black Christian communities in Britain, there remains a means of constructing a binary between righteousness and transgressive behaviours, the latter resulting in some Black people being perceived as the ‘enemy within’, which needs to be construed when we consider how Black bodies are positioned in the macro politics of postcolonial Britain. This essay is a challenge to the Black Christian insider notions of respectability in the body politic of the United Kingdom. In undertaking this analysis as a self-declared Black liberation theologian and decolonial educator,

Being the enemy within 119 I continually argue that the gospel of Christ is good news for all humankind, but one has to be sufficiently honest to acknowledge that it is bad news for some. My radical Black liberationist critique is one that challenges more conservative pietistic readings of the Bible,28 for example (on which many restrictive notions of Christian social ethics are based), as it provides an ideological form of hermeneutical practice that challenges the casual ethnocentric and ecclesiological certainties that belittle, oppress and marginalise some people over and against others.29 Such a Black theology–based form of social ethics challenges the notions that some people are created more in God’s image than others are. It challenges those who feel that some people belong more than others do. It challenges those who think that some people are a part of the ‘us’ and others who are different are a part of the ‘them’.30 Although the critique of this form of binary is addressed at the internalisation of the respectability politics at play in the imperial mission Christianity that has been imbibed by Black Christianity in Britain, it clearly has a larger resonance with the polarising polemics of the Brexit phenomenon. Notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are precisely the overarching dangerous dichotomisation of those who are perceived as belonging and those who are othered as the ‘enemy within’. In effect, my radical Black theology critique of notions of being the ‘enemy within’ is more than simply critiquing the blandishments of the racist state, particularly in terms of what is deemed respectable within Black Christian communities in Britain.

Precarious belonging What has made the increased hostility to visible minorities all the more unpalatable is that it exacerbates the already-pernicious nature of being ‘different’ and the ‘other’ in a nation that often wants to exemplify homogeneity and sameness. The statistics for Black and Asian lives in Britain largely make for grim reading. Being in Britain, despite the hard work and sacrifices many have made to be here (either through migration or from second, third or even fourth generations of residency), living here is never easy or without its struggles. The vast bulk of numbers, for example, are seeing their opportunities for social and economic mobility diminished.31 If being here is not easy, then one can imagine the insult set upon painful injury when our rights and dignity to gain lawful entry into our own country is brutally assaulted. As I will show later in this essay, the security one might feel in holding the ‘magic ticket of entry’ – namely a British passport – in no way guarantees the recipient stress-free, uncontested entry into this country. Brexit Britain has seen a palpable rise in the othering of visible minorities, particularly when it pertains to the attitudes and the psycho-pathological forms of behaviour of the White people who helped to fuel the Leave campaign. I  argue that Black and Brown skin (i.e. non-White) is the salient feature in the racialising of immigration procedures and subsequent codified

120  Behind the scenes forms of behaviour. The holding of a British or Jamaican passport is not the defining characteristic in how one is treated at a British airport when seeking to gain entry into the country. As I will demonstrate in a moment, my holding a British passport was seemingly irrelevant when I was confronted by two suspicious and paranoid immigration officers. The dominant motif in my scenario, which is echoed in the experiences of countless others, is the sense that our non-White skin marks us out for special treatment, because at some basic, intuitive level, we fundamentally do not belong here; and if we do, then we need to abide by certain rules to do so.32 Interestingly, such injunctions around forms of acceptable conduct, until quite recently, in terms of ASBOS,33 have not been directed at White working­class people – another grouping who are often deemed to be troublesome to the body politic of the nation.34 At least the White working class are spared the rhetoric of repatriation! I have yet to hear any far-right political party  talk about expelling socially undesirable White working-class people. If as in popular parlance, ‘three is the magic number’,35 then ‘White’ is the magic colour. Whiteness remains the emblematic construct on which belonging is predicated. Clearly, it is important to acknowledge that there are innumerable advantages to being in this country. Equally, I do not wish to overly generalise on the experiences of all Black and Asian people in Britain. Class and geography arguably play as significant a role in defining the positionality of specific subgroupings in the overall numbers of Black and Asian peoples living in Britain.36 Despite these much-needed caveats, I remain convinced that it is the privilege of Whiteness that allows the bulk of the population to enter through immigration with a degree of benign impunity, which is largely denied to most Black and Asian people. This country, despite all its faults and opportunities, remains home. From the moment I entered Usher Street Primary School in Bradford, West Yorkshire, at age five, I was well aware that people like my family and I were viewed as problems.37 I was the ‘other’ and did not belong. Gilroy and others have demonstrated the extent to which negative attitudes to Black and other minority people have been deeply embedded within the consciousness of this country.38 What has characterised Britain has been a deeply contradictory attitude to foreigners and those seeking entry into this country. In many respects, Britain has been and to some extent remains a bastion of democratic liberal values that enables it to welcome and become home to those seeking refuge and a safe, hospitable space.39 Yet, placed alongside this admirable tolerance and inclusivity, there has been a nasty whiff of xenophobia and racism directed towards those who are not deemed to be ‘one of us’.40 The experience of Black and minority ethnic people in Britain has been largely one of struggle and hardship. What has sustained the majority of African Caribbean people in Britain has been their Christian faith and a belief in the radical teachings of Jesus and the prophetic, liberating qualities

Being the enemy within 121 of the gospel.41 Many Black people have sought refuge in Christian-inspired pastoral care and larger African-influenced models of communitarian support systems that have enabled them to meet such struggles head on when they have collided into us, in our daily attempts to make a life in this country.42 Making this personal One of the reasons for my own ambivalence with Britain can be found in the following incident involving British immigration procedures and the officers who ‘police’ Britain’s borders. This incident occurred in the summer of 2000. In August of that year, I was invited to attend an academic conference in the Middle East. While the conference itself was hugely enjoyable, the experience of trying to leave and re-enter Britain was quite traumatic. My attempts to leave the United Kingdom were fraught. I was the only Black person on this flight to the Middle East. This was manifested in my being singled out of the line of people waiting to board the airplane and asked a series of penetrating and quite impossible questions to answer. One such ‘impossible’ question was to take out the copy of the academic paper I was to give at the conference and explain the contents to the security official. When I asked this diminutive young woman if she was familiar with the finer points of Black liberation theology, her disarming response was “No, but if you’re the expert you say you are, then you’ll be able to explain it to me, won’t you?” Talk about a daunting task! This was more pressure than the PhD viva voce I had undergone earlier that year. Presumably, if I had been unable to convince her, then I would not have been allowed to board the plane. The ‘real fun’ of this eventful journey occurred on the return leg. For personal and family reasons, I needed to leave the conference early. In anticipation of the difficulties I knew I would encounter in being a Black person perceived to be doing something out of the norm, I had asked the conference organisers to write an official letter for me attesting to the veracity of my story. I had notified the organisers before my registration that I would need to leave early. After five days away, I  was returning to Heathrow. From the moment the flight landed, I knew that I was going to be targeted by the immigration officials working for the UK Border Agency. As I looked around me, I saw quite clearly that I was the only Black person on the flight. The rest of the flight members were mainly White Jewish people. As the only Black person, I was more than conspicuous; but surely I could rest secure in the fact that I was in possession of a British passport and was returning to my country. While going to the Middle East was always going to be a tough ask, on the return leg, I assumed that I was going to be alright. Upon arriving at Heathrow, I waited my turn in the queue, duly handed in my passport and was then asked to stand to one side to answer some

122  Behind the scenes questions. I felt there was a grim inevitability to this whole procedure. I was then marshalled to an ancillary room and was questioned some more. I was asked for my reasons for visiting the Middle East. I explained that I was an academic and had attended a conference. I was one of the speakers, I explained. The officer’s close inspection of me did not bode well. I am forced to presume that his perceptions of what constituted a legitimate academic and the figure of this Black man stood in front of him did not correlate. Could I really be this Dr Anthony G. Reddie I claimed to be? The passport and the corresponding picture seemed to indicate that this was the case, but surely there must be more to it than that. The officer asked me why I  had been chosen to attend this conference; I  explained that I  was one of the leading people in my field in the whole country. Now I must have been taking him for a fool. A Black man who is the leading person in his field? Another officer came into the room to join the first one. Both officers now wanted to know the truth of my account. According to the schedule, I had left the conference early. Given that I was a British citizen and had a letter to attest to my early departure, what concern was it of these officers for my prior actions in a foreign country? This incident had occurred long before the more contemporary concerns around militant radicalisation of Black and minority ethnic people in Britain, particularly Muslims, but one can see the roots of this later existential concern in my experience.43 Whatever doubts the officers of the visiting nation had about the merits of my leaving the conference and the country early, they had, nevertheless, allowed me to leave, and nothing untoward had taken place on the flight back to Heathrow. Despite the benign nature of the flight and my apparent nondescript appearance as a harmless academic, I was still perceived as an unattributed threat. Having asked many questions concerning my appearance at an early departure from the conference, further inquiries were then made about the type of work I  did in the United Kingdom. At moments like this, every Black or Asian person has to make their own decision about how to conduct themselves at this point in the proceedings. To what extent does one continue to be polite, deferential and circumspect in the face of such blatant abuses of White power, thereby seeming to justify and collude with the injustice of the whole scenario? Alternatively, one can attempt to become naturally indignant at the rank injustice of the whole situation, perhaps then compounding the dangerous nature of the scenario in which the Black or Asian person is mired. I have attempted to offer some theological and educational resources for enabling Black youth to negotiate their way through the quicksand of such encounters with White officialdom, oftentimes when confronted with police officers in inner-city areas in Britain.44 The pain and struggle of trying to decide how to conduct oneself in such arenas is the often-hidden struggle that all Black and Asian people have to

Being the enemy within 123 confront when they have to move from one cultural context to the next.45 How would I conduct myself in this situation? Would I allow my natural sense of anger and indignation to envelop me at this point, in ways that Robert Beckford has outlined in a previous piece of work?46 Alternatively, would I become a passive object in an unjust context, with the added fear that one is then forfeiting the natural agency of being an autonomous subject, which is the unique feature of all human beings?47 When I  worked as a Christian youth and community worker in Handsworth, Birmingham, almost 20 years ago, much of my advice to Black youth when they found themselves in such confrontational situations was to observe pragmatic silence. Would I take my own advice on this occasion? As I stood before these two officers, I considered the many options before me before I  decided that studied professionalism was the best means of responding. So I threw the questions back at them. Given that I had been born in this country and had been working and paying my taxes for over 15 years, why was I being asked such questions now? What concern was it of theirs what I did for a living in the United Kingdom? Were these kinds of questions directed at all British passport holders returning to the United Kingdom or only Black people like me? On what basis had I been stopped? From the moment I had challenged their authority and begun to throw my academic respectable credentials at them, the tide had begun to turn in the relative balance of power in our head-to-head confrontation. There followed another bout of inane questioning, as I refused to justify either my presence in or the nature of my work in the United Kingdom. Unless there were clear objective criteria on which I was stopped and detained, I was not going to justify the apparently subjective, biased notions that had warranted my detention. After another 40 minutes or so, I  was allowed to proceed through customs. I think I was able to negotiate my way through this situation due to my training as an educator and theologian. As a Black religious scholar, much of my professional life has been spent having to defend my discipline and the rationale that underpins it. If I had ten pounds for every occasion I have been identified as not being legitimate or belonging at particular gatherings and then having to defend myself, I could afford to take an expensive holiday. This type of confrontation was no new occurrence for me. But what about other Black and Asian people who do not possess my professional veneer of respectability or the training to ask critical questions of White authority in such situations? What about all those Black people who are told that they are not a part of the body politic of this nation and are outside the cultural and societal norms?48

Theological challenges Looking within Scripture, we are given examples of the importance of welcoming and affirming the stranger. In the Hebrew Scriptures, in the book of Ruth, we read of the experience of Ruth, who is a foreigner in Judah.49 Personal

124  Behind the scenes and domestic difficulties lead Naomi (who was originally from Bethlehem) and Ruth (who is from the country of Moab) to travel to Bethlehem to start anew. Typical economic migrants perhaps? In chapter 2 of Ruth, The Eponyous Character is a foreigner and is offered sustenance by Boaz, a wealthy landowner. In the New Testament, Jesus, in one his teachings that has been interpreted as a comment on the final judgement, remarks on the seemingly harsh treatment that will befall those who failed to show due care and concern for those described as the ‘least of these’ (Matthew 25:40). Amongst those who are identified as being amongst the ‘least’ is the stranger. Of significant import for this case study is the work of City of Sanctuary, a faith-based voluntary organisation co-founded by Reverend Dr Inderjit Bhogal as a means of creating a more hospitable climate for migrants, particularly those who are refugees and seeking asylum in the United Kingdom.50 The work of City of Sanctuary seeks to create a more conducive, welcoming ethos, grounded in Christian hospitality, which acts as a riposte to the personal experiences outlined in my own narratives detailed previously in this chapter. A key theological component of the City of Sanctuary is the belief that Christian ethics should affirm the presence of the stranger. In this regard, a key ‘proof text’ is “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as a citizen among you; you shall love the stranger as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34).51 In a more scholarly vein, Susanna Snyder’s work has explored the theological responses to migration and the ethics for how we deal with and understand the positionality of migrants in the body politic of Western democratic nations.52 Jesus’s Jewishness is crucial to this case study, because it is in his Jewish identity that the otherness of his positionality within the religio-cultural framing of belonging is established. It is this awareness that the divine presence is located in the other; the divine other that is seen in all those who are pushed to the margins of British life, that creates a radical riposte to the ethnocentric domestication of Christology within the prism of imperial mission Christianity. I take from my encounter with racist White British ministerial students and at the hands of British immigration officialdom that Jesus is reflected in our confrontations with the symbols of White power. The divine Christ is seen in the presence of those who are deemed ‘the least of these’, the ‘enemy within’, rather than in a salvific figure that sanctifies the status quo and all the apparatus of empire and respectability. The crucified Christ is one who relates to the continued demonisation of Blackness, which can be seen in how Britain remains ambiguous about at best and brutal at worst to the existential realities of Blackness and all those who are othered. The continued sense of othering of Blackness in the body politic of the nation remains replete in White British Christianity. As I have shown in earlier essays, the roots of our experiences as Black people in Britain can arguably be found in the epoch of slavery, followed by that of colonialism.53 Black British pastoral theologian Delroy Hall has written movingly and persuasively on the Windrush Generation in Britain, describing our existence

Being the enemy within 125 as one of ‘existential crucifixion’.54 Hall argues that diasporan African peoples have endured the horrors of ‘Good Friday’ and our existential crucifixions at the hands of White hegemony, through the privations of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism, but the exulting freedom of ‘Easter Sunday’ has yet to materialise. The tragic fact is that as diasporan African peoples, we are still wrestling with an acute sense of being mired in ‘Low Saturday’ or ‘Holy Saturday’, stuck in a socioreligious and political form of liminality that speaks to the transformative nature of redemptive suffering that has thus far proved to be anything but redemptive.55 The continued marginalisation and suffering of Black people has raised an important, if not seemingly insoluble, theological problem of trying to correlate the agency of an omnipotent God with the ongoing negation of faithful peoples who have called repeatedly on God to end their existential travails, but to no avail! Our faith in the risen Christ, with whom we identity and who reciprocates in his identification with us, may have offered us a vision of spiritual salvation, but our existential plight largely remains unchanged.56 I would be the first to admit that my story does not compare with many others who have endured these kinds of experiences before. I cannot claim to have been physically or emotionally abused in my encounter with immigration officers in the United Kingdom. In many respects, my encounter was a relatively benign one. I was not humiliated or abused. It was, for the most part, a relatively innocuous encounter that was more farcical than pernicious. The importance of this situation lies in the overarching framework in which such incidences lie rather than in the substantive content of the event itself. When one puts this scenario into a wider context, one can see that such events are not simply benign incidents. I was stopped for a whole plethora of reasons, the majority of them not that hard to deduce. I was the lone Black person on a flight returning from a part of the world one would not expect to see such an individual. I was a Black person who seemed to have acquired an identity and professional status that was not commensurate with my skin colour. In effect, I was someone who did not belong in that particular context and whose presence triggered all the historical suspicions and stereotypes that have afflicted Black people for what is approaching a millennium.57 Had this been a flight full of Black people, returning from a predominantly Black or Asian country, what are the chances of the sole White person in that company being singled out almost as a matter of fact? I doubt it would ever happen with the same regularity as it affects Black people. Even when White people are stopped, it is never for the systemic, pernicious forms of racial reasoning that affect Black and Asian people. There is never the axiomatic notion that ‘we’ do not belong. Black and Asian people have been categorised as the ‘enemy within’ and are policed and detained on the basis that our presence is not conducive to the body politic. Is it not interesting that the assumptions governing Black and Asian bodies in Britain

126  Behind the scenes are predicated on the notion that too many of us spells trouble? So good ‘race relations’ is about limiting our numbers because, at some intrinsic, intuitive level, we somehow do not belong. Hence, the apparent impunity with which I  could be stopped and asked a whole series of insulting and asinine questions. This form of policing and monitoring is sufficiently bad to lead to significant numbers of young Black people believing that they have no legitimate place in this country.58 Many consequently choose to vacate the mainstream for their own subversive forms of subcultures and constructed identities. The irony of our residency in this country is that it has never been a benign or uncontested existence. The sociopolitical nature of Black and Asian bodies residing in Britain is neither a new nor a surprising phenomenon.59 The struggle for many Black and Asian people living in Britain is juxtaposed with the perennial difficulties we have in attempting to gain entry into the country in the first place. My reflections written as a Christian Black liberation theologian are offered as a radical riposte to the respectability politics of much of Black Christianity in Britain, which under the blandishments of imperial mission Christianity seeks to create an overly optimistic narrative of societal acceptance and belonging by means of our proximity to the White establishment. One can see this in the ‘celebration’ of the Windrush Generation at the national service at Westminster Abbey held in June 2018 to mark the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the SS Empire Windrush. My critical insights on this service are not a churlish complaint at the necessity of marking the import of Caribbean peoples in Britain, in light of the Windrush Generation and their sacrificial and generative work in shaping the multicultural body politic of the nation. Rather, thinking back to the initial critical encounter of Black bodies, as the ‘enemy within’, whether on the grounds of transgressive Black religio-political anger or perceived sexual deviancy (as depicted earlier in this chapter), I am wondering to what extent either of our respective Black bodies were representative in a service constructed to reaffirm the acceptability and respectability of Black Christians in Britain.60 In this essay I have used personal reflections and some systemic analysis to show what continues to happen to Black and Asian people as we attempt to live in Britain in light of the anti-immigration climate that has long existed, before the ‘hostile climate’ and Brexit. My personal reflections that form the core of this chapter were first undertaken several years ago. I have returned to them because the current climate in Britain has taken on a more pronounced, negative turn since Brexit. If one wants to locate the contemporary outworking of the aforementioned narratives of exclusion that I have depicted, then one simply has to look again at the treatment meted out to the Windrush Generation and the attempts by the Conservative government in 2018 to deport legal British citizens. My personal experience juxtaposed my legal Black body against a backdrop of White officialdom and its extant

Being the enemy within 127 suspicions around the legitimacy of the former, and one can see a more macro form of this pattern of racialised thinking in the reporting of the Windrush deportation incident in the news media. One can see this displayed quite markedly in a high-profile interview between Piers Morgan and Diane Abbott on “Good Morning Britain”, following the furore over the deportation of the Windrush Generation. Morgan repeatedly asked Diane Abbott to clarify her position and that of the Labour party regarding levels of illegal immigration that her party would tolerate in Britain, linking that to the Windrush Generation, who are not illegal immigrants but British citizens, many of whom came to Britain on British passports. My own parents travelled to Britain from Jamaica in 1957 on British passports because at that point in history, Jamaica was still a crown colony and a part of the British Empire and would not achieve its independence until August 1962. Despite the repeated reminders that this issue was one of callous racism at the behest of the British state and not one of illegal immigration, Morgan continued to press Abbott about illegal immigration.61 Morgan’s insistence on linking the Windrush Generation to illegal immigration simply reminds us that even legal Black British subjects are somehow intrinsically illegal, no matter what the law may state, simply by virtue of our Black skin. Black bodies remain the culturally constructed other, in which the Windrush Generation were the seemingly disposable entities at the sharp end of the vituperative rhetoric of entitled Whiteness that provides the underpinning of Britishness and acceptable notions of belonging. One cannot but help juxtapose the reality of the deportation of members of the Windrush Generation with the expressions of ‘gratitude’ and thankfulness articulated by members of this community in the national Windrush service. I argue that the former challenges aspects of the celebratory nature of the latter, when many of us are still living in the liminality of ‘Low Saturday’ or ‘Holy Saturday’. To me this raises the question, on what basis are some of us ‘grateful’? It also challenges me to confront any notions of theological election that believes that God was the architect of our migratory travels to the United Kingdom (where some, if not most of us have suffered severe hardships) as opposed to responding to the sociopolitical dimensions of imperialism and colonialism. I  would critique this counterview, which often leads to notions of ‘reverse mission’, as outlined in chapter 2, as vociferously as I  would accept the view that God was the architect of British imperialism and colonialism in the first instance. God may be acting within history, but I believe God’s presence is not be construed with the sociopolitical advantage accrued by the powerful. In the heartbreaking account of the Windrush Generation in their experiences of deportation and the threat of it,62 as a Black liberation theologian, I believe that for God to be God, Jesus must be revealed in the embodied pain and anguish of Black bodies who are deemed the enemy within and who are treated with vicious disregard by the British state. A Jewish Jesus

128  Behind the scenes who was othered during his own life time and died a miserable death as an outcast, a despised, symbolic Black body in Judea as depicted by James Cone,63 is one who is in radical solidarity with those who have been traduced and othered in the British nation state. This chapter  has provided an alternative means of exploring what it means to be a Black body in the toxic environment constructed by Brexit. But these challenges are not new, as this essay has shown. Indeed, the personal narrative I have presented, first reflected on well over a decade ago, has been augmented by my personal experience of being questioned and quizzed by UK Border Agency staff that is almost 20 years old. What this chapter has shown is that the existential challenges of living in Britain in a Black body remain a corrosive and debilitating affair. The more recent experience of deportation and the threat of deportation of the Windrush Generation shows that there has been a collapsing of time and space, between my experiences almost 20 years ago and my being labelled an enemy of Christ and so the ‘enemy within’ over a decade ago. While the material indices of Black social and geographical mobility are real and should be recognised and applauded, what this chapter seeks to depict is that the underlying sociopolitical thrust of White supremacist thinking and action has not substantively changed. The work of City of Sanctuary and other Christian agencies like Restore64 seeks to offer a more ameliorated, Christian-inspired presence than the visceral and often scarring wider climate of British life as it impacts on Black people in Britain. This chapter provides a more experiential dimension to the question of theologising Brexit than that provided in the previous chapters, although in truth, the greater part of my writing is invariably a synthesis of analysis in which I juxtapose subjective narrative and experience-based reflection. Returning to the earlier reflections, for one moment, as I recall my encounter with UK Border Agency staff in 2000, I am reminded yet again of the many reasons I do not support England or Britain in any sporting activity in this country. My ambivalence is borne of experience and is one that leads me to adopt the bold nomenclature of the enemy within. I choose to adopt this positionality given that the British state seeks to position me as such in its racist operations. I and many of my peers have adopted this nomenclature as a form of resistance to the British state. We are the enemy within – an enemy to White supremacy and racism!

Notes 1 This essay draws on material that I  first developed in a previously published essay. See Anthony G. Reddie ‘The Politics of Black Re-entry into Britain: Reflections on Being A  Black British Person Returning to The U.K.’ In Anthony G. Reddie (ed.) Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity (Basingstoke: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 209–222. 2 See Paul Gilroy There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack (London: Hutchinson, 1987).

Being the enemy within 129 3 The test series played against the backdrop of Tony Grieg’s infamous comment that he was going to make the all Black West Indian team ‘grovel’! The potency of Greig’s words arose from the fact that he was White and born in South African, and the resonance of his comments, made in a broad South African accent, ignited the ire of not only the West Indies team but also many of their supporters. For an excellent summary of the sociopolitical and cultural ramifications of both this series and the dominance of West Indies cricket as a whole during the 1970s and 80s, see the DVD Fire in Babylon (E & G Productions, 2011). 4 I make this assertion in light of the now infamous ‘cricket test’, so coined by Norman Tebbit, a cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher’s various governments of the 1980s. The phrase was used in April 1990 as a means of critiquing minority ethnic people whose predilection for supporting the countries of parent’s birth or ancestry and not England/Britain was seen as a failure in the test of loyalty to this country. Tebbit was particularly aggrieved at the lack of support for the English test cricket team from younger African Caribbean and South Asian (India and Pakistan) people. The ‘cricket test’ was a crude barometer for indicating the appropriate marker of loyalty and patriotism to the country in which they were living: would Black and Asian people ‘pass the cricket test’ by supporting the White English team against all foreign competing countries? For further information, see the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_test  – accessed Friday 11 May 2012 5 Paul Gilroy remains the main articulator of this complex dynamic of ‘race’, culture and nationality. See his There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack; Also The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993). 6 See Paul Gilroy There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack. 7 In 2007 while I  was working as a research fellow in Black theology at the Queen’s Foundation, funded by the Methodist church, I organised an international conference to mark the abolition of the slave trade in the 1807 Act of Parliament. The conference was titled Freedom Is for Freeing and was held between 13 and 15 July 2007. The proceedings were subsequently published in 2010. See Anthony G. Reddie (ed.) Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity: 200 Years and No Apology (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). 8 My colleague’s critique was later published in a special issue of Black Theology: An International Journal that was produced in the summer of 2007. The specific piece that gave rise to the incident at the heart of the case study is Michael Jagessar ‘Review Article: Critical Reflections on John Wesley’s Notes on Slavery’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2007, pp. 250–255. 9 I seem to recall there being perhaps one Black student in this particular cohort training for ordained ministry. I do not recall any particular engagement with this student during that week, although given their minority status, it would be unfair to expect them to have publicly supported me in any decisive way. 10 The best work that explores these issues within the context of British imperialism and Black bodies from the Caribbean and Africa, see Caroline Redfearn ‘The Nature of Homophobia in the Black Church’. In Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Postcolonial Black British Theology: New Textures and Themes (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2007), pp. 102–123. 11 See Peter J. Parris The Social Teaching of the Black Churches (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985); Dale P. Andrews Practical Theology for Black Churches (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2002). 12 Anthony G. Reddie Nobodies to Somebodies (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2003), pp. 29–36. 13 See Isaac Julien ‘Black Is, Black Ain’t: Notes on De-Essentializing Black Identities’. In Gina Dent (ed.) Black Popular Culture (Seattle: Bay Press, 1992), pp. 255–263.

130  Behind the scenes 14 Michael Eric Dyson Reflecting Black: African American Cultural Criticism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 15 Kobena Mercer Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1994). 16 Victor Anderson Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American Cultural Criticism (New York: Continuum, 1995). 17 Victor Anderson Beyond Ontological Blackness, pp. 118–131. 18 Michael Eric Dyson I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999). 19 Michael Eric Dyson Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur (Pittsburg: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). 20 Robert S. Beckford ‘Theology in the Age of Crack: Crack Age, Prosperity Doctrine and “Being There” ’. Black Theology in Britain: A Journal of Contextual Praxis, Vo1.4, No.1, November 2001, pp. 9–24. 21 One can see aspects of this in how the Windrush Generation and its legacies have been recognised and appreciated in the body politic of the nation. In my work, I  have consistently written about all Black people living in Britain, and yet one can see pieces written by leading Black Pentecostal theologians in Britain that seek to create forms of religio-cultural hierarchies, in which Pentecostals are assumed to be more authentic expressions of Black Caribbean cultures than non-­Pentecostals. For a telling example of this, see the following link: www.keep thefaith.co.uk/2018/06/15/he-has-brought-us-a-mighty-long-way-caribbean-pente costal-churches-in-britain-by-dr-r-david-muir/ – accessed 13 December 2018. 22 See Edward P. Wimberly Moving from Shame to Self Worth: Preaching and Pastoral Care (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999). 23 See Audre Lorde The Black Unicorn (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995). 24 See Robert Beckford God of the Rahtid (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2001). 25 One of the most notorious cases was that of the Reverend Douglas Goodman, a Black Pentecostal minister who was imprisoned for serious sexual misconduct. His resultant jail sentence did not prevent him resuming his ministry with a new Pentecostal church upon release, although many of his victims were members from his previous church. For a ‘before’ and ‘after’ syndrome of the stories, see the following two links: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/high-livingpastor-convicted-of-sex-assaults-562557.html  & www.v2vchurch.com/about/ about-v2v-church – accessed 13 December 2018. 26 Doreen Morrison attempts to outline a process where Black people in Britain can begin to challenge the externalised threat posed by racism while still addressing the internalised issues of self-negation and intra-communal dissention within their communities. See Doreen Morrsion ‘Resisting Racism: By Celebrating “Our” Blackness’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.1, No.1, May 2003, pp. 209–233. 27 This issue is addressed with great clarity by Robert Beckford Dread and Pentecostal (London: SPCK, 2000). 28 More informed work on the Bible and how it should be read and approached as a radical riposte to Brexit will be addressed in chapter 6. 29 See Harry H. Singleton, III Black Theology and Ideology (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), pp. 47–67. see also Anthony B. Pinn and Dwight N. Hopkins (eds) Loving the Body (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) for an excellent exploration of the limits placed on Black people by the Black Church in its prohibitions of sex and gender, sexual relationships and sexuality as a whole. 30 This form of reading has been inspired by Kelly Brown Douglas’s recent book What’s Faith Got to Do with It? (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005), where Brown challenges the traditional Christian imperial hegemony built on an adversarial closed monotheism.

Being the enemy within 131 31 See Ceri Peach ‘Black-Caribbeans: Class, gender and geography’. In Ceri Peach (ed.) Ethnicity in the 1991 Census – Vol.2 the Ethnic Minority Populations of Great Britain (London: HMSO, 1996), p. 27 For more indices for the socioeconomic positionality of minority ethnic people in Britain see the following link: – www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38447933 – accessed 4 August 2018. 32 See Robert Beckford God and the Gangs (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004), pp. 72–83. See also Kehinde Andrews and Lisa Palmer (eds) Blackness in Britain (London: Routledge, 2016). 33 Anti-social behaviour orders. 34 Note the alacrity with which the stereotyping and traducing of White workingclass people has been undertaken through the use of such nomenclatures as ‘chav’. See Owen Jones Chav: The Demonization of the Working Class (London: Verso, 2012). 35 At one time, this was a popular trailer and introduction to the television channel BBC 3. It is taken from a De La Soul record. 36 See Tariq Modood and Richard Berthoud Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1997). See also Bikhu Parekh The Future of Multi Ethnic Britain (London: Profile Books, 2008), pp. 205–222. 37 See Anthony G. Reddie ‘An Interactive Odyssey: Black Experiential Preaching’. In Geoffrey Stevenson (ed.) Pulpit Journeys (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005). 38 See Gretchen Gerzina Black England: Life Before Emancipation (London: John Murray, 1995); Ron Ramdin Reimaging Britain: 500 Years of Black and Asian History (London: Pluto Press, 1999). 39 See Bhikhu Parekh Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 2000), pp. 295–335. 40 Inderjit S. Bhogal ‘Citizenship’. In Anthony G. Reddie Legacy: Anthology in Memory of Jillian Brown (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House, 2000), pp. 137–141. See also Inderjit S. Bhogal On the Hoof: Theology in Transit (Sheffield: Penistone Publications, 2001), pp. 69–71. 41 See Dwight N. Hopkins Black Theology: Essays on Gender Perspectives (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018), pp. 23–32. 42 See Robert Beckford God of the Rahtid, p. 12. 43 In terms of religious and theological work concerning radicalisation from a Black Christian viewpoint, see Richard S. Reddie Black Muslims in Britain: Why Are a Growing Number of Young Black Men Converting to Islam? (Oxford: Lion, 2009). See also David Isiorho ‘Other Than White in a British Context: A Response from Black Theology to the Trojan Horse Affair’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.14, No.2, 2016, pp. 121–138. 44 Anthony G. Reddie Nobodies to Somebodies, pp. 159–171. 45 Anthony G. Reddie Growing into Hope (Volume 1): Believing and Expecting (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House, 1998), pp.  8–10. See also David Isiorho ‘A Tale of Two Cities: Implicit Assumptions and Mission Strategies in Black and White Majority Churches’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.10, No.2, 2012, pp. 195–211. 46 See Robert Beckford God of the Rahtid, pp. 8–38. 47 See Dwight N. Hopkins Being Human: Race, Culture, and Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), pp. 81–117. 48 David Isiorho ‘Other Than White in a British Context’, pp. 121–138. 49 See the book of ‘Ruth’ in the Hebrew Scriptures for the full account of Ruth and Naomi’s encounter with Boaz. 50 For more details on City of Sanctuary, see the following link: www.inderjit bhogal.com/category/sanctuary/ – accessed 4 August 2018.

132  Behind the scenes 51 For the wider resources that underpin this biblical and theological mandate to show hospitality to the stranger, see the following link: www.inderjitbhogal. com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/SANCTUARY-FOR-ALL-RESOURCE-2. pdf – accessed 4 August 2018. 52 See Susanna Snyder Asylum-Seeking, Migration and Church (London: Routledge, 2012). See also Susanna Snyder, Joshua Ralston and Agnes M. Brazal (eds) Church in an Age of Global Migration: A Moving Body (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 53 See the work of the great African-American historian Carter G. Woodson for work that reflects on the notion of identity struggle of Black people that often arises from various forms of miseducation organised and perpetrated by White power. See Carter G. Woodson The Mis-Education of the Negro (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990 [1933]). 54 See Delroy Hall ‘The Middle Passage as Existential Crucifixion’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.7, No.1, 2009, pp. 45–63. 55 Delroy Hall, ‘The Middle Passage as Existential Crucifixion’, pp. 46–54. 56 One of the factors that arises from the catalogue of social and political ills detailed in this chapter is the psycho-social dissonance felt by many Black people living in Britain, which gives rise to issues of intra-community conflict. This has been explored by Delroy Hall in his doctoral study investigating the role of Black pastoral theology among African Caribbean Christians belonging to the Pentecostal tradition in Britain. See Delroy Hall ‘But God Meant It for Good’: Inter-Personal Conflict in an African Caribbean Pentecostal Congregation  – a Pastoral Study (Unpublished PhD thesis, The University of Birmingham, 2013). 57 For the classic Black theology–related text that explores Black representation as it is seen within the purview of White supremacy, see Robert E. Hood Begrimed and Black: Christian Traditions on Blacks and Blackness (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994). See also M. Shawn Copeland Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009). 58 See Roxy Harris and Sarah White (eds) Changing Britannia: Life Experience with Britain (London: New Beacon Books, 2002), pp. 193–225. 59 See Bob Carter, Clive Harris and Shirley Joshi ‘The 1951–1955 Conservative Government and the Racialization of Black Immigration’. In Kwesi Owusu (ed.) Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 21–36. 60 For a useful distillation of the national Windrush service at Westminster Abbey in June  2018, see the following link. www.itv.com/news/2018-06-22/wind rush-anniversary-service-at-westminster-abbey-hailed-as-moving/ – accessed 13 December 2018. 61 For a precis of the interview, see the following link: www.itv.com/news/201804-30/diane-abbott-clashes-with-tv-host-piers-morgan-over-immigration/  – accessed 25 July 2018. 62 For examples of the heartbreaking accounts of the Windrush Generation and their experiences of deportation and the threat of it, see the following link: www. theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/10/windrush-people-wrongly-deportedjamaica-criminal-offence – accessed 22 September 2018. 63 See James H. Cone The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), pp. 1–29. 64 Restore is a project of Birmingham Churches Together that seeks to provide advocacy and a supporting and pastoral presence in the city of Birmingham in support of asylum seekers and refugees. Further information on the project can be found in the following link: www.restore-uk.org/ – accessed 4 August 2018.

Part 2

Responding to the challenge

6 Reading the Bible and multiple religious belonging

One of the important tools in the task of ‘doing’ Black liberation theology is the Bible. The Bible is important for the role it can play as a practical resource that allows ordinary people to become active agents in a more praxis- or activist-based approach to building theological discourse from the bottom up.1 In seeking to create an anti-nationalist theological critique of Brexit, the Bible continues to be an important battleground in challenging the thrust of popularist, right-wing nationalism that is sweeping Europe and the United States. This chapter seeks to outline the means by which the Bible can be used as a liberationist critique of the dubious monological claims to truth proffered by White British, particularly English, nationalism and the attempts of the latter to co-opt Christianity into its myopic and ethnocentric raison d’être. My own praxis- or activist-based, interactive approach to undertaking Black theology with ordinary Black people has sought to use the Bible as a resource for constructing liberative God-talk that seeks to empower often disenfranchised people.2 My approach to engaging with the Bible has been undertaken from a Black liberationist theological perspective. In using the name of Black liberation theology,3 what I mean to suggest is that the term ‘Black’ comes to represent God’s symbolic and actual solidarity with oppressed people, the majority of whom have been consigned to the marginal spaces of the world solely on the grounds of their very Blackness.4 In my work, I have used a Black theological method to pose a number of political and polemic points about the use and abuse of Holy Scripture and Christian tradition as it collides with contemporary Black experience.5 Black theology is committed to challenging the systemic frameworks that assert particular practices and ideas as being normative (normally governed by the powerful) while ignoring the claims of those who are marginalised and are powerless, often demonising the perspectives of the latter as being aberrant or heretical.6 So taking the aforementioned into account, I  hope it is relatively clear how and why the Bible is an important resource for constructing an antiBrexit polemic. Whether we see God siding with the cause of those who have been traduced, pilloried and scapegoated in the legitimation of Brexit

136  Responding to the challenge or assume that one’s supreme deity supports the machinations of the powerful in one’s attempts to obfuscate and distract the larger populace from their own self-aggrandisement largely depends on what sort of God we see as revealed in the Bible. This chapter assumes the former and is clearly in opposition to the latter.

Black Christianity in Britain and the Bible As a Black liberation theologian, my work is immersed within Black Christian communities, in Britain. As we have seen previously, my work has been ensconced within the wider context of the Windrush Generation. This wider, largely Caribbean and, later, African community is the dialogue partner with whom I have read the Bible in my hermeneutical work. One of the important characteristics of Black Christianity in Britain is the centrality of the Bible. This is not to suggest that the Bible is not central to the formulations of other Christian groups or persons, but it is a generalised truth, however, that every branch of Black Christianity across the world holds Scripture to be the supreme rule of faith and the only means by which one can understand God’s revelation in Christ. This is most certainly the case of Black Christianity in Britain. Despite its radical roots in countering racism and Black dehumanisation, many Black majority churches in Britain have remained wedded to a form of 19th-century White evangelical biblicism. A number of Black scholars have demonstrated the extent to which Christianity as a global phenomenon has internalised Eurocentric philosophical thought at the expense of African or other overarching forms of epistemology.7 Black Christianity has imbibed these overarching Eurocentric, Greek-influenced thought forms, often at the expense of its own identity and African forms of epistemology. This adherence to 19th-century biblicism has meant that the blandishments of historical-critical biblical studies have barely managed to penetrate the edifice of Black Christianity across the world. In the case of Black Christianity in Britain, one can still point to a propensity to read biblical texts in ‘flat’ and uncontested ways, often asserting that as the ‘Word of God’, the sacred words of ‘Holy Scripture’ should be read as literal truths. Little engagement with one’s existential condition or context, let alone the historicity of experience, is read into one’s hermeneutical perspectives or taken account of in the process of applying the Bible to the realities of human experience. It still remains the case that for much of Black Christianity in Britain, for example, religious faith is built on quasi-literalist readings of Scripture, in which Jesus and salvation are conceived solely in terms of John 14:6. Again, I must make the point that this particular approach to reading the Bible is not unique to Black people. There are many groups who will not only read the Bible in this way but also claim it to be normative of historical Christianity as it has been expressed and propagated over 2000 years. As I have asserted hitherto, the phenomenon of Black Christianity in Britain has been

Reading the Bible 137 the focus of my biblically based theological work in Britain and beyond, working across the broader contours of the African Diaspora and amongst ethnically diverse communities across the world.8 This adherence to Scripture by Black people in Britain is selective like all approaches to reading the Bible. I have placed the last few words in italics because I think the post is crucial in the context of this discussion. I  believe that all faithful reading communities of the Bible across the world are selective, idiosyncratic and contradictory in how they handle this sacred text. This work seeks to recognise how Black Christianity’s normative posture with the Bible has led it to not only unwittingly collude with the subterranean neo-colonial frameworks that underpinned Brexit but also provide creative, religio-cultural resources for pushing beyond this corporate sense of self-negation. In proposing a more liberative praxiological method for engaging with the Bible than is often the case with Black Christianity in Britain, I am outlining an anti-White-hegemonic approach to Christian faith that is unapologetic in its reverence for Black bodies and Black subjectivity. This work makes no pretence in seeking to adhere Black Christianity to the correctitude of Christian orthodoxy, unless that discourse is linked to the question of liberative ethics and what constitutes justice making and a full life for marginalised peoples. As I have argued elsewhere, I have found little evidence to suggest that during the epoch of slavery and colonialism, claims and counterclaims of orthodoxy and heterodoxy made little difference in how some, if not most, White people engaged with and treated Black people.9 My argument in this essay is not that Black people should be unconcerned with issues of orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Rather, it is that we should be concerned with what promotes a full life for all, but thinking especially of what speaks to the reality of Black experience and our troubled existence in a world in which White nationalism and popularist reactionary politics are on the increase. In this regard, it is crucial that Black people read the Bible in a manner that accords with Black existential experience.

Black experience and the Bible My point of departure when engaging with the Bible is that of Black existential experience. My radical or polemical assertion is that in all truth, the Bible does not give human faithful communities authority, because the Bible has no authority other than that which the Church, as the main faithful interpretative community, has given it. In effect, we give the Bible authority by means of the presuppositions we hold, which are then read into the Bible, rather than the other way around. Essentially, we give the Bible authority. But many argue that the converse is the case! When what we believe to be true is validated by the Bible, biblical authority as understood in terms of literal truth is preserved and respected. Conversely, when our own presuppositions are at odds with the biblical witness, we construct alternative reading strategies to reframe what we believe to

138  Responding to the challenge be true; these result in the Bible being ‘contextual’, ‘of its time’ and only a guide, not a rule book. Black theology’s belief in the primacy of the Black experience of suffering is such that the seemingly fundamentalist notions that equate the Bible directly with God’s own self are summarily rejected. The point of departure in my engagement with the Bible as a Black theologian is that the realities of Black suffering and struggle provide the hermeneutical framework for how I  interpret the Scriptures. The underlying theological perspective that shapes my approach to engaging with the Bible is one that seeks to use Black Christian experience as a part of the arsenal of Black theology’s method of thinking about God, in light of Black experiences of struggle and marginalisation. Black theology, reflecting on the Black experience in light of religious themes, has sought to use this ongoing dialectic between Black people and the Bible.10 In terms of Black theology’s method, Dwight Hopkins writes about Black people in the United States, the home of Black theology: The second building block in the development of a black theology of liberation is a rereading of the bible from the perspective of the majority of society, those who are poor and working people. Black theology of liberation believes in a relationship between God’s freeing activity in the African-American community and that same liberating activity documented in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. In contrast to dominant ideas about theology, which claim to offer impartial thinking or talking about God, black theology sees and experiences the spirit of freedom clearly on the side of the African-American poor.11 Black people have sought to use their experiences and realities of struggle and hardship as a means of reading themselves into Scripture to ‘tell a new story’ about the Black self to the world and, indeed, to one’s very self. It is a process of moving from being ‘nobodies to somebodies’.12 However, the Bible is not an innocent text. What I mean by this is that it has the power invested in it by human beings who believe that it can transform and energise human experience. Therefore, given its importance, this makes it incumbent on us to not take it lightly. One cannot ignore the reality that the Bible has been used to justify slavery, colonisation, rape and homophobic violence.13 It has also been used as a weapon against Black people. That is why Black biblical scholars like Randall Bailey and Oral Thomas talk about the need to read against the text.14 In fact, Bailey, whom I would identify as the doyen of sociopolitical, ideological readings of the Bible, asserts the importance of interpretation that is commensurate with one’s own religio-cultural bias.15 Black Christianity’s alignment with supporting mission Christianity is a form of self-negation that ignores the material realities that should inform one’s posture to alleged religious and political truth, and this should be remembered in how Black people should read the Bible.16

Reading the Bible 139 Reading against the text comes with the realisation that the construction and development of biblical texts represent the active involvement of human beings in context, often writing in light of their material interests when trying to talk about God’s revelation. Inspired by the scholarship of Bailey and, more recently, Thomas,17 I believe that biblical texts are better understood as a sacred ‘Word about God’ rather than ‘the Word of God’. That is, they are not nuggets of God-dictated prose that fell from the heavens in an unadulterated form. The challenge posed by the assertion that every part of the Bible is normative in its supposed truth is the epistemological one: whose truth? Whose interests are being asserted if we claim that every aspect of the biblical texts are to be read as containing normative truth that is applicable to all people, in all contexts, at all times? With this in mind, Black theology needs to enable ordinary Black people to become increasingly aware of the ideological power of the Bible. It is incumbent on all of us to remind ourselves of the need to engage with it faithfully but critically. This relationship between Black human experience and the Bible represents the central resource for and the basic thrust of Black theology. It is because of this basic thrust for Black self-determination, but also the desire to free White people from the heresy of White supremacy, that I am arguing for a Black theology–inspired approach to engaging with the Bible, in which the needs of disenfranchised and marginalised peoples are placed centrally in the hermeneutical process for determining truth.

Ideological challenges in reading the Bible in dialogue with Black experience The tension of reading the Bible in light of Black human experience is the challenge of holding together dialectical truths. This is the tension of being able to read ‘biblical truths’ in light of one’s contextual realities. This form of hermeneutical engagement is one that draws on the landmark work of W.E.B. Dubois and his seminal text The Souls of Black Folk.18 Elsewhere, I  have argued that Dubois’s notion of ‘double-consciousness’ has proved a helpful framework for articulating Black theological discourse, in which the Black self has had limited options in which to navigate the rough and often vicious vicissitudes of life.19 In short, Black people can read against the text and with it, depending on how the text aligns itself with the popular imagination of Black people from within a wider framework of diasporan African cultures and the often troubled and stunted humanity within such socioreligious settings. My Black theology–driven approach to reading the Bible is one that is concerned with enabling Black people to develop liberationist and subversive readings of biblical texts in order to promote more holistic and emancipatory forms of human living.20 This Black liberative approach is one that starts with the reality of oppression and struggle that has impacted Black people in history, particularly during the epoch of slavery and later during

140  Responding to the challenge colonialism and neo-colonialism. This approach is the one that I have largely deployed in my work as a Black theologian: seeking to connect what exists within the biblical text with the material realities of poor, oppressed Black people in history that occur in front of the text, seeking to bring the two into a critical conversation. Central to this type of reading is the connection between the biblical text and one’s experiences of struggle. This relationship represents the central resource for and the basic thrust of Black theology. What has been important in this consideration is how the ideas and concerns of Black theology can assist ordinary Black people to continue the faithful challenge of seeking to bring their experiences into critical conversation with sacred narratives.21 I continue my assessment of this task by making recourse to a comment I have made in a previous publication regarding Black existential experience and our ongoing relationship, as people of African descent, with the Bible. On that occasion I stated that My belief in the sacredness of the Black self is such that the existential realities of Black experience sit in dialogue alongside the biblical text and are not subservient to it. As I have often said to Black participants in the workshops and classes I teach, when having to defend my theological method; “Black experience has an integrity of its own, which is not subservient to the biblical text. I have no evidence to believe that when the author of any biblical text was writing, they had my reality as a Black person in mind as they were doing so”.22 The latter statement has been made in light of many years of struggle and painful reflection for me and for countless numbers of Black people the world over. Many will argue that sacred Scripture is of a wholly different character and category than the text of Black experience and Black story. While I can appreciate the rationale that gives rise to this form of analysis, I  reject it as being one that ultimately seeks to devalue the sanctity and sacred nature of Black experience and Black story. I  cannot countenance any form of analysis that will not accord the highest level of respect for the Black human self and Black bodies. In effect, I am arguing that in the case of this work, which is providing a theological thrust to Brexit, Black humanity (as in the case for all humanity) is in effect the very summit of God’s creative potential in the world. The dispensability of Black life at the hands of White hegemony, which finds expression in the form of the casual dismemberment of Black bodies,23 is too recent an experience for us to surrender the potentialities of our God-created self to the fixity of a written text. Thinking back to the British referendum on the European Union, I am in no doubt that when White Christian leaders failed to denounce the nationalistic thrust of the Leave campaign, what was not uppermost in their minds was the existential needs of Black and minority people, many of whom were members of their churches, who were being scapegoated by right-wing popularists. If White hegemonic power was not

Reading the Bible 141 going to protect the interests of Black people and other visible minorities, then it is incumbent on us to ensure that we have hermeneutical strategies that will protect our own interests. To suggest that Black bodies and the experiences that arise from their material and spiritual engagement with the cultural milieux in which they are housed are not sacred texts opens up the possibilities of Black non-being through oppression. And while I  accept that privileging the Bible before Black experience does not necessarily imply that one is seeking to dismember the Black self, I  argue that the litany of suffering and oppression for Black humanity, often using the Bible as a form of justification, is too recent a historical phenomenon to even dare to concede the privileging of biblical texts over and above the living reality of Black existential experience.24 I have been known to state to students and adult laypeople in the churches with whom I have worked in workshop settings that “The Bible has nothing to say until we open it and engage with it”. The Bible itself is a witness to God’s self, but it should not be confused with God’s being. God is beyond the Bible. The Bible is not God! The theological concept of ‘the imago dei’ confirms the anthropology of Black people and counters the notion that our bodies are not sacred texts on which the divine author, God, has written (and continues to do so) God’s own sacred narrative. Black story, when placed in relationship with the Bible, offers opportunities for ordinary Black people to reread the Scriptures so that a Black political, theological hermeneutic can emerge. This approach to reimaging Black theology allows us to reinterpret the essential meaning of the Christian faith in light of Black experience. I know that there are those who hold a more evangelical perspective on the Christian faith and would suggest that this method for reading the Bible does not take seriously the God-inspired authorship of the biblical text. They would point to the often-quoted words of 2 Timothy 3:16 that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” as a proof text for arguing in favour of the transcendent, trans-historical meaning of biblical texts. In this particular theological and biblical schema, the Bible is, for many, beyond criticism and cannot be compared to any other text, literary or human. My belief in the sacredness of the Black self is such that the existential realities of Black experience sit in dialogue alongside the biblical text and are not subservient to it. The Black story that resides in front of the page not only has integrity of its own but reminds us that no community reads the Bible outside of its context and the experiences that shape their interpretive framework. That is, no one reads the Bible in neutral fashion. What happens in front of the page always has a bearing on what is read within the text itself. As an addendum to my previous remarks, I am at pains to add that I am not suggesting that Black experience has no regard for or completely ignores

142  Responding to the challenge the biblical text. My argument is that Black Christian radicalism has invariably found ways of linking Black experience to the biblical text to affirm the troubled existence of the Black self.25 In effect, there is an ongoing dialectic between Black experience and the Bible. In using this approach to Black theology as a means of reinterpreting the Christian faith, thereby creating a liberative agenda for the praxis of Black life, it is my hope that this schema will resource and enable Black people to move beyond passivity to active radicalism.26 The biblical literalism of many Black Christians in Britain is one that has been challenged by scholars such as Robert Beckford.27 This form of rigidity in engaging with sacred texts has often had the negative effect of stymieing the liberative praxis of Black Christian expression in Britain, as Black Christian leaders have often spent more time aligning themselves with religio-political positions that are inimical to Black existential freedom, at the behest of wanting to appear orthodox. One can see this in the posture of some Black Christian leaders who have aligned themselves with reactionary conservative politics around the issue of human sexuality. As a Black liberation theologian, I am wholly committed to the cause of human liberation for all people, including my LGBTQI+ and other comrades. I am not naïve enough to assume that most Black Christians think the way I do on such matters, and I am not sufficiently arrogant to presuppose that I am the absolute arbiter of truth on these complex matters. What I  do know, however, is that the White conservative proponents opposing LGBTQI+ thrusts for equality are often the same people who are pro-empire and pro-Christian values and who favour a form of White entitlement that wants to preserve the status quo. These sociopolitical positionings are ones that are usually antagonistic to the type of progressive changes in society across the West that have actually benefited Black people. So in opposing one particular issue (as if Black LGBTQI+ people do not exist within Black Christianity), many Black Christian leaders seem happy to align themselves with proponents who, outside of this narrow coalition issue, often have no commitment to Black self-determination whatsoever. A Black theology approach to reading biblical texts is one that seeks to give rise to a renewed activist-based perspective on Black activity. This Black theology approach to rereading the Bible is one that challenges the ahistorical pietism or abstract spiritualisation of conservative interpretations of the Christian faith. A Black theology, reader-response approach to reading the Bible speaks to the historical commitment of Black people to never settle for anything less than their God-given right to be free. The central thrust of this approach to reading the Bible, particularly in light of Brexit, is that the Black self that sits in front of the biblical texts matters every bit as the alleged truths that lie within it. In the next section of this essay, I examine the complexity of that Black self and argue that it is the sociopolitical and contextual realities of our metaphorical and literal journeys that make any simple recourse to biblicism both unhelpful

Reading the Bible 143 and ultimately unworkable. Black bodies are complex, as we have seen in previous chapters. The complex ways in which Black identities and experiences have been constructed are such that any simple binary for what constitutes authentic belonging within the Christian family should be rejected. Rather, what I propose at this juncture is a commitment to affirming the multiple religious identities of Black people, our heterogeneity that eschews any simplistic recourse to notions of ‘saving Christian Britain’ or asserting that we are ‘Christian’ before we are ‘Black’, as if that were even possible. The painful truth that Black Christianity must never forget is that ‘being Christian’ or being faithful followers of Christ never saved us from having our bodies stolen and broken or our lands usurped, often by White believers of the same religious code as ourselves. Therefore, placing orthodoxy before praxis has always been a fool’s errand. Black experience needs to embrace our heterodox religio-cultural journeys and to reject any rigid binary of ‘in’ or ‘out’, ‘acceptable’ or ‘transgressive’, as these suit the machinations of White hegemony and not the pragmatic needs of Black self-­determination and existential freedom. In effect, Black liberationist readings of the Bible must be aligned with the internal complexity of our identities that are beyond the limited, conscripted notions of being ‘Christian’ and belonging to imperial mission Christianity that limits our agency, as I outlined in chapter 2.

Multiple religious belonging Multiple religious belonging is a natural part of Caribbean life. In using the term ‘multiple religious belonging’, I  am speaking of a phenomenon where religious adherents do not self-identify as belonging to one religious code or tradition in any exclusive or solitary sense. Rather, such individuals identify as belonging (in whatever sense one seeks to define such terms) to more than one code or tradition, not necessarily in equal or co-terminus terms, meaning they can divide themselves as being specifically half Christian or half Muslim or some of other type of crude division.28 Although I self-identify as a ‘Christian’, I have always been aware of the other dimensions of my life that are heterodox and do not adhere to normative Christian practice. Reflecting back on my formative upbringing within a staunchly nonconformist, evangelical Christian home, the formative traits that helped to define truth for me still remain even though I often now find myself in opposition to them in a number of ways. And yet I remain a stubborn creature of habit. I  remain my mother’s son despite the additional layers of sociocultural, scholarly redaction on my life and my concomitant experiences. So while I have grown to become much more critically sceptical of the claims made for seemingly normative evangelical Protestant Christianity, my development and training to become a liberation theologian have taught me to be a critically sceptical Christian believer.

144  Responding to the challenge In terms of my contemporary practice as an African Caribbean Christian, I  have learnt from my mother and grandmother that one places a Bible, open at the psalms, on one’s bed when absent from the room. I still believe that there is a residual power within the sacred book to fight powers and principalities and elements unseen and yet deeply real within our experience of the world. This example I have just given is evident of my multiple ways of belonging, in that the fact that placing a religious book, in this case the Bible, on one’s bed to ward off malignant spirits is a facet of African-derived religious sensibilities and not orthodox Protestant evangelicalism. I  am a child of my parents, especially my mother, but even her identity was complex in that her own practices were a matrix of different ways of belonging. The practice of opening the Bible at the psalms when not in the room finds accord with the work of Dianne Stewart and her highly influential book Three Eyes for the Journey29 and the relationship between African-derived religions and Christianity in Jamaica. Opening the Bible to ‘run unclean spirits’ is not evangelical Protestant Christianity, but neither is it traditional African religion or akin to anything that might be understood as that in the classical sense in continental Africa. This form of religious practice is definitely heterodox and reflects the alternative religious perspectives that make African Caribbean people like me and my mother something more than just conventional Christians but something less than being formal members of a different religious orientation.30 Please do not ask me to deconstruct this for you. Do not ask me to consider the extent to which this is simply a form of learnt behaviour or an example of the debilitating false consciousness about which many of our Marxists friends have warned or even a culturally retentive example of the pre-Christian fear of the spirits amongst African peoples.31 For my mother and many of her generation, who had migrated to the United Kingdom from the Caribbean, life was lived between the intersections of the surface reality, in which racism, discrimination and being perceived as second-class citizens was juxtaposed with a subterranean form of epistemology that spoke of the mendacity and the egregious nature of the former. The lives of Black people of the Windrush Generation were ones that sought to make sense of this layered reality to life in Britain by way of a rich diet of religio-cultural repertoire that sought to interrogate the surface realities of life through a subterranean framework of often concealed practices that critiqued the world of White normality for its veracity or lack thereof. My mother’s faith was part of a larger repertoire of religio-cultural experiences that frame the broader contours of this chapter on reading the Bible, for my mother’s faith was also a strongly evangelical and Bible-based form of believing. What my mother’s faith exemplified was a complex, embodied matrix in which her life and the lives of many of her peers evinced the dialectical negotiation between the evangelical Protestant version of Christianity and the subterranean religio-cultural patterns of African-derived religious sensibilities. The life of my mother moved simultaneously between

Reading the Bible 145 both modes of being, holding them together, as complex forms of dialectical spiritualities.32 The basis of this work is that African and Caribbean people are invariably never one thing or the other but rather complex matrices of multiple influences and perspectives. For many Black Caribbean people, for example, their general theism and theology enables them to hold a dialectical perspective on reality. This dialectical sensibility is one that argues against the monological strains of Brexit and the adherence to a bounded set of tribal identities and loyalties that sees Britishness as separate and separated from others. The complex amalgam of Black religious traditions and sensibilities falls within the theorised parameters outlined by scholars such as Albert Raboteau33 and Robert Hood.34 Their work is characterised, in particular, by a pervasive sense of the work of the spirit(s) in Black life. The spirit offers different ways of knowing35 and provides an alternative, parallel reality to the concrete nature of the immediate built environment that most commonly confronts us.36 The opening of the Bible to repel malignant and rogue spirits in the material world accords with the pervasive reality of the spirit world. The existence and manifestation of spirits in the lives of African people has been explored in exemplary fashion by Esther Acolatse.37 Acolatse’s work explores the pastoral implications of being immersed in a world of the pervasive presence of the spirits and the cognisance of Africans to issues of divination and deliverance ministries. Acolatse, writing as a reformed theologian, is aware of the tension in Black religious and theological discourse surrounding the relationship between the spirits and the Holy Spirit.38 The latter is contained within a distinct Christian framework that is often seen as being anathema to or simply separate from and superior to the former.39 Ethnographic research by African scholars is exploring the complexities of this discourse.40 Acolatse’s theological perspective is more critical of the collapsing of Christian and other forms of spiritualities, and she finds this problematic. In this work, I am not abiding by such orthodox or reformed Christian strictures. Drawing on the work of Hood41 and, more recently, Stewart,42 I will work with the clear intentionality that the spiritualities of Black people extend way beyond the often-constricting limitations of Hellenistic-­influenced orthodox Christianity. To me, the constrictions of Hellenistic-influenced orthodox Christianity lie in the assumptions around binary notions of being, namely the demarcation between normative orthodoxy and the heterodoxical other. It seemed clear to me observing my mother that any simplistic notion of her religious identities and concomitant spiritualities being simple monoperspectival trajectories was an erroneous one. The churches to which she belonged, the Jamaica Baptist Union in the Caribbean and Methodist in the United Kingdom, would like to believe that her religious identities were subsumed by attendance at orthodox, historical forms of evangelical Christianity. However, there lay beneath the outer edifice of religious orthodoxy

146  Responding to the challenge ways of being and knowing that speak to alternative subjectivities that echo to an African-derived past. My mother never acknowledged the alternate, subterranean nature of African spiritualities within the context of the African-derived religions that provided the larger cosmological, epistemological framework that informed her life. This dialectical, epistemological framing for the religiosity of African Caribbean people connotes the deepest ontological basis for apprehending the nature of their humanity. The complexity of diasporan African religiosity represents the core basis of what it means to be a Black human being. The subterranean means by which my mother engaged in covert forms of religio-cultural dimensions of African-derived religion through leaving her Bible open on her bed to ward off malignant and rogue spirits was an instinctive response to White imperial attempts to objectify Black people. This concealed form of African-derived religion is an affirmation of the African self against the privations imposed on it by imperial mission Christianity. I have written about the anti-Black sentiments inculcated into diasporan and continental Africans by colonial missionary Christianity in previous pieces of work43 and more recently in the previous chapters of this book. I argue that the inherited practice of leaving my Bible open on my bed is a means of challenging the anti-Black epistemological bias of colonial mission Christianity’s emphasis on tacit Whiteness and Eurocentric superiority. In the words of Robert Hood, Must God Remain Greek?44 Hood’s work explores the existence of African-derived religions within the ‘New World’ of the Americas and the Caribbean and illustrates how these varying and similar modes of African religio-cultural practices exist as forms of African retention and subversive ripostes to White colonial Christianity.45 Hood’s work provides the larger historical and theoretical grounding for the belief that diasporan African people – in my case, African Caribbean peoples  – live within a matrix of multiple religious belonging. This contention is complicated by the fact that the alternate dimension in our religio-cultural identities remains concealed and subterranean in form and cannot be apprehended in the normative, bounded ways in which recognised religions are accorded definitional respect and identity by religious scholars. Alongside the seeming normality of conventional, evangelical Protestantism, there has been the eclectic, complex interaction and the incorporation of alternative epistemologies and schemas of thought, which have long been a part of the theological and hermeneutical repertoire of Black people. Caribbean Canadian religious scholar Carol Duncan has used the religious phenomenon of the Spiritual Baptist tradition in Toronto as a means of reflecting on the multiple religious identities of its adherents in Canada.46 Duncan’s ethnographic research provides critical insight into how African Canadians are able to embrace the complex subjectivities and intercultural identities that are embodied in their contemporary religious practices of the

Reading the Bible 147 Spiritual Baptist tradition. Duncan offers thick descriptions for how Spiritual Baptist adherents seek to embody a complex amalgam of influences and cultures that straddle any simple binary of being African or European, Christian or traditional African religion followers.47 Black Christianity sits in negotiation with indigenous religious traditions and spiritualities, with this ongoing nexus for mutuality and cooperation remaining a live issue in many religio-cultural settings across the world. Comparatively recent work from The International Association for Black Religions and Spiritualities48 has sought to illuminate how one can juxtapose ‘traditional’ models of post-Constantinian Christian faith with other forms of religious expression and spiritualities. This work shows what can be done even in contexts where Christianity has been the less-than-benign harbinger for the acceptance of indigenous religions and spiritualities.49 For many Black Christians, particularly in Britain, the Caribbean and the United States, they remain located within contexts in which the Christian faith was and is an inviolate guarantor for the normativity of what might be described as authentic religious expression. That is, to talk about a person of faith is to be a Christian.50 The religious frameworks in which I was socialised did not permit any sense of dialogue with that which was considered to be the ‘other’, whether in terms of ‘non-belief’ or heterodox belief. The White Western evangelical Christianity of empire and colonialism was seen as undoubtedly true and its supposed superiority was not to be questioned. In effect, I and many others were socialised into believing the blandishments of the religion of empire and to be sole believers in a Christian church that had long since learnt to give homage to Caesar as well as Christ.51 In creating a critical coming together between what might be considered orthodox or heterodox, normative or aberrant, conventional or transgressive, I argue that an expansive and inclusive understanding of Black Christianity and its adherence to the Bible and how one reads it as a Black person must steer us beyond unreconstructed binaries located in the fading horizons of the past. The Christianity of the evangelical revival that has influenced my upbringing remains a powerful means of describing Black Christianity across the world. In our engagement with the Bible, Black people should acknowledge that our religio-cultural identities cannot be contained within nor restricted to mission Christianity and what people dictated as orthodoxy. This religio-cultural dialectic within all-Black Christians arises through the ongoing tensions between Imperial mission Christianity as the harbinger of White normality and entitlement and the Black self that has always attempted to make sense of the former while trying to affirm the latter. The underlying tension in the epistemological framework of Black Christianity is one that seeks to wrestle with the ongoing relationship between faith and empire. The phenomenological bases of the Christian superstructure, juxtaposed with the trans-global tentacles of imperialism, are concerns that have been conveniently under-examined for some time, as this book has shown. The critical challenge of seeking to enable Black Christianity to free itself

148  Responding to the challenge of the stultifying limitations of Imperial mission Christianity must begin with the acknowledgement that as postcolonial subjects, our adherence to the Christian faith must not be commensurate with or be overly reliant on White hegemony for its raison d’être. In exploring Black liberationist readings of the Bible in light of Black existential experience, the reality that multiple religious belonging is commensurate with our deepest ontological notions of self has been helpful. That is, we are more than any one simple cipher that wishes to construe the nature of our belonging, whether to Imperial mission Christianity, the Bible or indeed the British state. The important facet of multiple religious belonging lies in the range of the complexities of the subjectivities and the positionalities of postcolonial bodies within the milieu of the Christian faith and the concomitant divinities after empire. I believe that the facet of belonging in multiple religious ways to different forms of religiosity provides us with a form of postcolonial framework that offers us myriad forms of critical perspectives that eschew the kind of rigid binaries that seem to be normative within the epistemological frameworks that are often wedded to the epoch of modernity. Central to the developing theories of postcolonial discourse is the notion of hybridity. Hybridity is the realisation that at the heart of all colonial and postcolonial epochs and religio-cultural milieux is the sense of an ongoing dialectical contestation between notions of insider versus outsider, the centre versus the margins, pure versus miscegenation and perhaps, most crucially of all, the struggle for the meaning of so-called authentic language.52 This form of theoretical analysis challenges us to reflect on whether it is possible to undertake the semantic step backwards into various forms of seemingly uncontaminated indigenous identities, given that as human beings we can never construct our subjectivity outside of history. This latter question arises from the counter-assertion to mission Christianity mounted by more Afrocentric models of the Christian faith that seek to return Black people to a mythical pre-colonisation past.53 My charge is not that such formulations of Christianity are not helpful, even desirable; it is simply whether there is any substantive way in which the politics of cultural return can be affected for Black people outside of history. And what does this mean for how one reads the Bible? In effect, if one is still adhering to relatively conservative modes of hermeneutical strategies that reify patriarchy, classism and heteronormativity, then how are the strictures of empire and neo-colonialism really being overturned?54 A sensibility of multiple religious belonging that is informed by a postcolonial framework is one that can enable Black Christianity to view the Bible in a respectfully critical way. This mode of theological engagement is one that holds in dialectical tension the struggle between competing and possibly adversarial modes of being, even within the context of the one-faith, one-baptism and one-Lord dictum of the Christian church.

Reading the Bible 149

Critical challenges posed by this work This chapter is an invitation to explore what it means to be a ‘Christian’ or to be influenced by or engaging with the ‘Christian tradition’, at the intersection of indigenous and multifarious connections that connote self in the 21st century. How does one make sense of the often-contested meanings and nuances of what such terms mean when juxtaposed with the Bible in particular and the notion of the body of Christ and the Christian faith as a whole? How does one read the Bible in light of our modes of multiple religious belonging, in the body politic of postcolonial Brexit Britain? Can Black people reject the monological claims of Christian Britain and the incendiary bombast of White nationalism from mission Christianity? The questions I am posing in this chapter in light of Brexit remain deeply challenging for all churches given the rise of Black Christianity in Britain, in its various guises. Can Black majority and White majority churches develop looser, more-improvised and more-eclectic perspectives on the Bible and biblical studies that take account of the need for people to move beyond the constrictions of binary ways of being? Can we assist people to reject the monological optics of Brexit that place British and English nationalism as a bounded conception that rejects the other? Can we develop liberationist and postcolonial optics to the Bible that will enhance and affirm the dignity of people through their exploration of the relationship between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and the spiritual and material product that is Christianity? This work will assist in providing the means by which one establishes the importance of postcolonial hybridised people in their contemporary time and space. Yet the question remains: how successfully can the subaltern reimagine the substantive meaning of the Christian faith in general and the Bible in particular when the dictates of what is construed as orthodoxy and normativity were produced in epochs and contexts that resonate with the power of the centre and not the margins? In short, for those of us who are engaged in subversive, counternarrative discourses regarding the movement of the divine within the religio-cultural framework of Christianity, are we indulging in a wholesale scholarly conceit? More specifically, we know our work cannot achieve, even remotely, any of its stated aims; the constructive power of the tradition is in effect an unyielding and reified structure that resists the claims of postcolonial scholars to remake and rethink it. And yet we persist because to stop would force us to have to confront the manner of our futility. To what extent can multiple religious belonging, located within the larger frameworks of postcolonial discourse, exert any meaningful challenge to the hegemony of imperial Christendom and its dangerous offshoot, namely Brexit? To what extent is the presence of so much clerical privilege in the massed ranks of postcolonial Christian theological discourse a sign of the co-option of the movement by those who are pretending to be poachers when in effect they have always occupied the role of gamekeepers? Is it

150  Responding to the challenge possible to reimagine the divine after empire when the Bible has been coopted to represent the blandishments of imperialism and White supremacy? Then there is the question of the ongoing colonisation of the mind, even of those who are purporting to be amongst the conscientised who are advocating change. I hope I am not alone in questioning my positionality as a so-called radical scholar who works from within a Christian tradition in the United Kingdom that gains its support (financial as well as organisational) from the most colonially minded of churches that continue to lament the passing of Christendom and empire. Is this an exercise in mass deception?

Final reflections This chapter  has explored Black liberationist approaches to reading the Bible. Its initial point of departure has been the recognition of the Black self in front of the Bible when it is opened and read. This Black self, I am arguing, is a sacred body, as sacred as the written text we have been taught to revere. I am arguing that if more time were given to revering Black bodies alongside ancient texts, slavery and colonialism would have looked very different from the purview of Christianity. Adopting a radical, liberationist model of reading the Bible, one that affirms Black bodies and their concomitant experiences, is essential if we are to use biblical texts as means of eschewing the tribalism and xenophobia of Brexit. This work has also explored concealed dimensions of African-derived religions in the experiences of African Caribbean people. The secondary point of departure was the African religio-cultural retentive practices of my mother, which I have inherited and continue to practise. I learnt from personal experience that the submerged dimensions of multiple religious belonging are not relegated solely to the concealed practices of my mother or myself. In a previous piece of research that I  undertook with African Caribbean elders in the late 1990s, I  witnessed first-hand the heterogeneous religious beliefs they held and the extent to which they concealed these forms of practices.55 I shall return to this work in the final chapter of this book, because I believe that the legacy of the Windrush Generation represents the most visible and telling riposte to the racism and manifest Whiteness of Brexit. In this chapter, I have attempted to recognise the concealed and submerged African-derived religio-cultural practices and beliefs of African Caribbean people. Given the transgressive reputation that these beliefs and practices have gained due to the demonisation of them by colonial regimes in the 18th and 19th centuries, I understand why they have remained concealed.56 My argument in this chapter is not for the full expression of such beliefs. First, I remain unconvinced that many African Caribbean people will feel comfortable revealing aspects of these subterranean belief structures and practices, given the level of vituperation that has been heaped on such African-­derived traditions. Dianne Stewart outlines the anti-African expressions replete in

Reading the Bible 151 colonial missionary Christianity and the epistemological grounding that asserted the superiority of Eurocentric aesthetics and cultures.57 Second, I believe that the concealed nature of such beliefs and practices remain an important means of subversive resistance to the blandishments of imperial missionary Christianity and the tyranny of respectability that is often replete in the bourgeois conventions of church for many Black people on the margins of African and Caribbean societies. I am interested in how we can assist African Caribbean people to better own their complex subjectivities and to do so as part of their wider repertoire for what it means to be human. Black theology has always been concerned with Black agency and self-determination. I believe that acknowledging and accessing the concealed and subterranean religious identity of African Caribbean people can provide greater agency for enabling such individuals to resist the anti-Blackness of imperial, colonial, missionary Christianity and so offer an embodied challenge to everything that Brexit represents, particularly, its tacit Whiteness. The critical dialectic between Christianity and African-derived religions remains an ongoing site of tension, but I believe that there is agency and creativity in this continued nexus. I see no need to try to resolve this tension or argue for the capitulation of one over the other. Rather, I see this critical dialectic as a form of complex subjectivity that does not need to be regulated or amended, as it connotes the lived realities and ingenuity of Black people. Of greatest importin this chapter, however, is the necessity for ordinary people to be encouraged to use their multiple religiously informed selves to read their existential selves into biblical texts and to see what is and what is not said. Reading ‘into’ or ‘between’ the text – that is, using one’s experience to read ‘what is not said’ in the text – is one of the staple ingredients of a Black liberationist approach to reading the Bible. This type of approach is informed by what many scholars call a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’; this means that one reads the Bible in an ideological way, looking with suspicion and thinking critically about how the power relations and structures are in evidence in the text. It is the critical insight and consciousness to challenge the norms of who is empowered and disempowered by the assertion of particular themes and ideas as being truth. This form of reading challenges ordinary people to ask important generative questions: • • • •

Who has power in this story? Who is disadvantaged? Who benefits or who loses out? How is God’s liberative presence displayed in the text, or how is it denied?

These questions and concerns sit at the heart of this form of hermeneutical engagement with the biblical text. In the post-Brexit era, Black theology is arguing vociferously for a renewed belief that the kingdom of God remains incompatible with White privileged forms of English nationalism. As I have asserted, it begins with

152  Responding to the challenge the belief that the kingdom of God is incompatible with the present world system, as millions of poor people experience it on a daily basis. The rise of right-wing populist rhetoric, in which minority ethnic people on the margins are used as the scapegoats by rich White politicians who have hoodwinked poor White people into trusting them and demonising other poor people, has to be resisted. A Black liberationist reading of the Bible is one that is rooted in the leftist politics of Black theology, which begins with the radical, countercultural nature of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God speaks against all notions of exploitation of the poor and the vested self-interests of the rich and powerful. Black theology has used the sociopolitical criticism of Black biblical scholars, such as African-American Hebrew scholar Randall Bailey,58 South African biblical scholar Itumeleng Mosala59 and Caribbean biblical scholar Oral Thomas.60 Each of them has offered an alternative understanding of God’s justice to that found in colonially inspired models of Imperial mission Christianity that have helped to give rise to Brexit. These scholars have helped to shape a Black theology perspective on reading the Bible. Their work starts from the belief that all knowledge and truth is a struggle for power. This struggle is one between those who can assert their own perspectives – such as the powerful White elite, often pseudo-Christian Conservative MPs, whose belief in the manifest destiny of White English people (as described in previous chapters) triggered the referendum in the first place – and those who are often denied power. This chapter has shown that there is always an ideological battle in how we read the Bible. The Bible can be read as a radical challenge to the status quo, particularly when it is interpreted in light of human experiences of marginalisation and oppression. Black theology challenges any normative perspective on the Bible that allows those with power to align God’s will and agreement with their actions, especially if this is done at the expense of those on the margins. For the Bible to be a source for liberation and transformation for those who are oppressed (in this case, migrants, especially asylum seekers and refugees) and to be a source of challenge to those rightwing ideologues whose myopic vision of Britain triggered Brexit, then we will all have to learn to read the biblical text with an eye as to who often wins and who loses when the Bible is read in terms of our social contexts. A Black theology approach to reading the Bible does not pretend to be neutral. Neither does it see all parts of the canon, especially the oppressive elements of it, as being the ‘Word of God’. For God to be one of righteousness and justice for all people, particularly those who are poor and on the margins, some part of the Bible needs to be seen as a ‘Word about God’ as opposed to anything that represents God’s actual self. This is a difficult perspective for many people to accept, given how the Bible has been propagated as ‘God’s word’. In the final analysis, we all need to ask ourselves, what matters most  – defending orthodoxy, often propagated and patrolled by the powerful and those with authority, or defending the

Reading the Bible 153 marginalised and the oppressed? In the age of Brexit, there is no room for sitting on the fence.

Notes 1 Please note the important semantic difference between my notion of articulating theology and the doing of theology. The latter, for me, represents a more engaged dynamic in which ideas and talk about God are undertaken through a participative framework in which ordinary people are actively involved in the process of theological exploration and articulation. This commitment can be seen in three of my books. See Anthony G. Reddie Acting in Solidarity: Reflections in Critical Christianity (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005); Dramatizing Theologies: A Participative Approach to Black God Talk (London: Equinox, 2006); Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Is God Colour Blind? (London: SPCK, 2009). The more ‘traditional’ mode of articulating theology, as in the works of many systematic and constructive theologians, does not necessarily contain any component to actually engage with people in the development of one’s theological ideas or concerns. 2 Aspects of my participative form of Black theology-based hermeneutics can be found in Anthony G. Reddie SCM Core Text: Black Theology (London: SCM Press, 2012). See also Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie Black Theology in Britain: A Reader (London and Philadelphia: Acumen, 2007). 3 I have often used this term alongside that of the shorter nomenclature ‘Black theology’. I see the two as synonymous since Black theology was conceived as a theology of liberation. I shall use both terms interchangeably during the course of this essay. 4 See James H. Cone A Black Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986). 5 One of the classic texts that has helped me in this work comes from a great Black theologian and biblical scholar in South Africa. See Itumeleng J. Mosala Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa (Grand Rapids, MI: W.M.B Eerdmans, 1989). Of equal import is Musa W. Dube Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2000). 6 See Kwok Pui-Lan’s excellent text on this: Kwok Pui-Lan Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005). 7 See Robert E. Hood Must God Remain Greek? Afro-Cultures and God-Talk (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990). See also Gay L. Byron Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature (New York: Routledge, 2002). 8 In my role as co-editor of the Cross Cultural Theologies series, I commissioned an international text that sought to articulate the broad range of Black religions and spiritualities that exist across the world. See Dwight N. Hopkins and Marjorie Lewis Another World Is Possible: Spiritualities and Religions of Global Darker Peoples (London and Philadelphia: Acumen, 2009). 9 See Anthony G. Reddie ‘Not Just Seeing, But Really Seeing: A Practical Black Liberationist Spirituality for Re-Interpreting Reality’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.7, No.3, 2009, pp. 339–365. 10 See Vincent L. Wimbush (ed.) African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (New York and London: Continuum, 2000); Vincent L. Wimbush The Bible and African Americans: A  Brief History (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003); Michael Joseph Brown Blackening of the Bible: The Aims of African American Biblical Scholarship (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press

154  Responding to the challenge International, 2004); Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth (ed.) Righting Her-Story: Caribbean Women Encounter the Bible Story (Geneva: The World Communion of Reformed Churches, 2011). 11 See Dwight N. Hopkins Introducing Black Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), p. 23. 12 This term was the theme of one of my earlier books. See Anthony G. Reddie Nobodies to Somebodies: A  Practical Theology for Education and Liberation (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2003). 13 The Bible was a key tool in justifying the enslavement of African people. Two amongst the many texts in this area are Stephen R. Haynes Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of Slavery (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). See also Sylvester A. Johnson The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 14 See Randall C. Bailey ‘The Danger of Ignoring One’s Own Cultural Bias in Interpreting the Text’. In R.S. Sugirtharajah (ed.) The Postcolonial Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 66–90; Randall C. Bailey ‘But It’s in the Text! Slavery, the Bible, and the African Diaspora’. In Anthony G. Reddie (ed.) Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 31–46. See also Oral Thomas Biblical Resistance Hermeneutics Within a Caribbean Context (Oakwood and London: Equinox, 2010). 15 Randall C. Bailey ‘The Danger of Ignoring One’s Own Cultural Bias in Interpreting the Text’, pp. 66–90. 16 See Randall C. Bailey ‘But It’s in the Text! Slavery, the Bible, and the African Diaspora’, pp. 31–46. 17 See Oral Thomas ‘A Resistant Biblical Hermeneutic Within the Caribbean’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.6, No.3, 2008, pp. 330–342. 18 See W.E.B. Dubois The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Bantam Press, 1989). 19 See Anthony G. Reddie Dramatizing Theologies, pp. 97–98. 20 A key text in this regard is Hugh R. Page, Jr (General Editor) The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010). 21 An important text in this regard is Garth Kasimu Baker-Fletcher Bible Witness in Black Churches (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 22 Anthony G. Reddie Working Against the Grain: Re-Imaging Black Theology in the 21st Century (London: Equinox, 2008), p. 109. 23 See Anthony B. Pinn Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003). 24 See Randall C. Bailey ‘But It’s in the Text! Slavery, the Bible and African Diaspora’, pp. 31–46. 25 See Gayraud S. Wilmore Black Religion, Black Radicalism (New York: Doubleday, 1973). 26 Robert Beckford Dread and Pentecostal (London: SPCK, 2000), pp. 144–156. 27 Robert Beckford God and the Gangs (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004), pp. 85–86. 28 See Joseph Prabhakar Dayam and Peniel Jesudason Rufus Rajkumar (eds) Many Yet One? Multiple Religious Belonging (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2015). 29 Dianne M. Stewart Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 139–187. 30 In a previous piece of work, I have explored aspects of this phenomenon and seen the extent to which African Caribbean people conceal aspects of Africanderived religion in their daily repertoire of religio-cultural practices. See Anthony G. Reddie Faith, Stories and the Experience of Black Elders: Singing the Lord’s Song in a Strange Land (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2001).

Reading the Bible 155 31 For an exploration of the role of the spirits in traditional African religion, see C.R. Gabo ‘Anlo Traditional African Religion: A Study of the Anlo Traditional Believer’s Conception of Communion with the “HOLY” ’ (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of London, 1965). See also Esther E. Acolatse For Freedom or Bondage: A Critique of African Pastoral Practices (Grand Rapids, MI: W.M.B. Eerdmans, 2014). 32 The notion of African Caribbean people having ‘dialectical spiritualities’ can be found in a previous piece of work, where I argue that Black people’s spirituality is a critical nexus between orthodox evangelical Protestantism and West African religions. See Anthony G. Reddie ‘A Dialectical Spirituality of Improvisation: The Ambiguity of Black Engagement with Sacred Texts’. In Anthony B. Pinn (ed.) Black Religion and Aesthetics: Religious Thought and Life in Africa and the African Diaspora (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 153–171. 33 See Albert J. Raboteau Slave Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978). 34 See Robert E. Hood Must God Remain Greek? 35 Cheryl Bridges Johns Pentecostal Formation: A Pedagogy Among the Oppressed (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 62–137. 36 Robert Beckford Dread and Pentecostal, pp. 168–182. 37 See Esther E. Acolatse for Freedom or Bondage. 38 Esther E. Acolatse for Freedom or Bondage, pp. 32–71. 39 Peter J. Paris The Spiritualities of African Peoples: The Search for a Common Moral Discourse (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), pp. 27–57. 40 Brigid M. Sackey ‘Spiritual Deliverance as a form of Health Delivery: A Case Study of the Solid Rock Chapel International’. Black Theology in Britain: A Journal of Contextual Praxis, Vol.4, No.2, May 2002, pp. 150–171. 41 See Robert E. Hood Must God Remain Greek?. 42 See Dianne M. Stewart Three Eyes for the Journey. 43 See Anthony G. Reddie ‘Anti Black Problematics in Imperial and Contemporary British Christianity.’ In R. Drew Smith, William Ackah and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Churches, Blackness, and Contested Multiculturalism: Europe, Africa, and North America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp.  11–30. See also Anthony G. Reddie ‘Beginning Again: Re-thinking Christian Education in Light of the Great Commission’. In Mitzi J. Smith and Lalitha Jayachitra (eds) Teaching All Nation: Interrogating the Matthean Great Commission (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014), pp. 239–252. 44 Robert E. Hood Must God Remain Greek? 45 Robert E. Hood Must God Remain Greek? pp. 43–104. 46 See Carol B. Duncan This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2008). 47 Carol B. Duncan This Spot of Ground, pp. 35–63. 48 Details about this organisation can be found by going to www.iabrs.org/ 49 See Dwight N. Hopkins and Marjorie Lewis (eds) Another World Is Possible: Spiritualities and Religions of Global Darker Peoples (London: Equinox, 2009). 50 In an otherwise fine book, Curtis Evans explores the development and nature of ‘Black Religion’ in the United States, but he limits his gaze to that of Christianity alone. The complexity of religious expression is reduced to only one mode of religious orientation. See Curtis J. Evans The Burden of Black Religion (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2008). A much more plural text in this regard is Anthony B. Pinn’s magisterial Varieties of African American Religious Experience (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998). 51 See J. Kameron Carter Race: A Theological Account (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 39–77. 52 There is a wealth of literature pertaining to postcolonial theology and biblical studies  – some of the works that has most influenced my own work include

156  Responding to the challenge the following: R.S. Sugirtharajah Postcolonial Reconfigurations (London: SCM Press, 2004); R.S. Sugirtharajah The Bible and Empire (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); David C.I. Joy Mark and Its Subalterns: A  Hermeneutical Paradigm for a Postcolonial Context (London: Equinox, 2008); Musa W. Dube Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible; Fernando S. Segovia and R.S. Sugirtharajah (eds) A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings (London: T & T Clark, 2007); Catherine Keller, Michael Nausner and Mayra Rivera (eds) Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2004). 53 For a helpful overview of this form of Christianity and some texts that outline their perspectives, see the following link: https://mosestheblack.org/resources/ books/ – accessed 6 August 2018. 54 I address this issue in more detail in chapter 8, when I explore Rastafari as an alternative form of religio-cultural identity that can counter the blandishments of Imperial mission Christianity that underpinned Brexit. 55 See Anthony G. Reddie Faith, Stories and the Experience of Black Elders. This book consisted of an ethnographic exploration of the religio-cultural practices of a group of elderly Black Caribbean women of the Windrush Generation, living in Birmingham and London. In the interviews, many of the participants, predominantly women, spoke in covert terms of the African-derived religious beliefs they held. Frustratingly, the more explicit articulation of their African-derived religious beliefs was revealed only once the tape recorder had been switched off and the various participants felt safer revealing their concealed faith and practices. This act of concealment (from an official lay employee of the Methodist Church and an accredited local preacher) was a reminder to me of the transgressive nature of their concealed African-derived religio-cultural practices. 56 One of the strictures that led to concealment has been the legal framework instituted by English colonial regimes in the Caribbean. Obeah, one tradition within the larger African-derived religions, was banned in 1898. Although Jamaica achieved independence in 1962, repeated governments of the independence era have not repealed this Act of Parliament. For further details, see the following link: https://obeahhistories.org/law/ – accessed 19 December 2016. 57 Dianne Stewart Three Eyes for the Journey, pp. 69–90. 58 See Randall C. Bailey Yet with a Steady Beat: Contemporary U.S. Afrocentric Biblical Interpretation (Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature, 2003); Randall C. Bailey, Tat-siong Benny Liew and Fernando F. Segovia (eds) They Were All Together in One Place? Toward Minority Biblical Criticism (Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature, 2009). 59 See Itumeleng J. Mosala Biblical Hermeneutics. 60 Oral Thomas Biblical Resistance Hermeneutics.

7 Education and learning to be different

This chapter seeks to bring together the insights of Black liberation theology with those of practical theology to create a hybrid approach that enables us to use the insights of the former, through the creative practicalities of the latter, to educate and stimulate radical thinking and learning amongst ordinary people. I write as someone who is essentially a Black practical theologian. I have a foot in each camp of the two disciplines I have just described. The critical challenge that has confronted Black practical theologies has been that of attempting to develop a more specific, deliberate perspective on the issues pertaining to Black life in the African Diaspora. This chapter will address the educational challenge that arises from the creative interface between practical theology as outlined by ministers and other religious practitioners and the use of Black theology as the content of this educational work for empowering ordinary people. What I outline in this chapter is the need for a creative, liberative Black practical theology that combines the prophetic insights of Black liberation theology with the activistled, methodological intent of practical theology to address some of the salient issues facing all people, especially visible minorities in Brexit Britain. The chapter seeks to develop a greater synergy between Black theology and practical theology. This later work has sought to use the ideas that have emerged from the areas of transformative popular education as a means of effecting a prophetic, educative approach to Black practical theology or what I prefer to term ‘participative Black theology’.

Transformative popular education Transformative popular education is a form of scholarly enterprise and a mode of knowledge construction that is ‘of the people’ and is ultimately accountable to ordinary people. It is an activist mode of scholarly engagement that seeks to provide the necessary theoretical tools that will inspire ordinary people to engage in radical action for social change and transformation. Transformative popular education is most often identified with non-statutory and non-governmental entities, as it emerges from informal and independent social entities, such as churches, vocational groups and

158  Responding to the challenge voluntary social agencies. The church has often been an important harbinger for the development of this mode of intellectual enquiry and pedagogy, most often identified as Sunday schools,1 although the radical intent of this work is often to be questioned.2 While this particular approach to education is undoubtedly a scholarly discipline, like Black theology, its aim is to go beyond the formal basis of academic theorising to influence the thinking and actions of ordinary people. Some of the most famous exponents of this mode of educational scholarly endeavour include Paulo Freire,3 bell hooks,4 Ira Shor5 and James Banks.6 My own engagement with transformative popular education has its roots in my interaction with these individuals. Banks describes transformative popular education as a form of knowledge creation that challenges the dominant theories and models that are understood as being enduring, objective and universal truths.7 Transformative popular education proceeds from a critical, challenging and contested inquiry into the basis of truth and knowledge.8 Central to the underlying frameworks for this form of education is the challenging of the alleged objectivity and universality of top-down knowledge asserted by people with power. Banks asserts that “The assumption within the Western empirical paradigm is that knowledge produced within it is neutral and objective and that its principles are universal”.9 Banks’s challenge to the seemingly assumed objectivity and centrality of the Western intellectual tradition is central to this form of intellectual inquiry. In this method for engaging with controversial subject matter in the teaching-learning process, adult learners are invited to reflect in a critical and challenging manner on what constitutes truth. Transformative popular education in the context of this work alludes to a critical process of activistbased forms of reflection on how oppressive theories and forms of knowledge are constructed and enacted. It is an invitation to ordinary learners to critically assess the veracity of particular truth claims and the processes that produce seemingly all powerful, interlocking systems and structures that constrict and inhibit the God-given selfhood of ordinary people. Arguably, the most important person in the development of the popularisation of transformative popular education was Paulo Freire. Paulo Freire’s groundbreaking work in devising appropriate pedagogies for teaching marginalised and oppressed peoples is legendary.10 Freire developed a philosophy of education that challenged poor and oppressed people to reflect on their individual and corporate experiences and begin to ask critical questions about the nature of their existence. The radical nature of this critical approach to the task of teaching and learning brought Freire to the attention of the military government in Brazil in 1964. He was subsequently imprisoned and then exiled. In exile, he began to further refine his educational philosophy and method. He came to international attention with the publication of his first book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed,11 which laid the foundations for a seismic shift

Education and learning to be different 159 in the whole conceptualisation of how poor, oppressed and marginalised people might be educated. The importance of Paulo Freire cannot be overstated. In developing a rigorous and critical approach to the task of educating those who are poor and oppressed, Freire created an essential template by which religious educators and practical theologians might reconceptualise their task. One of Freire’s central concepts was that of ‘conscientization’. This is a process where poor and oppressed people become politically aware of the circumstances in which they live and how their humanity is infringed on and blighted by the often dehumanising contexts that surround them.12 Freire’s approach to education has opened up new vistas for religious educators, along with pastoral and practical theologians. His work contains a profound humanising spirit that draws extensively on his Roman Catholic upbringing and catechesis. For one who would not consider himself a theologian or a religious educator, Freire’s work has always been marked by a firm, implicit theistic content. In my scholarship, I have attempted to combine the radical intent of transformative education arising from the Freirean tradition with Black liberation theology in order to develop a more participative and interactive mode of theo-pedagogical engagement that moves intellectual discourse beyond mere theorising to more praxis-based forms of engagement. The point of departure for this mode of scholarly inquiry is the experiential, social location of the learner. The construction of knowledge underpinning this mode of scholarly inquiry is one that proceeds in an intellectually challenging manner from the critical engagement of adult learners who are encouraged and equipped to critique the positionality of allegedly top-down truth claims. These truth claims are often those notions of truth that emerge from the conflation of human self-interests with power, of which revelatory knowledge is often a part;13 the latter is not assumed to be immune from the corruption of such truth claims.14 For the purposes of this work, I am proposing a contextual appropriation of the central tenets of transformative popular education to develop an alternative teaching and learning paradigm, essentially an alternative activist-based approach to Black practical theology. This critically creative nexus is propelled through the use of Black theology as a methodological framework in which this process of transformative knowledge takes place. A  Black theology–inspired notion of Black practical theology, one which uses the central tenets of transformative popular education, is essential to critique the overarching power of White top-down knowledge construction that underpinned the Brexit process. The people assuring us that things would be better upon leaving the European Union did so on the assumption that their accounts of the truth would be believed. It is the dominant, captive possession of knowledge and truth arising from the supposedly objective, Western intellectual tradition that has provided the vital underpinning of White elite power, which helped to strengthen the accounts of truth made by those supporting the claims for Brexit. The challenge for White majority

160  Responding to the challenge churches in Britain in this intellectual process is that this construction of White Eurocentric power and supremacy is one in which Christian theology and they have been a convenient lackey. Emmanuel Eze has demonstrated the potent and corrosive relationship between Enlightenment thought (including White Eurocentric knowledge construction) and the hierarchical claims for White superiority and supremacy.15 Using Black theology as a model for illustrating the illusory dimensions of the White Western world order, this work seeks to enable ordinary Black and poorer White people to pose critical questions and to gain important insights into how truth is constructed. It does so in the hope that what accrues from this educative process is a form of transformative learning. As bell hooks has observed, transformative knowledge can give rise to new, distinctive forms of thinking, which as a corollary, can assist in reshaping one’s perception of reality that is not conditioned or silenced by the top-down, patriarchal frameworks of imperialism and androcentric discourse.16 Imperialism, patriarchy and androcentric thinking underpinned Brexit: imperialism in the sense that the desire to ‘make Britain great again’ and to reclaim an island identity that is separate from the conglomeration of mainland Europe in the form of the European Union has its historical underpinning in the age of empire. The age in which the zenith of British colonial power was projected across the world represents the glorious age in which Britain’s hubris in believing it was manifest destiny to rule was not limited by the alleged pernicious nature of EU Commission rules. As we shall see, for the leading players in the orchestrated and obfuscated game of ‘musical political chairs’, in which the winners and losers were predictably drawn from various social classes, patriarchy was overseen by White male privilege. So to the added twin strictures of imperialism and masculinity, we need to add that of Whiteness. It was the conflation of all three of these entities that provided the skewed epistemological framing for what was to be one of the most wretchedly disinformed political processes in living memory.

Participative Black theology – another worked example As I have outlined previously, this work combines transformative popular education with Black theology. It does so to illustrate how ordinary Black and especially poorer White people are challenged to think and act differently. The use of experiential models of learning, in which the adult learner is immersed within a constructed exercise, game or drama, becomes a means by which they are enabled to reflect critically on the immediate experiences and feelings that have accrued from the participative activity itself. Participants are invited to reflect on what they have felt and learnt while being immersed within the embodied, metaphorical activity that forms the active element in the practical theological process that has emerged from what I have now termed as ‘participative Black theology’.17

Education and learning to be different 161 Central to this mode of scholarly inquiry is the use of games and exercises. This is deliberate: the performative mode of this form of dramatic action requires that participants be actively engaged with others in a specific exercise in which the rules of such contested encounters are constantly being defined and redefined.18 The use of games and exercises also plays an important teaching-learning role in that they seek to force learners out of their often self-referential world of religiously inspired forms of ‘learnt behaviour’ and the accompanying notions of ‘top-down’ assumed truths emanating from White people with power and influence. Immediately following the performance of the exercise, role play or game, I usually spend several minutes with the participants helping them to reflect on the events in which they have just taken part. Participants are encouraged to connect with their feelings for a few moments as they reflect on the implications of the embodied metaphorical exercise for the faith positions and theology they presently hold. Oftentimes, in the central activity, there will be inbuilt dynamics that seek to represent the issues of contestation and argument that are often commonplace in all philosophical and religious frameworks that give substance to and which act as meaning-making operations in life. This opportunity for reflection is essential because it provides the necessary bridge between previous beliefs and attitudes on one hand and the possibilities of critical, reflective change that sometimes accrues from the performative activity on the other. Central to the working of the exercise, game or role play is the sense that at the heart of this methodological approach to theological reflection is the demand, indeed the expectation, that participants are willing to enter into the ‘internal logic’ of the activity. By internal logic, I am referring to a process in which the participant takes seriously the realised psycho-social image of the performative activity itself: they are acted upon and are active subjective players within the activity of which they are a part. Each participant must engage with the activity in a manner that takes the activity seriously. This does not mean that the activity is overly serious, however. On the contrary, many of the exercises and games I have used are comedic in fashion, as laughter and humour are great aids to learning and have been central ingredients in all my participative Black theology work since its earliest conception in the mid 1990s.19 This mode of behaviour is not unlike that demanded of participants in Groome’s20 or Berryman’s21 respective educational approaches to practical theology. In these approaches, participants are encouraged to be involved and become active players in any activistbased approaches to theological reflection. The use of laughter and comedy is often deliberate because history has shown us that it is often in times of great distress and emotional turmoil that the sharpest and most incisive forms of humour emerge.22 This approach to reflecting and assisting people to engage with Black theology through the refracting lens of practical theology in the form of transformative popular education, is one that challenges ordinary Black

162  Responding to the challenge and White people in terms of their engagement in the constructed exercises or games. The resultant challenge for ordinary Black and White people, whose participation has helped to give rise to this scholarly coming together between Black theology and practical theology, is one of suspending reality as they have experienced it. It is the challenge to enter into the basic logic of a ‘simple game’, in which they are invited to engage and interact with others. The premise of the game or exercise may appear absurd or ridiculous, but participants are challenged to take the game seriously, at least in their participation in it. This sense of asking participants to suspend their critical, realist judgements to enter into the internal logic and dynamic of a piece of activity is one that lies at the centre of this approach to the teaching and learning of socalled controversial topics. This approach is one that seeks to engage with the emotional or the affective repertoire of the adult learner and not just the cognitive or thinking domains of the human self. The process is also critical because, in the final analysis, it is with the emotional or the affective self that profound changes in religious consciousness are most likely to accrue. The best theology is never just a cognitive or an intellectual affair. It is one that not only engages the emotions but perhaps, most crucially, stimulates the imagination. What would happen if one were enabled to see something completely differently? How might one’s perception of God be changed if through an exercise one were able to witness, if only a glimpse, another way of knowing, or an alternative mode of being? As an educator using this method of teaching and learning, perhaps the greatest challenge that confronts me is the need to ensure that I create an environment in which participants can be enabled to ask critical questions of Christianity, society and some of the underlying theology that underpins many of the accepted norms for Black life and other minorities in the 21st century.

A participative, educational approach to engaging with Brexit One of the persistent challenges that has confronted Black people and other minority ethnic people has been how we have been attacked as being the cause of social dis-ease in the United Kingdom. Think back to the scandalous scaremongering adopted by Nigel Farage, seen in the now infamous ‘immigration poster’ used during the 2016 EU referendum in the United Kingdom.23 Black theology has always been concerned to provide sharp analyses for explaining ‘why things are the way they are’. Black and other minorities are often blamed for being a drain on British society, with questions of morality often being used as a rationale to explain our presence at the bottom of society. What is rarely explained is that Black poverty is necessary for capitalism to flourish in the United Kingdom and in many of the leading neo-liberal

Education and learning to be different 163 economies of the world. The architects of the Brexit vote often seek to disguise the callous and greedy forces of Western capitalism that underpinned their campaign.24 The latter has always benefited from the material poverty of the Black majority of the world. The demonisation of particular groups of people, most often Black people of the African continent, is often undertaken based on seeking to mask the rapacious intent of global capitalism that exploits the natural resources of Africa, for example, while condemning Africans for being lazy and corrupt.25 In terms of the latter, some Black theologians have used the insights of social theory to scrutinise Western capitalism and the overall profit motive that diminishes the basic humanity of poor Black people.26 The poor are the pawns in such industrialised and mechanised processes, because they do not have an inherent stake in the means of production for which their labour is an essential source. In more recent times, African theologians are seeking to develop a more culturally orientated approach of African theology (that is often seen as the natural inheritor of Black theology),27 as they have sought to analyse how the era of colonialisation sowed the seeds for Africa’s present malaise. The structural and systemic forms of analysis provided by Black theologians28 have proved most adept at offering an overarching perspective on Black poverty and why migrants seek to come to the United Kingdom, not to claim benefits but to work to support families back in their countries of origin. Black theology’s critique of Whiteness and its associated sense of entitlement is also important because it throws into sharp relief how a toxic form of Whiteness was culpable in enabling many ordinary poor White people to be so comprehensively fooled by the political robber barons of the elite, privileged and entitled White male class.29 For decades now, we have heard the mantra that poor people from abroad have driven down wages and have taken the jobs that poor White people themselves might have taken had not the migrants been present to usurp them. Yet, reflecting on my own experience of growing up in working-class Bradford, I  remember clearly the poor White people who assumed that the dehumanising conditions in which my father and his four brothers-in-law worked, all of whom were Black Caribbean migrants, were not for them because they were deserving of something distinctly better. So while my father left home at 5:00 a.m. to walk the 90 minutes to work at a large industrial foundry making cast iron moulds for large container ships, many of his working-class male peers remained in their beds believing that such dispiriting work was not for them. I make this point not to traduce such individuals or to re-create a pernicious Protestant work ethic binary of the ‘deserving poor’ and ‘undeserving poor’. Rather, I mean to remind us of the false consciousness of blaming migrants for the lack of work opportunities for some White working-class people who have remained unemployed, even during times of full employment, such as the era of which I am speaking, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

164  Responding to the challenge Interestingly, when wages are pushed down by migrants, blame is noticeably directed at the migrants and not at the capitalists, whose desire to make profit above all other concerns leads them to do so, as if someone were pointing a gun to their heads, forcing them to act in this way. The fact is, companies pay people less because those companies wish to expand their profit margins, and there is no rule that says that they must do so.30 The exercise that follows in this chapter is a means of trying to conscientise ordinary people to recognise a rigged game when they see it. Why is it that predominantly self-interested, rich White men were able to persuade their poorer counterparts that they had more in common with them than with other poor people, suffering equally under the yoke of neo-liberal economic and social policies? The notion that Britain’s future would best be realised outside of the European Union in a kind of fortress Britain, in which immigration is slashed, is an illusion that works best if one can confuse the populace into looking in the wrong direction to discern the ills that plague the nation. In this chapter, I am offering a participative Black theology approach to demonstrating how one can raise the consciousness or awareness of ordinary people, in order to show the cynical disinformation and naked racism that underpinned the Brexit vote. This approach is one that seeks to link Black theology with transformative popular education. The heart of this particular piece of work was my engagement with a group of ordinary Black people and ordinary White people. I have used this particular exercise before, but on this occasion, I used it with an alternative group of people.31 I invited 20 Black people from Birmingham and London to assist me in the following exercise. Although I have often created my own games and exercises for the participative work I  have undertaken in the past, on this occasion, the exercise I used was a simple one and is actually a traditional game that has been played for many years. On this occasion I asked the various individuals to attempt the following task: play a traditional game of musical chairs.32 The game works on the premise of there being one less chair than the number of people taking part in the game. Individuals are asked to walk around the chairs that are placed in a line. When the music stops, each participant has jump onto the nearest available chair. One of the usual provisions in the game is that individuals cannot go backwards to sit on a vacant chair. Rather, all participants can only move in a forward direction around the chairs, so if there is a vacant chair behind them, an individual will have run all the way around the chairs to sit on the next available empty seat. After every round of the game, one seat is removed. The last person left standing when the music stops is eliminated from the game in every round. This game has been a staple ingredient of children’s parties for many years. This simple game for children works on the premise that there is an element of surprise in that none of the participants knows when the music will stop, which results in individuals running to beat their compatriots to the

Education and learning to be different 165 available vacant seats. The game works based on ‘fairness’: all people are subject to the same rules of the game. When the exercise was played with the group on two occasions, one of the clear insights that emerged as an experiential, metaphorical truth is that the game is supposedly fair but not equitable. This observation arose from the fact that in a game such as this, it soon becomes clear who is going to win. Those that were healthy and younger and who, in two cases, had been trained as athletes (a deliberate choice on my part) were the ones who would contest the final to determine who would win the game. Those who did not possess their advantages were never going to win the game. This issue became one of the critical points of learning that arose from this simple game, which acts as an experiential example of transformative popular education. As the theologian and educator, I was at pains to remind the participants/learners that there is a world of difference between equality and equity. In terms of the former, one assumes that all people should be treated the same. In popular parlance, this notion is often given expression in the metaphor of the ‘level playing field’ or ‘the fair race’. In terms of the race metaphor, it is the belief that all people should start from the same place and be subject to the same rules governing this activity and, in effect, should be treated the same. The problems with such notions and metaphors is that they lack any sense of the structural and systemic ways in which fields are not level nor races indeed fair. Using the metaphor of the race as my primary example, what happens if the governing of the race only appears to be fair? What happens if some people are given a wealth of unearned advantages, which render the notion of ‘fair play’ in the race nothing more than an allusion? In recent times, the world of sprinting was electrified by the charismatic presence of Usain Bolt. In the interests of fairness, Bolt and I  might well stand together at the start line of the race and when the starter fires their pistol, we are notionally taking part in a fair race. We are indeed subject to the same rules. The race can be said to be fair, but it cannot be said to be equitable in any way. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that in such a setup, Bolt will always win. Stretching or mixing our metaphors, what if some contestants have unearned privileges from birth, such as schooling, education, ethnicity, gender, social networks, ‘race’ and so on which lead them to always prosper in the race? Can that race be said to be fair? Equality often works on the naïve assumption that fairness equals treating all people the same, irrespective of the structural or systemic advantages some groups or individuals inevitably possess. At this juncture, it is worth reminding ourselves of Nigel Room’s work on English Christianity and how notions of fair play are central to the self-understanding of the English, but as we can see in this game, they simply lead to the reinforcement of systemic inequality.33 The church has invariably been far more comfortable with notions of equality than they are with that of equity.34 I  argue that the reasons for

166  Responding to the challenge this can be found in the collusive relationship that Western Christianity has made with White supremacy, in which the liberative qualities of the gospel of Jesus Christ were exchanged for the death-dealing characteristics of White-informed Christendom. In terms of the latter, so long as the Church could convince native bodies that there was a modicum of equality within the body of Christ (never fully realised or explicated, of course), there was no compelling need to live out a praxis of radical revolutionary love in which the first would be last and the last would be first.35 Equality, which was rarely, if ever, practised between White people and Black people, was never intended to bring about a radical reversal in the modalities of power and influence within the body of Christ, let alone in the body politic of the larger Western, democratic nations in which the Church was housed. This collusion with White supremacy was intent on keeping the respective power relations untouched and on White people continuing to live the lie that White hegemony and White privilege were entirely compatible with the Christian gospel. In this regard, the work of the late great James Cone remains the unmatched beacon of clarity in critiquing the false consciousness of Whiteness that has not only bedevilled mission Christianity but also stifled the consciousness and cognition of poor White people.36 The latter have believed the false doctrines of Whiteness that have not helped them but their rich counterparts instead. Cone has been pronounced in his efforts to name the ‘elephant in the room’ and to critique the Church and Christianity’s collusion with White supremacy and entitlement. Cone writes the following about the silence of Christian theologians in addressing White privilege and racism: Most importantly, Whites do not talk about racism because they do not have to talk about it. They have most of the power in the world – economic, political, social, cultural, intellectual and religious. There is little that Blacks and other people of color can do to change the power relations in the churches, seminaries and society. Powerful people do not talk, except on their own terms and almost never at the behest of others. All the powerless can do is to disrupt – make life uncomfortable for the ruling elites. That was why Martin King called the urban riots and Black Power the ‘language of the unheard’.37 The failure to talk about White privilege and racism, theologically, has meant that church has largely colluded with the false doctrines of White supremacy. As I have outlined in previous chapters, even when the Church has spoken prophetically about radical equality within the body of Christ, it has rarely critiqued the privileges of Whiteness as it did so. It was as if slavery, colonialism and racism took root by themselves and came into fruition by means of abstract, spectre-like beings from another planet. By rarely, if ever, naming the elephant in the room that was White supremacy, mission

Education and learning to be different 167 Christianity enabled toxic forms of Whiteness to flourish, leading to the calamitous spectacle of poor White communities voting against their own interests, by supporting right-wing political dictates that are committed to punishing them even further. The best that the Church has been able to offer is a relatively benign process of equality (as opposed to radical equity) and fairness in which the power relations have largely remained unchanged and the efficacy of Whiteness has remained unchallenged. It goes without saying, of course, that Black theology would aim to question to what extent fairness and treating all people the same can ever be identified with the historical or contemporary practice of Christendom or in Euro-American societies in terms of their social arrangements regarding darker-skinned people.38 But notwithstanding the illusory promises of equality, it is a flawed concept. Black theology, like all ‘theologies of liberation’,39 argues for equity and not equality. Equity is based not on notions of fairness but those of justice. In a context of justice, one does not treat all people the same, because that sanctions the status quo, in which some people inevitably win and others are condemned to lose. The iniquities of equality can be seen in the pernicious doctrine of ‘free trade’, which is of course anything but free. In theory, in wanting to treat all nations the same, the winners of history, the Global North, usually triumph over the poor and impoverished Global South, having already possessed and created the means for their economic development, which is now denied newer, emerging nations. This system may be called many things, even that of ‘free’, but it is never just.40 The system fails to take into account that in treating all people the same/equally, those who have exploited the world markets and the resources of others possess a critical advantage over those nations that have been subjected to the dominant neo-colonialist exercise of power of Western nations. Black theology and Black theologians are committed to the cause of equity. Equity as a concept realises that for the sake of justice, there must always be a commitment to systemic and structural change. This commitment to change arises from acutely observed forms of social, economic and cultural analysis of reality in order to unmask the often-hidden and often-covert ways in which equality seeks to preserve the inbuilt power and advantage of the status quo.41 By this, I mean there can be no serious change without people looking closely at the field or the race to notice that neither of them is either level or fair. In either case, those that have been the traditional winners in an unequal world remain untouched by the reality of the losers, for whom the field or the race is but an unattainable dream. Going back to the metaphor of the race, what if the fictional Usain Bolts of this world go to the best schools, live in the best houses, have access to the best trainers – that is, enjoy all the privileges denied an alternative group of people? The truth is that one cannot use the mythical Bolts of this world as the basis to determine notions of fairness and competition in the race. The obvious on-the-field advantages over/against his competitors separate the

168  Responding to the challenge likes of Bolt from all of those who have been denied any of his natural gifts. Making any kind of comparison in terms of fair competition is to collude in a wholesale exercise of false consciousness. Namely, that the race is as good as rigged. The fact that it looks ‘fair’ should not disguise the fact that the outcome of the race was in effect determined long before each competitor reached the track. Even if one can find the statistically ‘odd’ person who has not enjoyed the advantages of which I have just spoken and still manages to ‘pull themselves up by their boot straps’ to give the mythical Bolt a good race, this does not change the basic template of the race itself. There will always be the extraordinary individuals who can defy the odds and succeed, but such individuals simply mask the intent of this type of setup to exclude the majority who come from such backgrounds. Besides, the mythical Bolts of this world do not need to be extraordinary to succeed in this supposedly ‘free’, laissez-faire, ‘fair play’ construct. It would be stretching credulity to believe that all successful people who populate Wall Street and the City of London are exceptional individuals or inhabit these spaces based solely on merit. In the construct I have just described, Black theology is indeed biased and unfair. The unfairness of its position arises from the reality that life is most obviously unfair. In a world in which racism blights the potential and everyday life experiences of many ordinary Black people, are we seriously saying that God should be fair, that God should ignore injustice and treat the perpetrator and the victim exactly the same? In the words of James Cone, In a racist society, God is never color-blind. To say God is color-blind is analogous to saying that God is blind to justice, to right and wrong, to good and evil. Certainly this is not the picture of God revealed in the Old and New Testaments. Yahweh takes sides.42 The so-called unfairness of Black theology in general or James Cone’s early writing in particular is that it defiantly calls for equity and not equality. It calls for justice and not fairness. Dwight Hopkins has argued that the religion of globalisation is one that seeks the profit motive as its highest expression of salvation and uses ordinary people as its supplicants, whose votes ensure the success and propagation of the religion, often at their own expense.43 My argument in this essay is not in favour of the European Union. I am aware of the arguments of the political left that the European Union is an anti-democratic body that is committed to neo-liberal policies that perpetuate social and economic injustice as opposed to reducing it.44 As I  have stated at the outset of this book, my concerns in this work lie in the dialectical space between an ambivalence for the European Union on one hand and contempt and anger at and against Brexit on the other. My argument here is not to defend the European Union but to argue against the blatant tendentious discourse of the Leave campaign and to challenge the many White

Education and learning to be different 169 people who voted for Brexit, particularly poorer individuals at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. This essay, like that of chapter 4, has two aims. It seeks to conscientise Black people and White people. In terms of the latter, the participative exercise I have devised in this chapter has been used with White participants to help them think through the skewed nature of the Leave campaign. It has been an invitation to reflect critically on how the Leave campaign pandered to the unreconstructed Whiteness and sense of entitlement and privilege that many White people held and with which mission Christianity has colluded. It has challenged the notion that fairness is the best expression of Christianity’s vision for the kingdom of God and the social relationships that are evidenced within social and ecclesial bodies. The claims of the gospel are ones that call for radical solidarity, one with another, across lines of ethnic, gender and class distinctions. This communitarian ethic, however, needs to be understood within the context of eschewing the false consciousness of cheap grace. The latter means that those who are advantaged need to give up privilege so that others can experience a fuller existence within the collective.45 It is interesting to note the extent to which Black theologians continue to express our admiration at and thanks for Bonhoeffer for modelling the type of costly praxis we have long hoped to see in most White Christians, in recognising privilege and standing alongside marginalised and oppressed peoples.46 James Cone talks about Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King Jr on this subject: Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. Dietrich Bonhoeffer.47 We will have to repent  .  .  . not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King Jr.48 The lives and writings of Bonhoeffer and King tell us far more about what it means to be a Christian and a theologian than all the great tomes in the history of theology. Their martyrdom placed Christian identity at the foot of the cross of Jesus and in the midst of oppressed people fighting for justice and freedom. We need more theologians like Bonhoeffer and King  – more scholars in religion with the courage to speak out against wrong, especially the evil of White supremacy.49 Conversely, this chapter has also sought to raise the consciousness of predominantly ordinary Black people. In using the participative exercise in this chapter, I have sought to remind them of their experience of equality and rarely that of equity. In effect, they have experienced first-hand the near-impossibility of succeeding in the rigged game, in which the British referendum on the European Union was yet another exercise in the mass deception of equality (let alone equity) practised by White hegemony. The participative Black theology work of this chapter has sought to conscientise

170  Responding to the challenge ordinary Black people to see that the game as played in the body politic of postcolonial Britain has rarely been constructed with us in mind. Our best hope of progress in the wider holistic terms remains that outlined by Black theology, which is to exercise various forms of resistance to the toxicity of White supremacy. In the final three chapters of the book, I  outline three alternatives ways in which Black agency and self-determination has been brought about from within the wider purview of Black theology. In this chapter, I have offered another example of participative Black theology as a means of seeking to conscientise ordinary people. This approach to undertaking Black theology through a participative methodology operates on an inductive mode of education, in which equal attention is given to affective learning and to cognitive learning. This popular educational approach seeks to challenge ordinary people to reflect critically on experience to reimagine their ongoing learning and development. These initial reflections are then brought into conversation with the overarching forms of analysis provided by Black theologians, so that a form of transformative learning should accrue for the participants. This work proceeds from the perspective that asks, ‘how does this feel?’ and ‘what does it mean?’ and then moves towards the more generic or wider forms of critical reflection and analysis. One starts with real stories and actual encounters and experiences, from which one then begins to see how these smaller examples inform us of more macro epistemological truths.

So what does this mean for Brexit Britain? In using this method for conscientising ordinary people, I am offering participants a form of reflective practice, to assist them to not only understand Black theology but, importantly, also to see how the acquisition of new knowledge can transform their experience as Christian disciples. The vote for Brexit was largely based on the presumption of White normality and the belief that the needs of poor, disenfranchised White people would be better served if the numbers of other poor minority ethnic people and others from outside of the United Kingdom were reduced. There is no doubting that poor, disenfranchised White people have been as severely impacted and reduced to consumerist objects over the past century as have Black people, Asian people and people from other minority ethnic and cultural groups. I  do not dispute that poor working-class and underclass White people also experience marginalisation and cultural and emotional deprivation. As the exercise shows, however, the rigged nature of the game carries many similarities with that of British society and the construct of Britishness that has never served ordinary poor White people well, let alone others, from minority ethnic communities. The idea that rich conservative politicians are in solidarity with the poor is a ridiculous and downright insulting proposition. The reasons why many poor White people are poor has little

Education and learning to be different 171 do with other poor people from the Global South or from Eastern Europe. Rather, it is a result of a skewed system that was never set up for many of them to succeed. British society does not operate based on so-called fairness and equality, much like the game participants played in the staged exercise I enacted. The game offers a metaphorical reading of the biased and tendentious ways in which the media has sought to obfuscate the true nature of British society. Ordinary people were fooled into believing that a Leave vote would enhance their existential realities when, in fact, the opposite may well be the case. The truth is that many White people were fooled into believing the tendentious truths of Brexit because it suited their subterranean myths of White privilege and the concomitant inferiority and lesser claims to Britishness made by Black and other minority ethnic people. There have been centuries of thinking that holds to the belief that Britain is a de facto White nation that constructs its identity on Whiteness.50 When politicians speak of effecting good ‘race-relations’, that is always predicated on the basis that the number of non-White people needs to be controlled and non-White immigration into the country needs to be limited. In effect, good race relations always means less Black people, Asian people and others who can be readily identified as ‘not one of us’. Scapegoating those who are different is nothing new. Black scholars have shown the extent to which White people in power in Britain have always used the presence of those not seen to be part of the mainstream as a means of deflecting attention away from those with power and privilege for whose benefit Britain has largely been run.51 The success of Brexit, therefore, was a carefully orchestrated game in which the operation of the event was carefully contrived so that the usual suspects would be victorious, and most poor people, irrespective of ethnicity, culture and language, were the palpable losers. The exercise at the heart of this chapter seeks to combine the insights of Black theology with that of transformative popular education to create an accessible learning tool that will help ordinary people to see the illusory nature of the Brexit phenomenon. Black theology, like all theologies of liberation, is committed to analysing and critiquing existing systems and structures, noting how the status quo benefits some, often a powerful minority, while demonising others, usually a powerless minority, to fool the insecure majority from seeing the world as it really is. The exercise at the heart of this chapter and the broader work of participative Black theology seeks to conscientise ordinary people so that they will be able to see the world more clearly. Brexit may well prove to be the most pernicious British swindle since Malcolm Maclaren attempted to hoodwink the British public via his huckster-like management of the dubious talents of the Sex Pistols.52 The British public became wise to the mixture of mock sincerity, outrageous egotism and rampant overselling of the truth. The gospel of Jesus Christ seeks to bring all people into the truth and includes telling the continued difficult belief that all of us matter, irrespective of ethnicity,

172  Responding to the challenge class and religion. Perhaps, most crucially, in light of Brexit, we need a form of faith that is prepared to realise the need for a radical form of equity in which White supremacy and privilege is vanquished. To quote W.E.B. Dubois, cited by James Cone, “What we all want”, proclaimed W.E.B. Du Bois, “is a decent world, where a [person] does not have to have a White skin to be recognized as a [human being]”.53

Notes 1 For an exploration of the Black Church as a source for transformative popular education, see Anthony G. Reddie Nobodies to Somebodies: A  Practical Theology for Education and Liberation (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2003), pp. 37–73. This point, however, should not be taken to mean that the Church has not been an important contributor to the development of formal, assessed education in the form of ‘Day schools’. It is simply that for the purposes of this discussion, the focus is on informal, non-assessed forms of education that have often proved the most ideal framework for the pedagogical developments of transformative popular education. 2 For a helpful summary of the history and the development of Sunday schools and the Christian formation and nurture, particularly of children and young people, see John Sutcliffe Tuesday’s Child: A Reader for Christian Educators (Birmingham: Christian Education Publishing, 2001). For the wider developments of the Church as a source for education, learning and the creation of a distinctly Christian form of epistemology, see David Willows Divine Knowledge: A  Kierkegaardian Perspective on Christian Education (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). 3 See Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972). 4 See bell hooks Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York and London: Routledge, 1994). 5 See Ira Shor Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 6 James A. Banks Race, Culture, and Education: The Selected Works of James A. Banks (New York and London: Routledge, 2006). 7 James A. Banks (ed.) Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996), p. 9. 8 See Jurgen Habermas Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971). 9 James A. Banks Race, Culture and Education: The Selected Works of James A. Banks (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 148. 10 See Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), p. 199. Also Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Continuum, [1973] 1990); A Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1999). 11 Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, [1970] 1993). 12 Paulo Freire Education for Critical Consciousness, pp. 18–20. 13 Thomas Groome challenges aspects of authority-bound notions of knowledge construction in his excellent study that combines practical theology with liberation theology. See Thomas H. Groome Sharing Faith: A  Comprehensive

Education and learning to be different 173 Approach to Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), pp. 36–84. See also his equally influential Christian Religious Education: Sharing Our Story and Vision (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999). 14 For an excellent transformative popular educational resource that critiques ‘top-down’ forms of knowledge construction (including that which is clothed in the costume of ‘church dogmatics’), see Anne Hope, Sally Timmel and Chris Hodzi Teaching for Transformation: A  Handbook for Community Workers  – Books 1–3 (Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1994); Anne Hope, Sally Timmel and Chris Hodzi Teaching for Transformation: A  Handbook for Community ­Workers – Book 4 (London: Intermediate Technology Publication Ltd, 1999). 15 See Emmanuel C. Eze Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). 16 bell hooks Teaching to Transgress, pp. 93–128. 17 This work is best exemplified in two books: See Anthony G. Reddie Dramatizing Theologies: A Participative Approach to Black God Talk (London: Equinox, 2006); Anthony G. Reddie Working Against the Grain: Re-Imaging Black Theology in the 21st Century (London: Equinox, 2008). 18 See Jose Irizarry ‘The Religious Educator as Cultural Spec-Actor: Researching Self in Intercultural Pedagogy’. Religious Education [The Vocation of the Religious Educator], Vol.98, No.3, Summer 2003, pp. 365–381. See also Clark C. Apt Serious Games (New York: Viking Press, 1970). 19 The use of comedy can be seen in several of my books. As the Reverend Dr Colin Morris has been known to remark, “The opposite of funny is unfunny, not serious”. That is, there is no oxymoron in juxtaposing ‘funny’ and ‘serious’ in any approach to theological reflection. 20 See Thomas H. Groome Sharing Faith; Christian Religious Education [1st published 1980]. 21 Jerome W. Berryman Godly Play: An Imaginative Approach to Religious Education (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg [1st published in 1991 by Harper-San Francisco] 1995). 22 Jacqueline Bussie has written an award-winning study on the relationship between oppression, laughter and resistance. The pointed use of laughter and comedy becomes a means of effecting resistance in the face of oppression and marginalisation. See Jacqueline Bussie Laughter of the Oppressed: Ethical and Theological Resistance in Wiesel, Morrison and Endo (New York and London: T & T Clark, 2006). 23 See the following link for the controversy followed the unveiling of the poster in June  2016: www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/eu-referendum-nigel-farageslammed-over-brexit-poster-showing-queue-of-migrants-a3273836.html  – accessed 30 January 2017. 24 For one of the most incisive Black theology–inspired critical analyses of the links between Western capitalism and Black poverty, see Itumeleng J. Mosala Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa (Grand Rapids: W.M.B. Eerdmans, 1989). 25 See Munyaradzi Feliz Murove ‘Perceptions of Greed in Western Economic and Religious Traditions: An African Communitarian Response’. Black theology: An International Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2007, pp. 220–243. 26 See Itumeleng J. Mosala Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa. See also Itumeleng J. Mosala and Buti Tlhagale (eds) The Unquestionable Right to be Free (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986). 27 See Mokgethi Mothlabi African Theology/Black Theology in South Africa: Looking Back, Moving on (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2008), pp. 42–49.

174  Responding to the challenge 28 Arguably the most persuasive Black theology commentator on this issue has been Dwight N. Hopkins. See Dwight N. Hopkins ‘Theologies in the USA’. In Marcella Althaus-Reid, Ivan Petrella and Luiz Carlos Susin (eds) Another Possible World (London: SCM Press, 2007), pp. 98–100; Dwight N. Hopkins ‘The Religion of Globalization’. In Dwight N. Hopkins, Lois Ann Lorentzen, Eduardo Mendieta and David Batstone (eds) Religions/Globalizations: Theories and Cases (London and Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 7–32. See also Keri Day ‘Global Economics and U.S. Public Policy: Human Liberation for the Global Poor’. Black theology: An International Journal, Vol.9, No.1, 2011, pp. 9–33; Tissa Balasuriya ‘Liberation of the Affluent’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.1, No.1, 2001, pp. 83–113. 29 See P.W. Preston Britain After Empire: Constructing a Post-War PoliticalCultural Project (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 19–39. 30 I say it is not a fact that companies have to maximise their profits by paying their workers less, because there have telling examples in British history, when ethical forms of business activity have been practised, which have demonstrated alternative models of entrepreneurship. This can be seen in the business activities of Quaker philanthropists such as the Cadbury family in Birmingham and non-conformist, congregationalists like Titus Salt, in Saltaire, Bradford. In both cases, we have forms of business activity that did not put profits before their workers. These forms of entrepreneurship are in stark contrast to the neo-liberal models of unfettered capitalism often advocated by right-wing politicians pushing for Brexit. See the following link for the radical Quaker tradition. http:// www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/14583 (Accessed 8 April 2019). 31 Details of the previous occasion during which I used this exercise can be found in Anthony G. Reddie ‘Participative Black Theology as a Pedagogy of Praxis’. In Dale P. Andrews and Robert L Smith (eds) Black Practical Theology (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2015), pp. 59–72. 32 Details of the game can be found in the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Musical_chairs 33 Nigel Rooms The Faith of the English: Integrating Christ and Culture (London: SPCK, 2011), pp. 47, 52, 90–92. 34 Interesting to note that the Methodist church of Great Britain, of which I am a member, has pursued a strategy of ‘Equalities, Diversities and Inclusion’ (EDI) as its means of seeking to be a just body that affirms difference and seeks to challenge all forms of discrimination. Interesting to note that the strategy does not include any commitment to systemic analysis and restructuring, as advocated in this chapter, as opposed to one of Equality and fairness. For the Methodist church EDI strategy see the following link. https://www.methodist.org.uk/ for-ministers-and-office-holders/guidance-for-churches/equality-diversity-andinclusion/edi-toolkit/ (Accessed 8 April 2019). 35 David Joy ‘Decolonizing the Bible, Church, and Jesus: A Search for an Alternate Reading Space for the Postcolonial Context’. In David Joy and Joseph Duggan Decolonizing the Body of Christ: Theology and Theory After Empire (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 3–24. 36 See James H. Cone ‘Theology’s Great Sin: Silence in the Face of White Supremacy’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.2, No.2, 2004, pp. 139–152. 37 James H. Cone ‘Theology’s Great Sin’, p. 144. 38 A comparative study has been undertaken that seeks to outline the ways in which predominantly darker-skinned people are invariably the ones most impacted by the dominant model of economic laissez-faire neo-liberalism, and they are the ones attempting to resist and challenge it by means of liberative models of faith. See Dwight N. Hopkins and Marjorie Lewis (eds) Another World Is Possible: Spiritualities and Religions of Global Darker Peoples (Oakwood and London: Equinox, 2009).

Education and learning to be different 175 39 This title refers to a group of sociopolitical theologies that seek to reinterpret the central meaning of the God event in history, particularly in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. They provide a politicised, radical and socially transformative understanding of the Christian faith in light of the lived realities and experiences of the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed. For an important recent text that delineates the comparative developments in ‘theologies of liberation’, see Marcella Althaus-Reid, Ivan Patrella and Luis Carlos Susin (eds) Another Possible World. 40 See Wilf Wilde Crossing the River of Fire: Mark’s Gospel and Global Capitalism (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2006) for an excellent account of this point. 41 One of the dominant voices arguing for a radical, prophetic form of Black theology has been Cornel West. See Cornel West ‘Black Theology of Liberation as Critique of Capitalist Civilisation’. In James H. Cone and Gayraud S. Wilmore (eds) Black Theology: A Documentary History Volume Two: 1980–1993 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993), pp.  410–425; Cornel West Prophecy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 2003). 42 James H. Cone A Black Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990). p. 6. 43 See Dwight N. Hopkins Head and Heart: Black Theology, Past, Present and Future (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 127–152. 44 See the following link for a politically left-wing argument against the European Union: www.opendemocracy.net/uk/paul-emery/why-on-earth-would-socialistssupport-neoliberal-undemocratic-eu – accessed 6 August 2018. 45 This concept of ‘costly grace’ owes much to the towering genius that was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship (London: Pocket Books, 1995). 46 See Reggie L. Williams Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and the Ethics of Resistance (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014). 47 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, cited in Explorations 12.1 (1998), p. 3. 48 Martin Luther King Jr ‘Letter from Birmingham City Jail’. In James M. Washington (ed.) A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), p. 296. 49 James H. Cone ‘Theology’s Great Sin’, pp. 139–140. 50 See Lorraine Dixon ‘The Nature of Black Presence in England Before the Abolition of Slavery’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2007, pp. 171–183. 51 See Tamara E. Lewis ‘Like Devils out of Hell: Reassessing the African Presence in Early Modern England’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.14, No.2, 2016, pp. 107–120. 52 See the following link for details of the ‘Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle’ of Malcolm Maclaren and the Sex Pistols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_ Rock_%27n%27_Roll_Swindle – accessed 6 August 2018. 53 David Levering Lewis W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2000), cited in James H. Cone ‘Theology’s Great Sin’, p. 152.

Part 3

The critical challenge of the other

8 Rastafari and Black theology

My intention in this chapter is to locate Rastafari, particularly as it pertains to the British context, within the broader framework of Black liberation theology. This is not to suggest that the Rasta phenomenon is reducible to Black theology or that its development has had such formulations in mind during its long gestation.1 Instead, this essay intends to illustrate the means by which Rastafari can be understood in terms of its relationship to Black theology and how it still provides a form of Black religio-cultural resistance to British nationalism and White supremacy in the United Kingdom. The modus operandi for this essay is predicated on the notion of Rastafari as a religious, social movement whose various formulations and thought forms adhere to the central ideas of Black, faith-based notions of liberation.

Historical background and summary of beliefs Before we commence with our discussion about Rastafari’s identity as a form of Black liberation theology, which seeks to destabilise White supremacy, we must locate the movement in its original context. The roots of the movement in historical terms can be centred on a pivotal event that occurred in 1930, namely the coronation of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Selassie’s coronation, in many respects, can be seen as the culmination and fulfilment of a number of ancient prophecies predicting the anointing of the second coming of Jesus Christ in the person of ‘Ras Tafari Makonnen’, Selassie I’s birth name (and from which the movement derives its name).2 Jamaican Black theologian Noel Erskine is at pains to remind us that the roots of Rastafari predate the epoch-­making event in 1930. Over two hundred years of African-derived resistance on the Caribbean island of Jamaica helped to form the Afrocentric liberationist sensibilities of the island’s slave populace prior to the emergence of Rastafari in the 1930s.3 Within the matrix of Black religio-cultural movements that were the result of the synthesis of mission Christianity and African-derived religious practices emerged a belief in the Black conception of Jesus Christ as the manifestation of Jah (God).4 Within the context of this emerging belief

180  The critical challenge of the other system was the importance of Ethiopia in particular and Africa in general as the site of revelation of Jah, as the source of liberation of Black people in the African Diaspora.5 Of particular import are words from Psalm 68:31. Erskine writes, The double emphases of Psalm 68:31, “Africa shall stretch out her hand”, and at the same time the saying attributed to Garvey by the Rastafarians, “Look to Africa where a Black King shall arise”, and Garvey’s insistence that each people must interpret God for themselves, provided a rational and reasonable basis for the bearers of the Rastafarians to look to Ethiopia for the renewing of their hope and for the advent of their salvation.6 The Rastafari movement effectively came to life in 1930s Jamaica, around a handful of leaders, including Leonard Howell, Robert Hinds, Joseph Hibbert and Archibald Dunkley.7 The movement grew throughout the 1930s and 1940s in Jamaica, claiming adherents from the predominantly poorer working-class communities of inner-city Kingston throughout this time.8 As an anti-colonial, pro-Africa movement whose oppositional stance to White authority and Western values was pronounced and distinct, it should come as no surprise then to realise the extent to which Rastafari followers were a persecuted minority in both pre- and post-independence societies in Jamaica. Barnett speaks of the high levels of harassment and persecution endured by Rastafarians in the 1940s and early 1950s, in Jamaica, culminating in the Coral Gardens massacre, when many Rastas (the numbers are still disputed) were brutalised, some even dying from their injuries.9 Surprisingly, given both his own Afrocentric philosophy and his inspiration to the Rastafari, Marcus Garvey was not a supporter of the movement during the period of its inception in the 1930s. Erskine writes, There seems to be a marked difference between Garvey of the 1920s and the 1930s. It is quite likely that the later Garvey had moved closer to embrace middle-class people and middle-class values, as his running for legislative office seems to indicate. In a profound sense in the late 1930s, and certainly in the 1940s and 1950s, I recall having lived in eastern St.  Thomas and that at that time the Rastafarians had replaced the Garveyites as the new outcasts in Jamaican society. Not only were they at the bottom of the social and economic ladder, they were regarded as heretics as they not only viewed God through the spectacles of Ethiopia, but also identified God with the Emperor Haile Selassie I. While the middle class, and certainly many Jamaicans who belonged to the lower stratum of society, could relate with pride to a Black king in Ethiopia, they regarded it as anathema to regard him as God. It is also clear that Marcus Garvey was not enamored with Haile Selassie.10

Rastafari and Black theology 181 Erskine’s comments on the controversies surrounding Rastafari beliefs and theology remain a site of continued debate amongst Rasta scholars. The movement has always understood its conceptualisation as within the Abrahamic faith, but unlike the other world monotheistic faiths, such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam, there is no magisterium nor a specific sacred text that is peculiar to Rastafari, although the Bible, as we shall see, is an essential source in Rasta theologising. As Middleton has shown, there are divergences in how Rastas view the figure of Haile Selassie. For some, he remains the embodiment of Jah and is therefore infused with divine qualities and attributes; in effect he is a ‘living God’. Meanwhile, for others, although they continue to believe that he is the 225th descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (this is the lineage for his royal descent), he is no longer seen as a ‘living God’ but as an emissary of God.11 Rastafari teaching is often considered heterodox, and because it does not have any centralised authority, there is a great deal of heterogeneity in its theological interpretation, often around the disputed notions of Selassie’s divinity. As an Afrocentric movement, Rastafari interprets the African Diaspora as living in Babylon and that salvation entails a return to Africa. The Bible is read through this Afrocentric lens, which provides a theological and a concomitant sociopolitical and cultural hermeneutic for the various social arrangements in Rastafari communities.12 The belief that the divine resides within all believers is one that ensures a degree of autonomy and a decentralisation of the faith, which explains the variations in doctrine and practice amongst Rastafarians and in Rasta communities across the world.13 The development of Rasta ‘livity’ (everyday practices and a wider lifestyle through which believers are able to commune with Jah) has led to a broader popularisation of Rastafari, far beyond its immediate base in Jamaica. The growing importance of the artistic and cultural apparatus associated with Rastafari, particularly in the music of its most famous follower and advocate, Bob Marley, has seen an increased visibility of the movement in the public consciousness of fans and admirers from across the world.14

Being Black in Britain – the antecedents of Rastafari in the United Kingdom The roots of Rastafari in the United Kingdom lie in the descendants of the Windrush Generation. Central to the experience of being Black in Britain, growing up as a descendant of the Windrush Generation has come with the challenge of living with the acute sense of marginalisation in a racist nation state. Gilroy and others have demonstrated the extent to which negative attitudes to Black and other minority ethnic people have been deeply embedded in the consciousness of Britain.15 To understand the sociopolitical role occupied by Rastafari in the United Kingdom, one has to place its development within the wider context of the

182  The critical challenge of the other Black Power movement, which came into full fruition in the 1960s, across the world, particularly in the United States and the Caribbean.16 The central ideas of the Black Power movement included the attempt by Black people of African descent to develop a framework and a form of practice in which there was a marked sense of ‘African pride’, a commitment to ‘self-determination’ and a desire to challenge the racism, paternalism and arrogance of White supremacy and control that had exploited and oppressed Black peoples for centuries. Important antecedents of the Black Power movement can be found in the life and work of figures such as Marcus Garvey17 and Franz Fanon.18 Black theology in Britain emerged from the initial fruition of the Black Power movement in the late 1960s and into the 1970s in urban Britain.

A brief summary of Black theology in Britain When speaking of Black theology in Britain, I am referring to the specific self-named enterprise of reinterpreting the meaning of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, in light of existential Black experience in Britain. This approach to engaging with the Christian tradition is not unlike Black theology in differing arenas like the United States or South Africa, where one’s point of departure is the existential and ontological reality of Blackness and the Black experience, in dialogue with the sacred text of the Bible and the overarching Christian tradition. Black theology in Britain, like all ‘theologies of liberation’, is governed by the necessity of ortho-praxis rather than orthodoxy. In using this statement, what I  mean to suggest is that one’s point of departure in any concomitant God-talk is governed by the necessity to find a faith response for one’s actions in response to the existential struggles and vicissitudes of life, which impinge on one’s daily operations in the attempt to be a human being. The need to respond to the realities of life as it is in postcolonial Britain is one that has challenged many Black British Christians to seek in God a means of making sense of situations that seem inherently senseless.19 Black theology is understood as the deliberate attempt to connect the reality and substance of being Black and the development of ideas surrounding Blackness with one’s sacred talk of God and God’s relationship with the mass suffering of humanity, who might be described as being Black people. The term ‘Black’ in the context of Black theology in Britain has a dual meaning: its dominant meaning refers to people of African descent, who since the late 1960s have adopted the term ‘Black’ as a form of description to identify themselves rather than adopt names and terms used by others, such as ‘coloured’.20 But it is also a political term that speaks of a coalition of groups who have come together to fight the central and dominating power of White Euro-American normality.21 This second meaning does not restrict the term ‘Black’ to those that are of African descent or simply refer to skin colour, but rather, it is open to all persons who are non-White and who are

Rastafari and Black theology 183 struggling in solidarity for liberation over and against the forces of White, male-dominated power structures.22 Black theology argues that the God revealed in Jesus Christ has entered into history and is in actual solidarity with Black people. In fact, one may even argue that God’s presence is actually revealed in the experiences and activity of Black people in the world and not simply through the official liturgies, particularly that of Holy Communion or the Eucharist of the Mass.23 In the context of my own work, the term ‘Black’ refers, primarily, to people of African Caribbean descent, but it also includes all African and Asian people who are marginalised in the body politic of postcolonial Britain.24 Black theology is concerned with liberation and not solely representation.25 By this, I mean that Black theology as a theology of liberation is concerned with the transformation of the Black self and not simply the acknowledgement of its existence. This means than not all theologies that seek to represent Black people might be termed ‘Black theology’, particularly if the modus operandi of such theological articulations is wedded to conservative social mores that reject the nomenclature of liberation or do not possess a commitment to subversive and transgressive action. It is this latter contention that is most challenging to the notion that Rastafari is a form of Black theology. In looking at the convergences and divergences between Black theology and Rastafari, the first substantive mooring of the former is found in their joint commitment to Black people of African descent. Both movements argue vociferously for the agency of Black people and the sovereignty of Black subjectivity as a site for divine revelation.26 Predominantly Black ‘Christian’ theology, divine revelation is found in the nexus of the Black Christ and his relationship to suffering Black bodies in history. The agency of the latter, fighting for material and spiritual freedom enacts the revelatory presence of the Black Christ in the continuing liberation struggle to bring about God’s reign on earth, as it is in heaven.27 The relationship of Blackness and being African to notions of selfhood and existential freedom will be explored in the final section of this essay. The second substantive convergence between Black theology and Rastafari can be found in their respective relationships to the Bible. An important aspect of Black theology has been its critical posture to the Bible, adopting a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’, namely an ideological reading strategy that views the Bible with suspicion, thinking critically about how power relations and structures are in evidence in the text. Black theology has challenged how White interests have been embedded in the interpretive framework for reading the Bible to promote and encourage White hegemony.28 In a more recent piece of work, I  have argued that Black theology has always held a critical hermeneutical dialectic to the Bible in terms of its relationship to oppressed and suffering Black bodies. I argue that Black theology sees the Bible as a contextual resource and a source for speaking of God’s liberative presence in the world, but given how the Scriptures have

184  The critical challenge of the other been used as an ideological weapon against the thrust for freedom by Black people, Black theologians have learnt not to revere it unquestioningly.29 Rastafari as a religious faith also seeks a relationship with a revealed body of truth as a means of explicating its belief in the theological import of God’s connectionality with Black African people. Rastafari has long asserted a connection between God and Black people through an understanding of the genealogy of African peoples that can be traced back to Africa. The acclaimed Jamaican scholar Barry Chevannes described this connection as the ‘idealization of Africa’.30 Rastafari’s posture to the Bible, like Black theology’s posture, is informed by an Afrocentric reading of the Scriptures in light of the social location and existential realities of Black people.31 Like Black theology, Rastafarian hermeneutics adopts a reciprocal form of engagement with the Bible through reading Black experience into the text and interpreting the experience of Blackness in light of revelatory truth that emerges from the text itself.32 The significance of the Bible and its use and the import of Rastafarian hermeneutics are reminders that although a good deal of Black cultural studies, particularly in the United Kingdom, has positioned Rastafari as a secularised, sociopolitical movement33 in the first place, it was and remains a religious faith whose ethics and epistemology are faith based and resonate with notions of divinely inspired revealed truth.34 In some respects, one can see elements of biblical literalism in aspects of Rastafarian readings of the Hebrew Scriptures and how Blackness is seen as historical truth within the text. One can pose the critical question as to how radical either movement can be in terms of effecting Black liberation and challenging the Eurocentric mission Christianity that underpinned Brexit when they are using the Bible as an epistemological source for effecting self-determination, given its role in European imperialism and colonisation.35 Randall Bailey’s ideological critique of the Bible36 is one that can be directed at the broader hinterland of Black Christianity as much as it can be used in challenging Rastafari. Bailey’s ideological critique of the Bible is one that challenges the more traditionalist adherence to the Scriptures one finds in more mainstream approaches to the Bible from some older Black biblical scholars.37 In both codes, one can see the existential struggle of anchoring sociopolitical understandings of Black liberative praxis with ancient texts in which non-Jewish slavery is never repudiated, and the accent is often on accommodation with slaveholding as opposed to its overturn and eradication.38 In using the Bible as a source for undertaking Black liberation, Rastafari shares with Black theology a belief in the revelatory import of the Scriptures for narrating notions of freedom and an eschatological understanding of the Black telos in which temporary struggles are juxtaposed with an expansive, liberatory denouement to human history.39

Black Christianity, Rastafari and Black resistance Black theology has existed against a backdrop of racism and came into being as a theology of liberation to respond to racialised injustice. It has,

Rastafari and Black theology 185 therefore, had to find ways of responding to the systemic racism of the British state, of which Brexit is simply the latest iteration. This has been undertaken in three ways. Black theology has been the most radical development within ‘Black Christianity in Britain’40 in its challenge to racism and a critical riposte to the notion of Black people as an aberrant presence in the body politic of Britain. The first of the three typologies that arises out of Black Christianity in Britain is the ‘colour-blind approach’. This is the most moderate and emollient of the various forms of Black Christianity in Britain in terms of its positionality in postcolonial Britain.41 This form of Black Christianity, as a corollary, has often resorted to a form of disembodied spirituality to handle race-based conflicts (i.e. we move ‘beyond’ the visible materiality of the Black body). The second typology is ‘Black Christian experience’. This offers a contrast to the overtly conservative models of Black Christianity in Britain, which can be seen in the first typology and as a more politically strategic form of the phenomenon. This particular typology of Black Christianity in Britain has offered a Black cultural, contextual reading of the Christian faith, which while it seeks to challenge to racism, it still seeks some form of acceptability and congruence in relationship to White authority.42 The third approach is Black theology, which has provided the more robust, systemic liberationist rereading of the Black presence in Britain. Black theology mounts a direct subversive challenge to White supremacy as its primary means of critiquing the White-led and -dominated models of Christianity identity that is often predicated on notions of concealed Whiteness. Whereas the ‘colour-blind approach’ has adopted ‘passive radicalism’43 as its mode of engaging with racism and notions of White supremacy, Black theology has used a notion of ‘active radicalism’ in its riposte to race-based forms of oppression. In active radicalism, those who are marginalised and oppressed seek to directly confront the oppressive and dehumanising structures in a more deliberate and explicit manner. Black theology in Britain has exhibited active radicalism when it critiques the construction of White Christian theology.44 Active radicalism is the form of resistance fiercely advocated by James Cone, in the first self-articulated book on Black theology.45 The quintessential strength of Black theology has been its unapologetic assertion of the cause of Blackness, both as an ontological symbol of resistance and as a communicative mode for unmasking the privileged construct of Whiteness. In terms of the latter, Black theology, with its contextual specificity around the ontological value of Blackness as a site for divine revelation, has forced White Englishness to own up to its biased, self-serving constructions in which God, the Church and notions of civilisation have provided its underlying raison d’être. Black theology in Britain, I  believe, provides the most substantive theological articulation for resisting the racist toxicity of Brexit. Given the above taxonomy for understanding the differing roles that Black Christianity has played in challenging racism in the nation, it is clear

186  The critical challenge of the other to me that Rastafari, in adopting the role as the visible ‘other’ in the body politic of the 1970s and 1980s, was clearly operating as a form of Black theology. Rastafari, as outlined by scholars such as Cashmore, Troyna and others,46 was clearly adopting an active form of radicalism in Britain, which can be detected in how the movement sought to consciously locate itself as the ‘other’, operating as a counter-symbolic form of representation: the antithesis of subliminal, normative Whiteness. Cashmore amplifies this point when he states that As young Blacks became aware of their colour and realise that it can be deprecated and used as a basis for exclusion, they fuse their Blackness with a new significance, incorporating it into a consciousness, organising their subjective biographies so as to include it, strike up allegiances and perceived adversaries on the understanding of it. In general, positioning themselves in relation to that quality of Blackness.47 Rastafari adheres to ‘some’ of the central tenets of Black theology in Britain in Rastafari’s rejection of the claims of normative Whiteness as a site for epistemological privilege and power. Both Black theology in Britain (largely, if not overwhelmingly, a Christian-inspired movement) and Rastafari are united in their assertion of the ontological value of Blackness as a site for constructed truth and revelatory insight. Whether in terms of the divinity of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I or in Jesus Christ, both Rastafari and Black theology have created immanent (in terms of cognition) and transcendent (in terms of revelation) forms of epistemology that reimagine the existential and ontological value of Blackness for people of African descent.48 Given the three-part taxonomy I  have outlined for articulating Black Christian responses to racism in Britain, in terms of ‘passive’ and ‘active’ radicalism, one can see that Rastafari can be understood in both active and passive radical terms, as a form of resistance to the existence of racism in Britain. Passive radicalism in Black Christianity in Britain can be discerned in the spiritual practices of worship, in which Black bodies seek direct mediation with and gain sustenance and affirmation from the divine (often call ‘livity’ in Rastafari, often achieved by means of smoking cannabis). This form of pneumatological paradigm creates a form of epistemology that emboldens Black religious believers to access an ontological reality that enables them to transcend the contextual, existential struggles with which they live within the temporal realm of their existence in history. In Black theology in Britain, this spiritualised sense of resistance through corporate worship and pneumatological, epistemologically driven notions of freedom has been best explored in Robert Beckford’s early work.49 In Rastafari, one can also find an element of passive radicalism in how many adherents of Rasta used their faith as a form of collectivist ethic that brought

Rastafari and Black theology 187 individuals together to worship and seek a deeper connection with the divine to live in ‘Babylon’.50

Substantive challenges to Black theology and Rastafari A particular feature of Rastafari has been its identification with Africa, both as a romanticised form of eschatology and as a realised expression of subjective, postcolonial identity construction and meaning making. Black theology in Britain has not used Africa as a trope for talking about home as clearly as Rastafari has, illustrating how the former can learn from the latter.51 Black theology in Britain, nevertheless, has sought to learn from the wider Black liberation struggle of the Afrocentric movement and has used an identification with African cultural values and expressions to construct an empowering form of Black identity.52 This work can be seen quite distinctly in the early theological work of Black British theologian and cultural critic Robert Beckford.53 Perhaps the central point of convergence in envisioning Rastafari’s relationship to Black theology in Britain can be found in the underappreciation of the important role that Black women play in their respective movements. Much like its American counterpart, Black theology in Britain has been an androcentric movement in which the import of Black women has been acknowledged but not prioritised. African-American Black theology that emerged in the late 1960s, largely from the pioneering work of James Cone, was undoubtedly sexist and patriarchal. The radical riposte to Black theology was ‘womanist theology’.54 Womanist theology is an approach to theological reflection that begins with the experiences of Black women as its point of departure in talking about God and how God-talk is undertaken. Womanist theology uses the experience of Black women to challenge the tripartite ills of racism, sexism and classism. This discipline has been influenced by feminist thought and on occasion has been inaccurately labelled as ‘Black feminism’.55 Womanist theology emerged as a necessary corrective to the androcentric myopia of much that was Black theology, which emerged in the late 1960s and the 1970s. It was not uncommon to find Black male writers referring to ‘man’ when wishing to talk about the plight of all Black people. In effect, their androcentric thinking was no better than the White male theologians they were often critiquing. The formative notions of womanism include self-determination, self-definition, the love of oneself, a commitment to holistic living, solidarity with other women and a respect for the experience and knowledge claims that arise from the reality of being a Black woman.56 The critical failure in Black theology in Britain has been the almost complete absence of Black women as leaders and contributors to the development of the epistemology in this field. At the time of writing, there are no sole authored books by a Black woman in Black theology in Britain.57 In my own engagement with Black theology, the androcentric and patriarchal

188  The critical challenge of the other complexion of the discipline and movement did not occur to me. It was only upon reaching the final chapters of the twentieth anniversary edition of A Black Theology of Liberation58 and reading the critical response of Delores S. Williams59 that I realised the inherent flaws in Cone’s initial work (and those of his contemporaries). The substantive challenge that faces Rastafari has arguably been its neoconservatism and how its Afrocentric focus has reified patriarchal constructs and androcentric entitlement. I  assert that Black theology, on the whole, has made greater strides in effecting models of gender equity in its development through the corrective challenge of womanist theology and the growing cadre of womanist scholars who have offered a critical challenge to the hinterland of Black male entitlement. This is not to say that Rastafari has not found space for Black women to express their agency. In Murrell, Spencer and McFarlane’s influential reader in Rastafari,60 there is an important essay by Imani Tafari-Ama who reflects on the Rasta woman as rebel.61 Tafari-Ama’s article gives a timely riposte to the notion that Black women possess no agency in Afrocentric movements like Rastafari. However, as Black women such as Marjorie Lewis62 and Velma Thomas63 can attest in their respective reflections on alternative Afrocentric religious movements, such as the Ausar Auset Society and the Shrine of the Black Madonna, radical sociopolitical positionality vis-à-vis racism does not necessarily translate into similar commitments to critiquing patriarchy and androcentric totalism. Black theology has benefited enormously from the necessary gender critique of womanist theology that has spoken into the lacuna created by the hegemonic silence of patriarchy. For later generations of Black religious scholars such as myself, it is now almost impossible to imagine how one could undertake any form of constructive Black theological work that did not account for the significance of Black women.64 In fact, in the salient words of Cheryl Townsend Gilkes in If It Wasn’t for the Women,65 Black churches would not function without the active presence of Black women. One might well say the same for Rastafari. How would Rastafari function as a movement without the active presence of Black women in their ranks? In the context of critiquing patriarchy, I wonder if greater attention to the work of female Caribbean theologians might not help arrest this challenge within Rastafari. Within the context of the Caribbean and its diaspora, I am thinking of the work of Marjorie Lewis,66 Valentina Alexander67 and Lorraine Dixon,68 all of whom have written about Black women’s contribution to leading and critiquing Black religio-cultural movements, such as churches, both in the Caribbean and in the United Kingdom. The scholarship of Lewis is particularly apposite given her groundbreaking work in seeking an alternative nomenclature for Jamaica women’s theological discourse.69 Lewis argues that the designation of ‘womanist’ is helpful only to an extent, given its American derivation, and argues instead for the descriptor ‘Nannyish T’eology’ named after Nanny of the Maroons,

Rastafari and Black theology 189 the only woman in the pantheon of national heroes in Jamaica.70 The noted Jamaican cultural critic Carolyn Cooper has identified Nanny of the Maroons as the quintessential Jamaican woman.71 Nanny is emblematic of the radical and subversive presence of Black women in the body politic of Jamaican/Caribbean life. Nanny of the Maroons is, in many respects, the progenitor for Black women’s agency that unites both Christian and nonChristian religious forms in Jamaica and across the Jamaican diaspora. I wonder whether greater attention to the legacy of Nanny of the Maroons and Nannyish T’eology in Rastafari discourse might not assist in broadening the trajectory of its self-understanding and so create a more expansive space that can reckon with the contributions of Black women to a greater extent. At the time of writing, the role of Black women in Rastafari occupies a distinctly marginal position because this religious movement often exemplifies Black masculinity as the defining optics that guide the trajectory of its practices and thinking. If the role and the significance of Black women in Black theology and Rastafari has proved a challenge, then perhaps the biggest test for both movements is the recognition of and affirmation of LGBTQI+72 people. The prohibitions around gay and lesbian people within Black religio-cultural contexts is a major question, and I certainly cannot do justice to this within the limited space afforded me in this essay. The late Caroline Redfearn argued that the hyper-sexualisation of Black bodies during the epoch of slavery in the Caribbean and the notions of shame, disgust and revulsion directed at the Black body have led to issues of sexuality being pushed to the margins and to those deemed to be deviant in their sexual practices to be pilloried and shunned.73 The more famous work in African-American womanist theology that addresses this issue in a not dissimilar fashion to Redfearn (albeit in much more detail than that managed by the latter) is by Kelly Brown Douglas.74 Both Redfearn (a Jamaican-born woman) and Douglas place the problematic nature of heteronormativity within a wider historical framework of colonialism. Within this contested framework, Black sexual expression that does not conform to the narrow parameters that constitute ‘authentic Blackness’ is deemed transgressive and deeply problematic to the body politic of the ‘Black nation’. I think it is true to say that it has taken Black theology some time to engage with the reality that not all Black bodies are ‘straight’ and that one’s sexual orientation should not preclude one from being a part of the movement.75 One of the commonalities in many Afrocentric, Black religio-cultural movements is a form of essentialism that polices the parameters of what constitutes authenticity and belonging in terms of its hermeneutics of Blackness. Early Black theology was no less adept at this form of semantic, sociopolitical constriction of the ‘Black Power movement’, the ‘nation of Islam’ and of course Rastafari. Arguably, the constrictions of essentialism were not loosened until Victor Anderson’s landmark text Beyond Ontological Blackness.76

190  The critical challenge of the other The first explicit treatment of homosexuality within the context of Black theological thought was Horace Griffin’s Their Own Receive Them Not,77 followed by Roger Sneed’s more radical Representations of Homosexuality,78 both of which have been supplemented by journal articles in Black theology: An International,79 including a special issue on LGBTQI+ concerns, commissioned by me in 2012.80 At the time of writing, the latest Black theology text that recognises the alternate sexualities of Black people who have been othered is by Pamela Lightsey,81 whose work addresses the heterodox nature of the Black Lives Matter movement and the diverse Black bodies that populate this bottom-up, activist-led coalition of peoples. I foregrounded the aforementioned concerns and the concomitant texts that have sought to address them in order to highlight the obvious lacuna within Rastafari. I am in no doubt that proponents of Rastafari will have a plethora of rationales for articulating their commitment to heteronormativity and the sexual ethics that underpin the essentialism that polices these particular forms of strictures. This essay is not seeking to traduce Rastafari for the lacuna that I  have identified. As I  have shown, Black theology has itself been somewhat remiss in recognising the claims for existential freedom in the consciousness of all Black people, irrespective of their sexual identities. The significance of this point, however, lies in the semantic meaning of Blackness and whether Black liberation movements are genuinely concerned with expansive notions of freedom that are not encumbered by the normative posture of White hegemony and neo-colonialist, Eurocentric conceptions of acceptability and respectability. The struggles of various Afrocentric religio-cultural movements is to own and affirm heterodox sexual identities amongst Black people, which strikes at the neo-colonialist frameworks of purity and the constructed and constricting binaries of acceptability and disrepute.82 Arguably, all Black religio-cultural movements are underpinned by strategic forms of identity politics, in which insiders define themselves against those beyond the parameters of their group, in the tropes that give them a sense of commonality, shared ideals and matching subjectivities.83 The issue for Black theology and Rastafari in this regard is not whether they can or should appeal to all Black people in an idealised, pluralised construct, but rather, like the question of gender, they can affirm all adherents that presently claim an identity within their existing parameters. Just as Black churches have Black gay and lesbian people in them who are struggling to belong, human nature being what it is, I would be aghast if there were not also Black gay and lesbian people trying to belong within the context of Rastafari. The challenge for all Black religio-cultural movements is whether the thrust for freedom and liberation is an expansive trajectory or one still circumscribed by the blandishments of White Eurocentric frameworks bequeathed to us all by imperialism and the continued strains of neocolonialism.84 In effect, Black religio-cultural movements even when they are exhorting the claims of existential freedom from Eurocentric forms of

Rastafari and Black theology 191 neo-colonialism are still constricted and bounded by the very conventions they are seeking to supplant.

Rasta as a form of African-derived religious practice In my comparative analysis of Rastafari and Black theology in Britain, I must also acknowledge the semantic challenge this poses to the prevailing orthodoxy of Black liberation theology, particularly in North America,85 the Caribbean86 and Africa.87 Black theology, ever since the groundbreaking early work of James H. Cone,88 has evolved as an essentially Christian discipline and socioreligious and political movement, anchored in the Church. The challenge presented by Rastafari, therefore, rests on its non-Christian perspectives as a movement committed to Black liberation. In what ways can the overly Black Christian complexion of Black theology learn from the non-Christian focus of Rastafari as a theology and movement of liberative praxis? The development of Black theology in the African Diaspora has been shaped by an ongoing dialogue with Christianity and the Church. In the Caribbean, for example, Dianne Stewart’s highly influential book Three Eyes for the Journey89 has critiqued the Christian hegemonic position as the seemingly normative superstructure for Caribbean liberation theology. Stewart argues that alongside the seeming normality of conventional, evangelical Protestantism that provides the overarching theo-religious framework for the articulation of Caribbean Black theology, there has been the eclectic and complex interaction and the incorporation of alternative epistemologies and schemas of thought, which have long been a part of the theological and hermeneutical repertoire of Black people. Rastafari’s significance alongside Black theology lies in its location as an important signifier for an alternative paradigm of African-centred liberative religiosity. Rastafari, for example, critiques the essentialised liberative constrictions of the fixed, tightly focused Christological lens that has characterised traditional models of Black theology. Michael Jagessar has critiqued this assumption in looking at the development of Black theology in Britain, which often assumes a normative Christological point of departure.90 I am aware that my own work has often exuded a kind of uncritical Jesus-only focus in the past. More recently, Jawanza Eric Clark has sought to develop an alternative perspective on Jesus as a saviour, one in which the salvific figure is shorn of the exclusivist Christian tag of divinity that has often proved problematic when dealing with the plurality of Black religious communities across the world.91 Clark’s work is useful in this discussion as his more open-ended perspective on Black theology, through a non-dogmatic Jesus, is one that opens up a greater avenue of dialogue with Rastafari. Rastafari sits in negotiation with other indigenous religious traditions and spiritualities in its relationship to Black Christianity. This ongoing nexus for

192  The critical challenge of the other cooperation and conflict reflects the religious pluralism evident in all diasporan African communities across the world. Rastafari shares with Black Christianity a commitment to affirming Black bodies, whereas the latter’s adherence to an exclusive Jesus has made it an often antagonistic adversary of the former. In this regard, it is a shame that Rastafari is not featured in The International Association for Black Religions and Spiritualities,92 which has sought to articulate the breadth of Black religious and spiritual sensibilities across the world. The sociocultural strictures of respectability in much of Black Christianity have led it to traduce and deride African-derived forms of religion, such as Rastafari. On a personal note, I remember the vituperation and vitriol that was aimed at Rastas in the Britain of my youth, from conservative, statusconscious Black Christians. Rastafari has existed alongside the superstructure of Black Christianity that has been the less-than-benign harbinger for the acceptance of African-derived religions and spiritualities, in which Rasta can be located.93 Rastafari challenges the normativity of Black Christianity as the sole paradigm for a Black-focused liberative form of praxis. Many Black Christians, particularly in Britain, the Caribbean and the United States, remain located within contexts in which the Christian faith was and remains an inviolate guarantor for the normativity of what was deemed acceptable and self-evidently true. The religious frameworks in which I was socialised did not permit any sense of dialogue with that which was considered to be the ‘other’, whether in terms of ‘non-belief’ or heterodox belief. The White mission Christianity of empire and colonialism was seen as undoubtedly true, and its supposed superiority was not to be questioned. In locating Rastafari as a form of African-derived religion, I believe that this phenomenon challenges notions of what might be considered orthodox or heterodox, normative or aberrant, conventional or transgressive. Rasta provides opportunities for a more expansive notion of what constitutes Black religious praxis, which takes us beyond unreconstructed binaries that are often evoked when some adherents to Black theology want to protect a form of Christian exclusivism in their understanding of what constitutes Black liberation.94 The Rasta phenomenon challenges the strictures and limitations of Black Christianity and its contested relationship with colonial Christianity as the religion of empire and the debasement of Black bodies. Operating as a seemingly aberrant, heterogeneous religious phenomenon functioning beyond the parameters of polite bourgeois Black Christian sensibilities, Rastafari reinforces the radical unacceptability of Black liberationist motifs when gauged against the normativity of White colonial mission Christianity.95 The Rastafarian phenomenon as an alternate, othered form of Africanderived religion creates an important repository for the development of a form of Black theology that is antithetical to the norms of Whiteness and the dubious claims of White bourgeois society in Britain. Rastafari challenges

Rastafari and Black theology 193 the Christian-inspired model of Black theology to reflect more critically on what we mean when we state that as human beings we are created in the image and likeness of God and the complexity that is imbued in that seemingly simple statement. Black theologians have long wrestled with the contradictions in mission Christianity that assert that all people are created in the image and likeness of God and then is prepared to sanction the lesser status, subordination and disregard for those bodies it judges to be less human.96 Womanist ethicists have argued against how White Christianity has colluded with the media to create forms of objectification that render the task of othering Black people an easier proposition in the body politic of the United States, for example.97 Rastafari has been committed to opposing the strictures of colonial missionary Christianity and its attempt to miseducate African people, turning them into objectified ciphers of passive, imperial Whiteness. A number of Caribbean writers have spoken of the miseducation and indoctrination elements of colonial Christianity.98 There can be no doubt that Rastafari has undertaken this kind of critique and has offered its adherents a model of ‘overstanding’ that refutes the miseducation of imperial mission Christianity. In critiquing, challenging and ultimately rejecting the normative posture of Whiteness, White social and cultural norms and ultimately White conceptions of God, Rastafari undoubtedly operates and functions as a mode of Black theology. In its elevation of the African self and the emancipation of Black ontology, Rasta has supplemented the more conventional ­Christian-centred perspective on Black liberation provided by Black theology. In doing so, as an othered, marginal, religio-cultural and social movement, Rastafari has provided an African-centred, cathartic and celebratory evocation of Blackness that should be considered to be the first authentic model of Black theology emerging from the Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora, particularly in the United Kingdom. The emblematic role played by Rastafari in 1970s Britain was one that provided a much-needed repository for resistance for disaffected Black youth in the body politic of postcolonial Britain. The numerical decline of Rastafari can be attributed to a number of causes, one of which is the death of its most popular evangelist, Robert Nesta Marley, in 1981. Marley has been identified as a totemic figure whose iconic status helped to propel Rastafari to a central place in the consciousness of African Diasporan life across the world and increasingly on the continent of Africa itself.99 Marley’s death and the concomitant fall in popularity of reggae music as opposed to dancehall and hip-hop have provided a semantic challenge for Rastafari and its relationship with Black communities in Britain and across other parts of the Caribbean Diaspora. The critical challenge facing Rastafari, especially if it is to be thought of as a form of Black liberation theology, is whether it can reinvigorate itself as a mass movement, as outlined by Chas Howard, and so regain its central place as a religious movement of resistance for Black people.100

194  The critical challenge of the other In an age of Brexit, when the toxicity of White British and English nationalism has given rise to repulsive forms of racism seeking to deport Black people of the Windrush Generation, this community of people and other visible minorities arguably need a religious form of resistance to become the radical riposte to the aforementioned policies of the government. Both Black theology in Britain, emerging largely from Caribbean Christianity, and Rastafari, which has grown out of the broader Caribbean religiocultural milieu, have sought in their differing ways to critique the alleged normativity of Whiteness that has governed the body politic of belonging and acceptance in postcolonial Britain. Can they now operate as a form of active resistance to the spurious blandishments of Brexit in 21st-century Britain? Can they provide new impetus by which we can critique the White supremacist notions of belonging and acceptability underpinning Brexit? Can they be the source of counter-hegemonic struggle in Britain and beyond?

Notes 1 See Walter Rodney The Groundings with My Brothers (London: BogleL’Ouverture Publications, 1990 [1969]). 2 See William David Spencer Dread Jesus (London: SPCK, 1999), pp. 1–17. 3 See Noel L. Erskine ‘The Roots of Rebellion and Rasta Theology in Jamaica’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.5, No.1, 2007, pp. 104–125. 4 Noel L. Erskine ‘The Roots of Rebellion and Rasta Theology in Jamaica’ pp. 104–125. 5 William David Spencer Dread Jesus, pp. 1–17. 6 Noel L. Erskine ‘The Roots of Rebellion and Rasta Theology in Jamaica’, p. 121. 7 See Michael Barnett ‘Rastafari at the Dawn of the Fifth Epoch’. In Michael Barnett (ed.) Rastafari in the New Millennium (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012), pp. 1–10. 8 Barry Chevannes ‘Rastafari and the Coming of Age: The Routinization of the Rastafari Movement in Jamaica’. In Michael Barnett (ed.) Rastafari in the New Millennium (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012), pp. 13–32. 9 Michael Barnett ‘Rastafari at the Dawn of the Fifth Epoch’, pp. 4–5. 10 Noel L. Erskine ‘The Roots of Rebellion and Rasta Theology in Jamaica’, p. 122. 11 See Darren J.N. Middleton ‘As It Is in Zion: Seeking the Rastafari in Ghana, West Africa’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vo.4, No.2, 2006, pp. 151–172. 12 See Steed V. Davidson ‘Leave Babylon: The Trope of Babylon in Rastafarian Discourse’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.6, No.1, 2008, pp. 46–60. 13 See William David Spencer ‘Chanting Change Around the World Through Rasta Ridim and Art’. In Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, William David Spencer and Adrian Anthony McFarlane (eds) Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), pp.  266–283. See also Edward Te Kohu Douglas and Ian Boxill ‘The Lantern and the Light: Rastafari in Aotearoa (New Zealand)’. In Michael Barnett (ed.) Rastafari in the New Millennium (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012), pp.  35–65; Jahlani Niaah ‘The Rastafari Presence in Ethiopia: A  Contemporary Perspective’. In Michael Barnett (ed.) Rastafari in the New Millennium (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012), pp. 66–88. See also Darren J.N. Middleton ‘As It is in Zion’, pp. 151–172.

Rastafari and Black theology 195 14 One can see this in how the artistic expression associated with and which emerges from Rastafari is now considered part of the mainstream. See Darren J.N. Middleton Rastafari and the Arts: An Introduction (Oxford: Routledge, 2015). See also Christopher J. Duncanson-Hales ‘Dread Hermeneutics: Bob Marley, Paul Ricoeur and the Productive Imagination’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.15, No.2, 2017, pp. 156–175. 15 See Gretchen Gerzina Black England: Life Before Emancipation (London: John Murray, 1995); Ron Ramdin Reimaging Britain: 500 Years of Black and Asian History (London: Pluto Press, 1999). 16 See Peniel E. Joseph The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil RightsBlack Power Era (New York: Routledge, 2006). See also Peniel E. Joseph Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A  Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2011). See also P.C. Emmer, Bridget Brereton and B.W. Higman General History of the Caribbean: The Caribbean in the Twentieth Century (Geneva: UNESCO Publications, 2004), pp. 224–252. 17 For further information on these figures, see The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey edited by Amy Jacques Garvey. Vol.3; for more philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey, see the selected and edited work from previously unpublished material by E.U. Essien-Udom and Amy Jacques Garvey (London: Cassell, 1977). 18 See Franz Fanon Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto Press, 2008); The Wretched of the Earth (London: Penguin Classics, 2001). 19 For arguably the best oversight of Black theology in Britain, see Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Black Theology in Britain: A Reader (London: Equinox, 2007). 20 For a n excellent discussion on the use of the term ‘Black’ as a means of describing people of African descent, see Algernon Austin Achieving Blackness (New York: New York University Press, 2006). 21 See The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain – Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1982). 22 See Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Postcolonial Black British Theology (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2007), pp. xiii–xv. 23 For an excellent treatment on the presence of Christ through elements of bread and wine, see Dennis E. Smith From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003). 24 See Michael. N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Postcolonial Black British Theology. 25 I have argued this most explicitly, particularly for Black theology in Britain, where there is a tendency to see all theologies emanating from Black religious experience as Black theology, as opposed to those movements that are committed to social transformation and the deconstruction of neo-colonial sociocultural mores. See Anthony G. Reddie Working Against the Grain: Re-Imaging Black Theology (London: Equinox, 2008), pp. 17–29. 26 In the context of Black theology, this has been argued with greatest potency and verve by James H. Cone in the first substantive systematic treatment of Black liberation theology as an intellectual discipline. See James H. Cone A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Orbis Books, 1986), pp. 17–49. 27 Arguably, one of Black theology’s distinctive claims is for the revelatory presence of the risen Christ in the agency and self-determined praxis of Black people as they seek their existential freedom within the tumultuous struggles to express their often-denied humanity. There is a wealth of material illustrating this substantive claim, but for the sake of brevity, I would like to highlight the following: James H. Cone God of the Oppressed (New York: Orbis Books, 1997), pp. 108–162. See also Kelly Brown Douglas The Black Christ (New York: Orbis

196  The critical challenge of the other Books, 1994); Robert Beckford Jesus Is Dread (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1998), pp. 130–152. 28 See Randall C. Bailey ‘But It’s in the Text! Slavery, the Bible, and the African Diaspora’. In Anthony G. Reddie (ed.) Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 31–46. 29 Anthony G. Reddie ‘Explorations in Front of the Text: A  Black Liberationist Reader-Response Perspective’. In Angus Paddison (ed.) Theologians on Scripture (London: T & T Clark International, 2016), pp. 147–159. 30 See Barry Chevannes Rastafari: Roots and Ideology (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994), p. 84. 31 Arguably the best work in this respect can be found in Nathaniel Samuel Murrell and Lewin Williams ‘The Black Biblical Hermeneutics of Rastafari’. In Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, William David Spencer and Adrian Anthony McFarlane (eds) Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), pp. 326–348. 32 See Steed V. Davidson ‘Leave Babylon’, pp. 46–60. 33 At the time of writing, some universities, most notably Birmingham City University, is developing a dedicated Black studies undergraduate degree course in which the work of Marcus Garvey is cited and also aspects of Rastafari, as examples of Black radicalism in the United Kingdom. I have not detected in any of this work any appreciation of the faith-based, revelatory truth claims that underpin the activism of either Garvey in particular or Rastafari as a whole. 34 Excellent examples of this can be found in a number of important articles that have been written on Rastafari, which have been published in Black Theology: An International Journal. It remains the only academic journal dedicated solely to the discipline in the world and to the promulgation of Black theologically derived scholarship. See Darren J.N. Middleton ‘As It Is in Zion’, pp. 151–172. See also Noel Leo Erskine ‘The Roots of Rebellion and Rasta Theology in Jamaica’, pp. 104–125; Steed V. Davidson ‘Leave Babylon’, pp. 46–60. 35 For an excellent analysis of Rastafari perspectives on the Bible and the hermeneutical frameworks for reading Black subjectivity, sociopolitical positionality and African history, see Steed V. Davidson ‘Leave Babylon’, pp. 46–60. 36 See Randall C. Bailey ‘But It’s in the Text! Slavery, the Bible, and the African Diaspora’. In Anthony G. Reddie (ed.) Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 31–46. 37 Interesting examples of this can be found in Walter A. McCray The Black Presence in the Bible (Chicago: Black Light Fellowship, 1990). See also Cain Hope Felder (ed.) Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991); Randolph Jackson Black People in the Bible (New York: Original Roots Press, 2013). 38 See Valentina Alexander ‘Onesimus’s Letter to Philemon’. In Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Black Theology in Britain: A Reader (London: Equinox, 2007), pp.  187–190. Alexander’s brief essay seeks to give voice to the enslaved Onesimus, who has run away from his slave master Philemon and sought sanctuary with the apostle Paul. We know of this incident from Paul’s letter to Philemon as it is recorded in the New Testament canon. Paul writes to Philemon on behalf of Onesimus, exhorting the former to receive the latter as a brother in the faith. Crucially, he does not demand Philemon free Onesimus or even challenge Philemon to free Onesimus from Onesimus’s condition of slavery. It is for this reason that Black theology has adopted a hermeneutic of suspicion towards the Bible and its usage as a source and norm for explicating liberation. Indeed, scholars such as Delores Williams argue that it is more honest to see the normative theme of ‘survival’ as being more germane to the thrust for Black existential freedom than that of ‘liberation’, because the latter is not greatly in

Rastafari and Black theology 197 evidence within the biblical text. See Delores S. Williams Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (New York: Orbis Books, 1993). 39 See Steed Davidson, ‘Leave Babylon’, pp. 40–60. 40 In using this term, I  am incorporating all taxonomies, manifestations, expressions and articulations of the faith which emerge from or are an expression of the myriad cultures and experiences of Black people of African and Caribbean descent who are living in Britain. This expression might mean Roman Catholic, Anglican (liberal, catholic or evangelical), Methodist, Baptist, Reformed or Pentecostal, with the fastest-growing trajectory, but may also include other manifestations, such as Seventh Day Adventist. See Mark Sturge Look What the Lord Has Done! An Exploration of Black Christian Faith in Britain (Milton Keynes: Scripture Union, 2005). 41 This form of theo-ethnic discourse is one that largely eschews any substantive sociopolitical engagement and ascribes notions of belonging to a pneumatological construct in which the Holy Spirit transcends cultural differences. For further reflections on this issue, see Anthony G. Reddie Working Against the Grain: Re-imagining Black Theology in the 21st Century (Oakwood and London: Equinox, 2008), pp. 18–20. 42 Perhaps the most emblematic work in this particular typology of Black Christianity in Britain is J.D. Aldred Respect: Understanding Caribbean British Christianity (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2005). 43 ‘Passive radicalism’ can be understood as an anti-oppressive mode of struggle which is based on a form of a pneumatologically inspired connection with the divine. Oppressed Black Christians come to believe that God has created them to be free, through the power of the spirit and spirit-filled forms of religio-cultural practices. This form of assertion is an expression of a belief that it is a fundamental, innate right on behalf of those who are being oppressed to seek to claim their freedom with God in and through the power of their religious association with this supreme being. For information on this mode of anti-hegemonic struggle by Black people of Christian faith, see Valentina Alexander ‘Passive and Active Radicalism in Black Led Churches’. In Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Black Theology in Britain: A Reader (London: Equinox, 2007), pp. 52–69. 44 The best collective articulation of Black theology in Britain can be found in Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Black Theology in Britain. 45 See James H. Cone Black Theology and Black Power (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989). 46 See Ellis Cashmore and Barry Troyna (eds) Black Youth in Crisis (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982). See also Ellis Cashmore Rastaman (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982). 47 Ellis Cashmore and Barry Troyna (eds) Black Youth in Crisis, p. 26. 48 For further reflections on the convergences and divergences in respect to Black Christianity and Rastafari, see William David Spencer Dread Jesus (London: SPCK, 1999), pp.  32–63. See also Noel Leo Erskine From Garvey to Marley: Rastafari Theology (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2005). 49 See Robert Beckford Dread and Pentecostal (London: SPCK, 2000). 50 Ennis B. Edmonds ‘The Structure and Ethos of Rastafari’. In Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, William David Spencer and Adrian Anthony McFarlane (eds) Chanting Down Babylon (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), pp. 349–360. 51 African-American Black theology has in more recent times sought to create a stronger conceptual link with Africa, via the life and thought of Albert Cleage. For further details on this, see Jawanza Eric Clark ‘Reconceiving the Doctrine of Jesus as Savior in Terms of the African Understanding of an Ancestor: A Model for the Black Church’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.8, No.2, 2010,

198  The critical challenge of the other pp. 140–159. See also Jawanza Eric Clark Indigenous Black Theology: Towards an African-Centred Theology of the African-American Religious Experience (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Jawanza Eric Clark (ed.) Albert Cleage JR. and the Black Madonna and Child (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 52 In the following chapter, I will explore the role of Caribbean theology and the iconic figure of Fidel Castro as providing an internationalist, transnational identity for Black Caribbean people, which has been an important bulwark against White British nationalism and racism. The challenge is how this movement can continue to undertake this role in Brexit Britain. 53 See Robert Beckford Jesus Is Dread: A Political Theology for the Black Church in Britain (London: SPCK, 2000), pp. 17–25. See also God and the Gangs (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004), pp. 62–71. 54 For an excellent introduction to Womanist theology, see Stephanie Y. Mitchem Introducing Womanist Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002). 55 Issues of the appropriate nomenclature for womanist theology will be addressed later in this chapter. 56 Alice Walker In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), p. xi. 57 In a previous book, I analysed the comparative failure of Black theology in Britain to produce significant input of Black women in the construction of Black knowledge. The best I could surmise was to outline the work of Black men who have supported and encouraged Black women to contribute to Black theological thinking. See Anthony G. Reddie Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 102–107. 58 James H. Cone A Black Theology of Liberation – 20th anniversary edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990). 59 Delores S. Williams ‘James Cone’s Liberation: Twenty Years Later’. In James H. Cone (ed.) A Black Theology of Liberation – 20th anniversary edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990), pp. 189–195. 60 See Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, William David Spencer and Adrian Anthony McFarlane (eds) Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998). 61 Imani M. Tafari-Ama ‘Rastawoman as Rebel: Case Studies in Jamaica’. In Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, William David Spencer and Adrian Anthony McFarlane (eds) Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), pp. 90–106. 62 Marjorie Lewis ‘Divining Sisters: Reflections on an Experience of Divination by a Priestess of the Ausar Auset Society’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.7, No.3, 2009, pp. 325–338. 63 Velma Mai Thomas ‘The Black Madonna and the Role of Women’. In Jawanza Eric Clark (ed.) Albert Cleage Jr. and the Black Madonna and Child (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 117–134. 64 This has certainly been the case in my own work, which can be seen in two of my texts. See Anthony G. Reddie Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue, pp. 83–112; Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Black Theology in Britain, pp. 109–152. Both chapters are specific reflections on the contributions and critique of Black women (via the refining optics of Womanist theology) to Black theology, the church and Christianity as a whole. 65 See Cheryl Townsend Gilkes If It Wasn’t for the Women: Black Women’s Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community (New York: Orbis Books, 2001). 66 See Marjorie Lewis ‘Diaspora Dialogue: Womanist Theology in Engagement with Aspects of the Black British and Jamaican Experience’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.2, No.1, 2004, pp. 85–109.

Rastafari and Black theology 199 67 Valentina Alexander ‘A Black Woman in Britain Moves Towards an Understanding of Her Spiritual Rites’. In Anthony G. Reddie (ed.) Legacy: Anthology in Memory of Jillian Brown (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House, 2000), pp. 119–125. 68 Lorraine Dixon ‘Are Vashti and Esther Our Sistas?’ In Anthony G. Reddie (ed.) Legacy: Anthology in Memory of Jillian Brown (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House, 2000), pp. 97–108. 69 See Marjorie Lewis ‘Diaspora Dialogue’, pp. 85–109. 70 Marjorie Lewis ‘Diaspora Dialogue’, pp. 99–102. 71 See Carolyn Cooper, ‘ “Resistance Science”: Afrocentric Ideology’. In E. Kofi Agorsah (ed.) Maroon Heritage: Archaeological, Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives (Kingston: Canoe Press, 1994). 72 This abbreviation is often used to identify lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (or questioning) and intersex people. 73 See Caroline Redfearn ‘The Nature of Homophobia in the Black Church’. In Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Postcolonial Black British Theology: New Textures and Themes (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2007), pp. 102–123. 74 See Kelly Brown Douglas Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (New York: Orbis Books, 1999). 75 Regarding the development of Black liberation movements, one can note the treatment of Bayard Rustin, arguably the intellectual genius behind the Civil Rights movement, who because of his sexuality and politics (he was alleged to be a communist) was considered too transgressive to be placed in the limelight of the anti-racist struggle in the United States. See John D’emilio Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 76 See Victor Anderson Beyond Ontological Blackness: Essay in African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (New York: Continuum, 1995). 77 See Horace L. Griffin Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in Black Churches (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2006). 78 See Roger A. Sneed Representations of Homosexuality: Black Liberation Theology and Cultural Criticism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 79 See Darnell L. Moore ‘Guilty of Sin: African-American Denominational Churches and Their Exclusion of SGL Sisters and Brothers’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.6, No.1, 2008, pp. 83–97; Roger A. Sneed ‘Like Fire Shut Up in Our Bones: Religion and Spirituality in Black Gay Men’s Literature’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.6, No.2, 2008, pp. 241– 261; Darnell L. Moore ‘Contested Alliances the Black Church, the Right, and Queer Failure’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.10, No.3, 2012, pp. 321–327. 80 This special issue on LGBTQI+ concerns took almost a decade to bring to fruition for a whole plethora of reasons that are too numerous to cite here but are detailed in my editorial to the volume. The special issue was drawn from a Black Theology Group panel to reflect on Roger Sneed’s book Representations of Homosexuality. An additional call for papers was issued after the successful panel discussion, which provided the supplemental work that helped to augment the special issue of the journal. See Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.10, No.3, 2012. 81 See Pamela R. Lightsey Our Lives Matter: A Womanist Queer Theology (Milton, Ontario: Pickwick, 2015). 82 See Caroline Redfearn ‘A Legacy of Slavery – Black with the Slaves or Mulatto with the Slavers: An English Jamaican Theological Reflection on the Trajectories of “Mixed Race Categories” ’. In Anthony G. Reddie (ed.) Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 129–148.

200  The critical challenge of the other 83 The tension between expansive and more constricted notions of group identities in Black religio-cultural movements is addressed in excellent fashion by Trevor Eppehimer. See Trevor Eppehimer ‘Victor Anderson’s Beyond Ontological Blackness and James Cone’s Black Theology: A Discussion’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.4, No.1, 2006, pp. 87–106. 84 See Anthony G. Reddie ‘The Anti Blackness Problematic of Postcolonial Christianity in Britain’. In Drew Smith, William Ackah and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Churches, Blackness, and Contested Multiculturalism: Europe, Africa, and North America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 11–30. 85 Aside from the dominant voice of James H. Cone, the founding patriarch of Black theology, one can also look at Dwight N. Hopkins Introducing Black Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999); Linda E. Thomas (ed.) Living Stones in the Household of God: The Legacy and Future of Black Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004); Gayraud S. Wilmore Pragmatic Spirituality: The Christian Faith Through an Africentric Lens (New York and London: New York University Press, 2004). 86 See Kortright Davis, Emancipation Still Comin’: Explorations in Caribbean Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990); Noel L. Erskine, Decolonizing Theology: A Caribbean Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981); Lewin Williams, Caribbean Theology (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1994). 87 See Allan Boesak A. Farewell to Innocence: A  Socio-Ethical Study on Black Theology and Black Power (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997); Itumeleng J. Mosala, Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989); Itumeleng J. Mosala and Buti Tlhagale (eds) The Unquestionable Right to Be Free: Black Theology from South Africa (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986). 88 See the classic triumvirate of Black theology work by James H. Cone Black Theology and Black Power – 20th anniversary edition (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1989 [1969]); A Black Theology of Liberation – 20th anniversary edition (New York: Orbis Books, 1990 [1970]); God of the Oppressed. 89 Dianne M. Stewart Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 139–187. 90 See Michael N. Jagessar ‘Is Jesus the Only Way? Doing Black Christian GodTalk in a Multi-Religious City (Birmingham, UK)’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.7, No.2, 2009, pp. 200–225. 91 See Jawanza Eric Clark ‘Reconceiving the Doctrine of Jesus’, pp. 140–159. 92 Details about this organisation can be found by visiting www.iabrs.org/ 93 See Dwight N. Hopkins and Marjorie Lewis (eds) Another World Is Possible: Spiritualities and Religions of Global Darker Peoples (London: Equinox, 2009). 94 See Delroy A. Reid-Salmon Burning for Freedom: A  Theology of the Black Atlantic Struggle for Liberation (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2012). ReidSalmon appears to restrict the Black struggle for liberation by enslaved Africans to within purely a Christian purview. He diminishes the importance of Africanderived religious sensibilities that have sat alongside normative Protestant evangelical Christianity, offering a more plural, expansive trajectory for liberation, such as that proffered by Dianne Stewart’s Three Eyes for the Journey. 95 See Janet L. DeCosmo ‘Reggae and Rastafari in Salvador, Bahia: The Caribbean Connection in Brazil’. In Hemchand Gossai and Nathaniel Samuel Murrell (eds) Religion, Culture and Tradition in the Caribbean (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 2000), pp. 37–64. 96 See Dwight N. Hopkins Being Human: Race, Culture and Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), pp. 1–52.

Rastafari and Black theology 201 97 The African-American womanist ethicist Emilie Townes has undertaken an excellent assessment of the manner in which evil is culturally produced in the body politic of the United States, in a fashion that daily and routinely seeks to undermine the very humanity of Black people in general and African Americans in particular. See Emile M. Townes Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 98 See Noel L. Erskine Decolonizing Theology; Howard Gregory Caribbean Theology: Preparing for the Challenges Ahead (Kingston: Ian Randle, 1995); Lewin L. Williams Caribbean Theology (New York: Peter Lang, 1994); Kortright Davis Emancipation Still Comin’. For a more recent offering, which provides perhaps the most radical riposte for the conservative and reactionary theological motifs contained in (Caribbean) imperial missionary Christianity, see Oral Thomas Biblical Resistance Hermeneutics Within a Caribbean Context (London: Equinox, 2010). 99 See Christopher J. Duncanson-Hales ‘Dread Hermeneutics’, pp. 156–175. 100 See Charles Lattimore Howard ‘Black Stars and Black Poverty: Critical Reflections on Black Theology from a Garveyite Perspective’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.9, No.3, 2011, pp. 312–333.

9 Doing it our way Caribbean theology, contextualisation and cricket

Rationale for this work This chapter offers some critical reflections on the process of contextualising the Christian faith in the Caribbean. The essay is a reflection on the development of Caribbean theology. The reasons why I am looking at Caribbean theology arise from two important aspects of Black Christianity in Britain, both of which are linked to the Caribbean. In the first instance, as a descendant of the Windrush Generation I  have been socialised and formed into the Christian faith carrying the influences of Caribbean Christianity via the religious faith of my mother. As a descendant of the Windrush Generation, I have witnessed how this community has borne the brunt of British racism and struggled to remain within racist White majority churches, while their Pentecostal counterparts had the courage and verve to create new models of independent churches, in post-war Britain. In this text, I have often referred to the Conservative government’s decision to deport members of the Windrush Generation and their descendants as being a shameless act borne of White supremacist racism and as an act that speaks to the Brexit epoch in which we are presently mired. In this chapter, I  draw on the optics of Caribbean theology and the totemic figure of Fidel Castro to construct a dialogue partner for a theological model of resistance that speaks to and for this beleaguered community who have offered much to British life and yet have been met with the searing injustice of deportation. In the second instance, I  have chosen to focus on Caribbean theology because of the distinct Caribbean quality of Black theology in Britain. The three leading exponents of Black theology in Britain, Robert Beckford, Michael Jagessar and me, are all people of Caribbean descent1 (Jagessar was born in Guyana but has been a resident in the United Kingdom for many years). Alongside Beckford, Jagessar and me, we also have Joe Aldred, who has been the leading advocate for intra–Black Pentecostal ecumenism and for greater mutuality and partnership between White majority churches and Black majority churches in the United Kingdom. Aldred is also from the Caribbean.

Doing it our way 203 This focus on the Caribbean is not intended to denote any form of privileging of one group, namely Caribbean peoples, over another, say people from the African continent. Rather, as someone who is a contextual theologian, writing from within the purview of my experience, I am interested in reflecting on the relationship between the region in which my parents and more immediate relatives were born and my formative experiences of growing up in Britain. I recognise and applaud the work of African theologians in Britain who are seeking to detail their contextual backgrounds and formative experiences that have shaped their lives.2 Given the Caribbean character of Black theology in Britain, and being cognisant of the postcolonial intent of this movement as it seeks alliances with diasporan trajectories and perspectives, I reflect on Caribbean theology as the familial elder of its British counterpart. As Black theology in Britain confronts the toxic residues of Brexit, what can it learn from its forebear, and how can it gain sustenance from this movement as seeks to address the spectre of White nationalism in Britain? This chapter builds on the recent work I have undertaken for and with the Baptist Union of Great Britain as it has sought to reflect on its more than two hundred years of partnership with the Jamaica Baptist Union.3 This more narrowly focused project brought Black (predominantly, Caribbean descent) British Baptists into conversation with Jamaican Baptists, reflecting on two hundred years of a missionary partnership. As the lead editor of that work, I had the opportunity to consider my own Caribbean roots and to reflect on the pivotal role my mother played in my Christian formation, given that her socialisation was within the Jamaica Baptist Union, at Belle Castle Baptist Church, in East Portland.4 The link between Britain and the Caribbean has been an important one in both sociocultural, ecclesial and theological terms. This essay seeks to draw on that connection to create a transnational, Black Atlantic, anti-Brexit focused theological rationale for empowering those who are othered in the body politic of postcolonial Britain. Finally, this essay juxtaposes Caribbean theology with cricket to create an imaginative heuristic for reimagining the relationship between postcolonial bodies and mission Christianity. I have chosen this particular nexus because it also reflects an important parallel discourse to the challenges of confronting and deconstructing mission Christianity, as I detailed in the first three chapters of this book. In constructing a theological riposte to Brexit, I have undoubtedly had to both name and attempt to deconstruct the underlying edifice of mission Christianity and its resultant impact on Black bodies within the British context. What unites Caribbean theology and Black theology in Britain is the challenge of confronting mission Christianity that has played a destructive role in limiting the agency of Black Christians in the former colonies of the British Empire and in the ‘mother country’. Cricket has been the curious artefact of the British Empire that has occupied an interesting parallel life alongside the Church as the quintessential phenomenon that

204  The critical challenge of the other speaks to the postcolonial matrices of sameness and difference between the formerly colonised and the colonisers. In my analysis of Caribbean theology and cricket, the salient challenge is one of how Caribbean people inhabit the phenomenological entities of Christianity and cricket with an intent that does something more than simply mirror the positionalities of their former colonial masters. Postcolonial discourse has long recognised the subversive power of mimicry in the arsenal of subjugated and colonised bodies of Caribbean people.5 Oral Thomas so aptly reminds us, however, that mimicry and contextualised, coded forms of resistance, such as that practised by Anansi,6 the patron saint of Caribbean tricksters, never bring about revolution and the defeat of oppressive systems. Rather, Anansi is able to manoeuvre within the system, creating space for limited forms of agency; the oppressive superstructure may be slightly tarnished, but it is never overthrown.7 In the context of this work, is Black theology and its necessary resistance limited to solely that of mimicry and subterfuge? In what ways is there any substantive difference between the Black Christianity of resistance that arises from subjugated and colonised Black bodies and minds and the Eurocentric mission Christianity of White hegemonic power? Is the former simply a contradictory darker but paler imitation of the latter? A form of ‘colourization Christianity’ of which I have spoken in the past?8 By analysing the contextual features of Caribbean theology in dialogue with cricket (the two substantive artefacts of British colonialism in the region), I reflect on how these two facets might inform Black theology in Britain. I  am interested in how they can provide helpful forms of liberative praxis by which the Windrush Generation and their descendants might mount a radical faith-based riposte to Brexit.

Introducing Caribbean theology The process of seeking out synergy between Christianity and the culture and experiences of poor, disenfranchised people of the Caribbean is one that has been undertaken by committed postcolonial scholars and activists since the early 1970s. This faith-based work received significant sustenance from the socialism-inspired anti-colonial politics of the Cuban Revolution under the leadership of Fidel Castro. This chapter juxtaposes the contextualisation process of Caribbean theology as a faith-based parallel to the sociopolitical transformation of the Cuban Revolution and the legacy of Fidel Castro. The central conceit of this essay is that cricket provides a symbolic heuristic for articulating the theo-cultural rearticulation of Christianity within the Caribbean milieu. Given the Caribbean complexion of Black theology in Britain, I look at Caribbean theology as the older sibling to the British movement, to explore the extent to which Christianity can be remade to become a movement of liberative praxis for ordinary people in the United Kingdom. How can Black

Doing it our way 205 theology in Britain, inspired by Caribbean theology, become an emblematic challenge to the subterranean White English nationalism of Brexit? Caribbean theology is explored to find out whether it can provide insights into how Black theology can critique the toxic residues of nationalism and xenophobia that is now replete in British society since the Brexit vote. Roots of Caribbean theology The roots of Caribbean theology lie in the anti-colonial movements of the 1950s and 1960s, flourishing in the 1970s under the aegis of the ecumenical movement, both in the Caribbean itself (the Caribbean Conference of Churches – CCC) and around the world (the World Council of Churches – WCC).9 The Caribbean has been a site of contestation since Christopher Columbus stumbled across the Caribbean islands towards the end of the 15th century. Christianity, the religion of the planter class and the spiritual guarantor of the mechanism of enslavement, was the central site in which the epistemological struggle for truth was undertaken.10 In many respects, the emergence of Caribbean theology in the early 1970s was largely a development of the revolutionary antecedents on the Caribbean island of Cuba in 1959. Before the emergence of Caribbean theology, the Cuban Revolution under the leadership of Fidel Castro had already exerted a powerful influence on civil society across the region.11 From our vantage point of the 21st century, it is hard to appreciate the totemic figure that Fidel Castro exerted across the Global South as a hero of disenfranchised people.12 Castro’s resistance to American imperialism, seeking to create an egalitarian society based on socialist principles is one that galvanised liberation movements across the Global South.13 The controversy surrounding Castro’s regime cannot be ignored, but his critics notwithstanding, there can be no doubting the impact the Cuban Revolution exerted on the Caribbean islands in the 1960s and early 1970s. I must now clarify the intent of this chapter on Caribbean theology, contextualisation and cricket. This work does not pretend to be a comprehensive analysis of the identity and development of Caribbean theology. I am not the best-placed person to undertake such work, and that is not the purpose of this chapter. Rather, my desire is to provide a brief overview of the environmental factors that helped to give rise to Caribbean theology and then to reflect on its development as a form of contextualised theology, linking its identity and intent to the other great contested sociocultural phenomenon of the region (alongside Christianity), namely cricket. The roots of Caribbean theology can found in the pivotal work of Philip Potter under the aegis of the Student Christian movement in the years following the Second World War and then later through the WCC in the 1960s and 1970s and the dialogue of cultures.14 Potter was a pioneer in the critical issues pertaining to the contextualisation of Christian theology seeking to articulate the dialectic between ‘the Word’ and the world.15

206  The critical challenge of the other The flowering of Caribbean theology in the 1970s emerged via the founding of the CCC in 1973 and the growing awareness of the political ferments amongst non-aligned nations seeking a separate identity within SovietAmerican hegemony.16 This period marked the initial flowering of Caribbean theology as a ‘theology of liberation’ emerging from the region. I shall reflect further on the nature of Caribbean theologising and the type of contextualised theology it created during the period, moving into the present epoch. The works of Howard Gregory, David Mitchell and Jean Price-Mars were important early signposts on the road towards the full flowering of Caribbean theology.17 As I have stated previously, one cannot assess the contextualisation programme of Caribbean theology without taking into account the anti-colonial socialism of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution as its inspiring backdrop. This link is perhaps best exemplified in Noel Erskine’s landmark 1981 book Decolonizing Theology.18 Erskine outlines a constructive appraisal of and for a Caribbean theology that is liberative and decolonial in its intent. Aside from drawing on anti-slavery history, citing such luminaries as Sam Sharpe and Paul Bogle (two of the seven national heroes of Jamaica),19 he, crucially, establishes a link with the Cuban Revolution and the anti-colonial rhetoric of Fidel Castro.20 Erskine links the development of Caribbean theology in the 1970s to the socialist government of Michael Manley in Jamaica21 and Manley’s personal links with Castro. In terms of the latter, Erskine identifies Castro’s visit to Jamaica in 1977 as being hugely important in the constructive development of Caribbean theology. In seeking to identify the relationship between a liberationist model of Christianity and the socialist vision of society, Erskine sees no radical disjunction between the two, as is often asserted by more conservative theologians and politicians. Writing on Castro’s visit in 1977, Erskine states that During that visit he held a two-hour conversation with the Jamaican Council of Churches in which he pointed out that he was baptized by the church and that he did not see a conflict between religion and revolution. The problem in Cuba is not so much between the revolution and religious beliefs as between the revolution and social class.22 Erskine continues by charting the emergence of the Caribbean Ecumenical Consultation on Development in 1971 as signalling the growth in consciousness of radical Christians seeking to develop a prophetic stance vis-à-vis the Church’s commitment to a more egalitarian understanding of how Caribbean societies should be constituted.23 Erskine’s landmark text was later augmented by similarly compelling work by Kortright Davis24 and by Lewin Williams.25 In Davis’s work, special attention is given to the CCC’s creative attempts to develop an ecumenical, contextual form of Christian education as the practical pedagogical

Doing it our way 207 development of Caribbean theology.26 The product of this pioneering process of contextualised practical Caribbean theological engagement was the landmark series Fashion Me A People,27 overseen by one of the great laypeople of the Caribbean, Joyce Bailey. Fashion Me A People is hugely important because it was the concerted attempt to concretise the salient features of the then-emerging Caribbean theology into a practical pedagogical tool for teaching a contextualised model of the Christian faith to ordinary people across the Caribbean. On a personal note, I cannot commend this resource too highly, because it was the vision of this work that inspired my own attempts to develop a contextualised Christian education curriculum for the teaching and learning of the Christian faith for Black Christians of Caribbean descent in the United Kingdom in the 1990s.28 Lewin Williams’s comprehensive appraisal of Caribbean theology, written in the mid 1990s, offers a systematic, constructivist approach to the topic, seeking to provide a much-needed theological method for the contextualisation of the Christian faith for the region. For the purposes of this work, I am interested, particularly, in Williams’s assessment of Marxism as a helpful methodological tool in the development of Caribbean theology, given the aforementioned import of the Cuban Revolution on the sociopolitical consciousness of the region. In a relatively short but incisive section on the sociopolitical influences that have informed Caribbean theology, Williams asked about the value of Marxism to the development of a contextualised Caribbean theology:29 Given the chronic classism that is rampant in the Caribbean and the gap between the rich and poor, the Marxist social analysis is an extremely handy tool for not only assessing the problem but for posing a remedy, if it is agreed that it is the dismantling of the oppressive structures that will bring equality to the region. In any case since neo- colonialism of this capitalistic and imperialistic nature keeps up its pressure in the area, some governments, searching for progressive alternatives, keep turning again and again to the Marxist corrective.30 Williams does not endorse Marxism as a viable theoretical framework on which to develop Caribbean theology; nor does he discount it, thereby opening up the possibilities for a religio-political rapprochement between Castro’s revolutionary Cuba and the wider Caribbean region. Given this brief appraisal of the sociocultural and political developments underpinning Caribbean theology, it is impossible for me to reflect on all the important voices that have helped to shape the character and content of this movement. So let me apologise once again for the obvious omission in my assessment of Caribbean theology. Even this brief assessment, however, would be amiss if a few words were not directed at the towering figure of Philip Potter. Potter was perhaps the first major Caribbean theologian to bestride the world stage as a scholar, thinker and ardent proponent for the

208  The critical challenge of the other development of Caribbean theology. I am indebted to my friend and colleague Michael Jagessar for my brief reflections on Potter’s importance and legacy to the contextualisation process of Caribbean theology.31 The bulk of Potter’s ministry was spent engaged in the ecumenical movement via the WCC, and it is largely from within the international purview that he made his significant contributions to Caribbean theology. An important part of Jagessar’s in-depth analysis of Potter’s scholarly ministry is the exploration of the art of ‘doing theology’.32 Jagessar outlines the major theological themes in Potter’s approach to the task of doing theology in context, particularly in the Caribbean. He demonstrates that Potter’s approach to the contextualisation of the Christian faith echoes many of the later developments in the Caribbean that occurred while Potter was away in Geneva. Central to Potter’s commitment to the contextualisation of Christianity in the Caribbean is his belief that the faith must be aligned to the needs of and be in solidarity with the poor.33 Jagessar summaries Potter’s commitment to the poor: According to Potter, to do theology in the Caribbean means living and thinking faith within the framework of, and in opposition to all that oppresses. It means solidarity with the poor and all the oppressed, seeking to bring liberation that all may share in the fullness of life as offered by Christ in community. In essence, the major task of theology in the Caribbean is to reflect on the meaning of one’s faith in the God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ in a context where most of the people are condemned to a life on the periphery.34 This commitment to the poor quite naturally resonates with the underlying intentionality of Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution, although Potter’s committed Christian faith, centred on the reconciling work of Christ, would recoil at the notion of a class struggle irrevocably separating people based on class conflict.

Theo-political issues in contextualising Christianity Having given a brief appraisal of the sociopolitical backdrop to the development of Caribbean theology, I now place the contextualisation process that underpinned this movement into a larger thematic and theological context. In some respects, what Caribbean theologians attempted from the 1970s through to the present day is normal for any theological enterprise named ‘contextual theology’, and yet it was also infused with a certain panache that was distinctively Caribbean. The challenges of seeking to locate Christianity within a specific cultural milieu is not new. The first major debates in this relationship emerged in the middle part of the last century. The classic work on ‘Christ and culture’ was written by H. Richard Niebuhr in the early 1950s.35 Niebuhr offers a number of models for illustrating how the phenomenon of ‘Christ’ at the

Doing it our way 209 centre of Christianity engages with the broader cultures within specific environmental milieux in which faith in Christ is located. Niebuhr’s work set forth an attempt to create all-embracing taxonomies for detailing the locus of authority for how the religious life was to be lived within differing sociopolitical contexts. Niebuhr’s formulations of Christ with, against, above, within and transcending culture and, as a corollary, context have given rise in more recent times to the pioneering work of the likes of Stephen Bevans36 and of Robert Schreiter.37 These writers have shown the extent to which the universal phenomenon of faith in Jesus Christ is always tempered by its local expression in any particular space, place and time. This chapter is informed by the broader hinterland of contextual realities, particularly that which pertains to contested notions of race and identity, alongside religious faith and practice. It seeks to address the wider issues pertaining to the nexus of faith and context within the Caribbean cultural milieu. This essay investigates how Caribbean theologians, inspired by the Cuban Revolution, sought to contextualise the Christian faith alongside the materiality of cultures within that regional milieu. The issue of how the Christian faith engages with the cultures in which the Church is located has generated a great deal of academic thought. The academic study of Christianity and its relationship to culture and how the latter can inform and influence the practice of the former is called ‘inculturation’.38 Questions pertaining to the nexus of Christianity and the cultures in which the faith is incubated, particularly as they relate to sociopolitical concerns pertaining to worship and religious practice, are specific queries for liturgists and specialist scholars in the area of inculturation.39 In many respects, the dominant voice in the contemporary study of contextualising the Christian faith has been Stephen Bevans. Bevans is a Euro-American Roman Catholic scholar who has done a great deal of work assessing differing models of contextual theology, illustrating the relationship between religious faith and the cultures and settings in which that faith is located.40 What Bevans terms ‘contextual theology’ is in many respects simply a description of what has existed within the Christian faith from its earliest days – that is, an ongoing dynamic relationship between the faith as it has been developed across history and the interpretation and expression of that faith in a specific sociocultural milieu. The localised expression of faith represents the very heart of what is often termed ‘contextual theology’. Bevans describes contextual theology thus: First of all, contextual theology understands the nature of theology in a new way. . . . Theology that is contextual realizes that culture, history, contemporary thought forms, and so forth are to be considered along with scripture and tradition as valid sources for theological expression.41 As we will see shortly, Caribbean theologians have sought to respond to many of the classical questions pertaining to the contextualisation of Christianity

210  The critical challenge of the other in their pioneering work in the 1970s and early 1980s. Of the different models of contextual theology that Bevans outlines, the one that most reflects the central concerns of Caribbean theology is that of the ‘praxis model’, namely an approach that emphasises faithful action for social change.42 In outlining the praxis model of contextual theology, Bevans highlights the means by which the various theological models identified in this typology are ones that express an element of identity politics in their modus operandi. Whether in feminist theology, queer theology, Dalit theology or, most pertinent to the Caribbean milieu,43 Black liberation theology, each model of theological expression uses the subjective experiences of subjugated people within a specific historical context as the point of departure in detailing the faith-based activism that subsequently gains expression in that particular sociopolitical milieu.44 Angie Pears’s work on contextual theology offers a helpful precis of the varying genres or approaches to situated, identity-based forms of theological reflection, including those frameworks whose modus operandi is confronting the stultifying effects of race-based thinking and action. In this respect, Black liberation theology can be seen as a particularised form of contextual theology.45 I argue that Caribbean theology can be construed as the contextualised rethinking of Christian theology in order to affirm the subjugated realities of the descendants of enslaved Africans and indentured Indians in that region. As this essay is written in response to the toxic subterranean Whiteness of the Brexit phenomenon, I  have chosen to limit my reflections on the contextualisation of Caribbean theology as it pertains to reaffirming Blackness as the critical other to the seemingly axiomatic normativity of White supremacist entitlement. In this regard, I am making an explicit identification of Caribbean theology as a form of Black liberation theology. In establishing this linkage, I focus on the particularities of Blackness as they pertain to the Caribbean, in terms of my own familial background, given my Jamaican parentage.46 I recognise the plural realities of the Caribbean and that there exists a plethora of ethnic, cultural and religious antecedents in the region, but in identifying Caribbean theology as a form of counter resistance to White English nationalism, I focus on religio-cultural import of Blackness. In the development of Caribbean theology, there has always been an important subtext that has been connected with rehabilitating and reconstructing the nature of Blackness as it is experienced and articulated within the Caribbean milieu. In this regard, Caribbean theology is not simply seeking to reflect the contextual experiences of ordinary people in this specific geo-cultural space. Rather, the contextualisation that Caribbean theology has sought to undertake attempts to go beyond merely reflecting the sociocultural and political milieu, to seek to transform it, much like the praxis model described earlier. With this thought in mind, I  believe it is correct to say that Caribbean theology is not only a form of contextual theology but also a ‘theology

Doing it our way 211 of liberation’. Caribbean theology, like other forms of ‘theologies of liberation’, emerges from specific locations and reflects the concrete material experiences of particular groups of people who have been marginalised and oppressed for a number of reasons. All theologies of liberation47 (indeed all theologies per se) are contextual. By this, I mean that the nature of any theological enterprise is influenced by and responds to the critical issues and experiences of the people in that time and space, in their relationship to God. The important distinction I wish to make, however, is that while all theologies are contextual, not all contextual theologies are necessarily liberative in character. I believe that the contextualisation attempted by Caribbean theologians in the 1970s, inspired by the legacy of Fidel Castro, was largely concerned with a liberative agenda, seeking to transform Caribbean societies and the Church in a manner not unlike the radical changes inspired by the Cuban Revolution. Caribbean theology was never intended to merely be contextual. Simply reflecting the context in which the theology has been incubated does not guarantee that the theological enterprise is seeking to transform the wider context for those who are disenfranchised at the bottom of the sociopolitical ladder. So to be clear, Caribbean theology is not a form of contextual theology that might be equated with, say, the oppressive nature of ‘Afrikaans theology’, the White theology of the Dutch Reformed Church that was distinctly oppressive for non-White people in South Africa. There is no doubting the contextual character of this theology, reflecting as it did the environmental and cultural milieu of the Boers and the broader White communities of South Africa, but by no stretch of the imagination could this theological perspective be described as liberative or as an authentic theology of liberation.48 It is my contention that Caribbean theology has offered something quite distinct and different in its attempts to contextualise Christianity within the Caribbean. There are important historical reasons why the tradition of radical liberative theological reflections of the Caribbean adopted the nomenclature of ‘Caribbean theology’ and not, say, ‘Black theology’, but I am in no doubt that the notion of liberative change remains at the heart of the intent of Caribbean theology. ‘Theologies of liberation’ do not merely reflect the contextual character of any specific cultural context; rather, they seek to reimagine and transform them by means of a commitment to liberative praxis.49 In using this term, I am speaking of the reflective faith-based activism that is committed to actualising the liberative dimensions of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the ‘upside-down’ values of the kingdom of God.50 What makes Caribbean theology a distinctive form of liberative praxis is that its intentionality to combine the race analysis of Black theology, seeking to rethink and rehabilitate Blackness, with the class analysis of Latin American liberation theology forges a middle way between these two differing forms of ‘theologies of liberation’. In terms of adopting a critical form of social analysis, Caribbean theology has undoubtedly been influenced by

212  The critical challenge of the other left-of-centre sociopolitical praxis that seeks to articulate a transformative notion of change in the body politic of the region. Through the frameworks provided by systemic and structural forms of analysis, Caribbean theology has arguably sought to provide a theoretical paradigm that has borrowed from the sociopolitical and economic egalitarianism that underpinned Fidel Castro’s commitment to a new Cuba, after January 1959. As a ‘theology of liberation’, Caribbean theology, borrowing from the Castro’s Cuban Revolution, has sought to create a societal platform that seeks to support and empower the victims of laissez-faire, neo-liberal capitalism. Rather than blaming the poor proletariat for their own failings, Caribbean theology has critiqued the world economic system, one built on free market capitalism. In this regard, Caribbean theology has offered an undeniably pointed, critical explanation for poverty in the region. It has critiqued the negative impact of neo-liberal economic activity on ordinary people in the Caribbean, particularly those who are the descendants of enslaved Africans. Lewin Williams adopts a sociopolitical form of analysis to assess how the missionary Christianity of the European colonial powers sought to create passivity and inertia in the minds of Caribbean peoples.51 Caribbean theology, as a theology of liberation, has found it necessary to critique the relationship between the status quo tendencies of the Church and the accompanying reactionary politics that seek to control the destiny of the poor. Williams states that In contemporary times the affinity between right-wing politics and the conservative church is highly suggestive of the perfect grasp of the idea in the rough and tumble of the political arena. As long as humanity can be successfully steered towards the portals of heaven it becomes so preoccupied with the heavenly demands that it looks away from the human condition of here and now.52 Lewin Williams’s comments outline a critical aspect of Caribbean theology in critiquing the incipient conservatism of traditional Euro-American Christianity and how it has supported the status quo, often at the expense of the poor across the Caribbean. Caribbean biblical scholar Oral Thomas’s work in combining the critical insights of Caribbean theology with an ideological hermeneutic of the Bible seeks to offer an alternative understanding of God’s justice than that found in normative, evangelical Eurocentric mission Christianity. Thomas’s hermeneutic is one that asserts the struggle between those who can assert their own perspectives and those who are denied power. This example of Caribbean theologising demonstrates how such forms of contestation can be seen in the biblical text itself. That is, the Bible does not necessarily provide us with a neutral or an entirely trustworthy picture of what constitutes the ‘will of God’.

Doing it our way 213 Contextualising sacred texts and gender One of the critical aspects of Caribbean theological contextualisation is a creative and critical hermeneutic of the Bible and the central place it takes in Christian practice. A critical insight into Caribbean theology’s recontextualisation of Christian theology can be found in how the Bible is read with a form of ideological intent drawn from the sociopolitical realities of the Caribbean. One of the strengths of Caribbean theologising in relation to the Bible can be seen in how scholars have recognised the means by which the Bible has assisted in reinforcing patriarchal norms that often provide the substantive underscoring for violence against women in many Caribbean societies. In short, the Bible is not always ‘the Good Book’.53 One can see elements of this complexity in how many Caribbean women have wrestled with the biblical text within the matrix of the contextual, existential, colonial and postcolonial milieu in which they have resided. My friend and colleague Michael N. Jagessar has remarked that one has to make an important distinction, for example, between ‘biblical literalism’ and ‘biblical realism’ as differing hermeneutical frameworks by which Caribbean people engage with biblical texts. Jagessar cites the latter as being part of the complex repertoire of Caribbean people in their ability to read biblical texts in a seemingly literal fashion, the outworkings of which, however, express themselves in liberationist, hope-filled declarations of life that are nevertheless linked squarely to the contextual realities of their lives. That is, biblical realism is not a retreat from reality through immersing oneself in a literal reading of the biblical text. Rather, it is the reading of the text in a way that reinforces the contextual struggles of life and questions the presuppositions one often holds about God that are often not attested to by experience. Jagessar states, The example I often use is the way the Haitian Creole Bible translates the verse “With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26 and Mark 10:27). The translators use a French Creole word which puts a different spin on the text to read “With God we can make do.” For Haitians and their history it would seem a lie to say with God all things are possible. Their reality has told them a different story.54 If Caribbean theology is seeking to deconstruct the domestication of the Bible as it has been used in traditional Euro-American mission Christianity, then Caribbean theology has sought to recontextualise the epistemological base of Christianity via a trenchant critique of patriarchy. The scholarship of Lewis is particularly apposite given her groundbreaking work in seeking an alternative nomenclature for Jamaican women’s theological discourse.55 As I have argued in the previous chapter, Lewis has provided an alternative nomenclature for Caribbean women, using the term ‘Nannyish T’eology’,

214  The critical challenge of the other named after the Nanny of the Maroons.56 Carolyn Cooper has explored the role of Nanny of the Maroons, seeing her as an archetypal figure for Jamaican woman.57 Nanny is a powerful figure  of Jamaican womanhood and represents the sociopolitical, experiential identification with the proletariat, particularly that of Black women in Jamaican society. Dianne Stewart’s important work Three Eyes for the Journey58 has critiqued the Christian hegemonic position that has underpinned Caribbean theology. She has recognised how Caribbean theology often reinforced patriarchy and androcentric-informed theologising. Stewart has challenged Caribbean theology to recognise the significance of African-derived religions within the region and to use these religious frameworks as ways of expanding the semantic gaze of liberative praxis. I.e., Jesus Christ does not provide the sole means by which Caribbean people have construed notions of freedom and agency.59 This additional perspective in critiquing traditional Eurocentric mission Christianity is one that borrows from and challenges the socialism-inspired revolutionary intent of Castro’s Cuban Revolution. In short, the enduring challenge for Caribbean theology in its contextualisation is the necessity of engaging with the deeply political and subversive realities of affirming Black embodiment, being cognisant that the very acknowledgement and celebration of Blackness often remains unacceptable when juxtaposed against the subterranean tacit invisibility of Whiteness.60

West Indies cricket as a heuristic for Caribbean contextualisation As we have seen previously, the question of the relationship between the Christian faith and the cultural context in which it is located is not a new phenomenon. The critical challenge of contextualisation has always been that of seeking to juxtapose the theological underpinnings of Christianity with the cultural and philosophical ideas of the wider sociopolitical milieu that informs human life in that particular context. Arguably, one of the earliest examples of contextualisation can be found in a cursory examination of the prologue to the fourth gospel. The construction of Jesus as ‘the Logos’, for example, is the kind of juxtaposition that seeks to recast him in a new form for the purposes of Christian mission in a predominantly Greek-influenced world. As the Church began to construct its identity within a new sociopolitical, cultural and philosophical milieu, the Christian faith began to construct new ways of reflecting on and conveying the salvific message of Jesus. This form of contextualisation seems self-explanatory to modern eyes and ears but would not have felt this way to 1st-century Jewish believers. The pivotal issue at stake in any conversation about Christ and the cultures in which the faith of the Church is incubated is less about whether culture and faith can and should coexist and more about which cultures are recognised as acceptable conduits for carrying sacred religious ideas.61

Doing it our way 215 Caribbean theology, like other forms of contextual theology, has emerged against the backdrop of colonially inspired Western forms of Christianity that emerged from 19th-century White evangelicalism. A number of Black scholars have demonstrated the extent to which Christianity as a global phenomenon has drunk deeply from the well of Eurocentric philosophical thought at the expense of African or other overarching forms of epistemology.62 The intent of Caribbean theology has been the attempt to enable the Christian church in that region to learn to become increasingly comfortable, engaging with the nurturing soil of the culture in which the faith and its many peoples are located. Caribbean theology’s contextualisation has been informed by the wider development of postcolonial Caribbean biblical hermeneutics.63 An important example of the means by which postcolonial hermeneutics has been incorporated into Caribbean theologising can be seen in the work of Oral Thomas, a Caribbean and Methodist biblical scholar, whose doctoral work was undertaken with R.S. Sugirtharajah at the University of Birmingham.64 Thomas offers one of the first postcolonial contextualised overviews of biblical hermeneutics in the Caribbean and shows how the enslaved and colonised have always engaged in radical and subversive forms of biblical interpretation to challenge White hegemonic power. Thomas uses cricket as a parallel metaphor for investigating the postcolonial framework of Christianity that encapsulates the differing meanings attributed to the common structures in which the enslaved and enslaver, colonised and coloniser are juxtaposed in the one common entity. It has always struck me that West Indies cricket is a perfect metaphor for the challenges of contextualising the Christian faith as a whole and for demonstrating the importance of seeing the person of Jesus anew, from within the Caribbean milieu.65 Since the seminal writing of C.L.R. James,66 Cricket has remained a potent signifier for the colonial and postcolonial relationship between England as ‘mother country’ and the Caribbean. One of my earliest memories of a positive Black identity growing up in a diasporan Jamaican household in Britain was the 1976 West Indies tour of England and Viv Richards’s defiant 291 at the Oval. Cricket for me serves as an excellent barometer for how one might reconceive the Christian faith in terms of Caribbean culture. One only has to imagine Jesus in the guise of Geoffrey Boycott (I was born in the county of Yorkshire) and then imagine him as say Viv Richards or Brian Lara to see all the difference in the world as to how the divine can be reimagined. In both guises, Jesus is imagined as someone inhabiting a space within the same defined rules of the game, namely cricket. The rules of the game do not change because one exchanges Richards or Lara for Boycott. While the rules do not change, the intent and the attitude of the person under scrutiny does! More specifically, whereas Boycott was intent on ‘playing it safe’ and ‘preserving his wicket at all costs’, knowing that one mistake could spell ruin, Richards or Lara sought to attack and entertain. Yes, they

216  The critical challenge of the other took risks and, in doing so, put themselves in danger of failure and disappointment. And yet it is in the very desire to seize life and express their innate genius that the boundaries of what is possible and even expected are stretched; indeed, they are often broken. Whether in Richards’s 56 ball hundred or in Lara’s two world-record knocks of 375 and 400 not out, we have risk, outrageous shot selection and brilliant execution all rolled into one. The issue, for me, is not whether Boycott, Richards or Lara represents the ‘proper’ way to play cricket, as both have their merits; rather, what is at stake is ‘which is the most pleasing way you would like to play the game?’67 Which one is fun? Which one represents sheer joie de vivre? Which one makes you want to punch the air and shout ‘One more time fi my yout’!’68 The issue of Christ and culture in the Caribbean context, indeed for all Christians in the area but thinking especially for the development of Caribbean theology, is whether there is the confidence and the fearlessness to present a Christ who is in the spirit of Richards and Lara. Conversely, is there still the continued desire to offer a dry colonial technocrat like Boycott? In the former, there are risks. Risks of bad behaviour, irreverence to authority and sheer disobedience! Liberationist and postcolonial depictions of Christ are ones who remind us that he himself was accused of being a glutton, of spending way too much time with women of dubious virtue and other social undesirables and even had no apparent respect for the Sabbath. In effect, Jesus was not a good rabbi by any means. In using cricket as a heuristic for the contextualisation process of Caribbean theology, one can draw a direct parallel between the technocratic, safety-first mode of playing that characterises the traditional English approach to batting and the improvisatory qualities of the West Indies cricket team. The Caribbean approach to playing cricket has been characterised by a desire to refashion the playing of the game in an entirely alternate manner than that favoured by the coaching manuals of the English establishment. This refashioning of the allegedly agreed norms of ‘the game’ is not unlike Caribbean theology’s rejection of the dogmatic rigidity and certainties of traditional Eurocentric colonial mission Christianity and its concomitant theological reflection. The refashioning of an alternative approach to playing cricket has been mirrored in the radical, iconoclastic political legacy of Fidel Castro, who sought to create an alternate society to the Batista-American-friendly paradigm that had dominated Cuba for over a century. Whereas the political leaders of Cuba prior to Castro had long sought to replicate the capitalistic greed and racism of the United States, being little more than a playground for the rich and the greedy, the Castro-led Cuban regime unleashed a radically different model of political science that came to be feared and admired the world over.69 I should, however, offer a note of caution on this parallel between the radical rejective posture of Castro’s revolution and the more emollient and pragmatic critique of imperialism offered by Caribbean theology, which can be equated with the symbolism of the Caribbean approach to playing the

Doing it our way 217 game of cricket. One can pose the critical question as to how radical either movement (Caribbean theology and cricket) can be in terms of effecting liberationist-inspired change when both remain within the epistemological boundaries set by the colonisers in the first place. Neither Caribbean theology nor Caribbean cricket outright reject the rules and norms set down in either code by the former colonial masters. Neither code has sought to invent a ‘new game’ or break decisively with the rules as set by Euro-­American imperialism. So how radical has been the intent of Caribbean theology, and is cricket a helpful heuristic for assessing the contextual power of either to effect substantive change for Caribbean people? When compared to the Cuban Revolution and the legacy of Fidel Castro, clearly, the answer to the question is, undoubtedly, no. Caribbean theology has remained resolutely ‘Christian’70 in its formative identity, seeking to amend, adapt and appropriate contextual forms of improvisatory alternatives in the rethinking and the articulation of Christianity, but it has not rejected it outright. Similarly, in terms of Caribbean cricket, yes, the batting of Viv Richards and Brian Lara may have added a swaggering alternative vista to the art of scoring runs, but neither rejected the rules of the game, just its aesthetic norms. I wonder whether the difference between Castro’s rejection of the sociopolitical and economic norms of governance of the West was in part fuelled by his own turbulent relationship with Roman Catholicism and the didactic conservatism of the Catholic Church in Cuba and its largely compliant relationship to the political status quo? Conversely, within the Anglophone Caribbean, has the role of evangelical Protestantism provided an alternative milieu that fostered a divergent sociopolitical and cultural approach? I am genuinely at a loss to proffer any substantive explanation for the difference between the two. It is telling, of course, that both Christianity and cricket represent the beating heart of the proselytising impulse of British imperialism. Both modes of engagement and practice are intensely conservative and yet alluring and deeply habit forming. As a practitioner and consumer of both, I know from first-hand experience the struggles of seeking to remake and refashion while remaining compelled to undertake one’s praxis from within, as opposed to beyond and without. In other words, Christianity and cricket are emblematic of the insidious best and the seductive worst of British imperialism and the corrosive effects of colonialism. Yet remaining within and seeking to refashion rather than rejecting can be best summed up in the visceral pleasure one experiences while witnessing the sheer ebullient brilliance of Caribbean people seeking to subvert the conventional modes of normality through our improvisatory skill of simply being different.

Caribbean theology, Black Christianity in Britain and Brexit Brexit Britain has witnessed a rise in anti-immigration rhetoric and the vituperation of those considered the other in the body politic of the nation.71 Arguably, the Conservative government policy of creating a hostile climate

218  The critical challenge of the other against illegal forms of immigration has arisen on the back of the tacit permission given them by the electorate post-Brexit to pursue a more trenchant policy towards visible migrants in the United Kingdom. In exploring the significance of Caribbean theology as a riposte to the monocultural optics of homogeneity that underpinned the Brexit vote, I naturally link the former to the embodied realities of the Windrush Generation that I mentioned in earlier chapters. As a proud descendant of the Windrush Generation, I am an embodied manifestation of the trope of hybridity that is replete within postcolonial reconfigurations of post-imperial entities like the United Kingdom.72 As I have outlined in several chapters of this book, the theoretical paradigms provided by postcolonial reconfigurations of notions of homogeneity and purity that are replete in the subterranean formulations of White British/ English nationalism that underpinned Brexit are punctured by the heterogeneous and impure stains of Black Christianity in its many manifestations in the United Kingdom. So in Caribbean theology, drawing on its ancestral roots in Africa, the internalisation of mission Christianity, the implicit modalities of African-derived religio-cultural retention and the more recent impact of neo-­pentecostalism,73 this form of Christianity present in the Windrush Generation creates a critical void for advocates of Brexit. In outlining its definitional features as a contextual theology of liberation that draws on multiple sources and is intrinsically linked to the United Kingdom by means of slavery and colonialism, Caribbean theology provides a necessary riposte to the tacit notions that ‘Christian Britain’ exemplifies in Whiteness and homogeneity. As long as inner-city churches remain predominantly Black74 and within that configuration of Blackness that one is speaking to in the embodied realities of the Windrush Generation and their descendants, then one is constantly reminding English nationalism of the distorted nature of its myopic and mythologised gaze. One cannot talk cogently and accurately about British identities without taking stock of the internalisation of empire that is reflected in the implicit rendering of Caribbean theology in the lived expressions of the faith of thousands of Black Caribbean Christian believers in Britain. Christians of Caribbean descent living in the United Kingdom can remain a critical sign of disjuncture in the seemingly axiomatic thrust for homogeneity that underpinned Brexit. Namely, our version of Christianity, underpinned by Caribbean theology and invested with the revolutionary intent of Fidel Castro, seeks to contest the normativity of White English nationalism and its claims to reflect Christianity in Britain. Like its colonial cousin, Caribbean cricket, Caribbean theology and its concomitant model of Christianity have not outright rejected the colonial paradigm from which it was birthed, but neither has it capitulated to the hegemonic strains of White entitlement that was infused into both English nationalism and the Christianity that is associated with the latter. In theological terms, this form of

Doing it our way 219 counter-hegemonic riposte can be summed up in the iconoclastic role of the Black Christ in Caribbean theology that beckons Caribbean people to play with the Christian faith in ways that may not signal outright revolution but that nonetheless do confound the understanding of one’s former slave masters. The decision to not outright reject but to reform from within carries with it definite limitations, not least the dangers of false consciousness in the form of unwitting complicity with hegemonic power. As I have stated previously, the dangers of seeking to refashion reform from within is that predominantly passive modes of resistance, as that outlined by trickster figures like Anansi, simply lead to isolated individuals succeeding and not the wider community of which they are a part. Anansi is a cunning individual who operates alone. He does not work with a community, and the success he accrues is for him alone. Colonial histories are replete with examples of heroic achievements of exemplary individuals whose hard-won successes did not lead to the enfranchisement of the wider community from which they emerged. The danger of focusing on such individuals is that their successes can be used by cynical colonial and neo-colonial regimes to disparage the wider communities and the failure of the collective whole to replicate the success of these atypical people. It is for that reason that there will always be a need for radical refuseniks like Fidel Castro, who possess the ingenuity and the verve to reject the conventional rules of the game. In doing so, they are able to walk away from the existing constructs, no matter how well defined and legitimised they may be. Clearly, this is a high-risk strategy, and for many good practical and sensible reasons, recourse to this form of revolutionary ethic is not the modality for the majority of people. Only a small minority will ever take the radical, revolutionary route advocated by a Fidel Castro. The challenge for Black theology in Britain, informed by the contextualisation outlined by Caribbean theology, is to conceive of forms of theological resistance that do not collapse into the bland reification of the status quo that is represented by mission Christianity. It is interesting to note the number of White British religious scholars who are far happier engaging with African Pentecostalism in Britain and the perceived colourisation models of Christianity they are evincing; White British religious scholars are less inclined to wrestle with the intense radicalism of Black liberation theology. The latter represents the critical challenge of deconstructing the entitled models of Whiteness that permit White scholars to undertake their various forms of unreflective, cross-ethnic work in the first instance. Theological institutions that once evoked a tradition for radical postcolonial and liberationist theologies have now replaced this work with a movement towards more pietistic forms of Black Christianity, predominantly Black Pentecostalism, that are not going to challenge White hegemony.75 To be clear, White hegemony will reward ‘some’ Black people for seeking an emollient rapprochement with mission Christianity and the

220  The critical challenge of the other dubious claims of the White Christian leadership in many of the older, more-­established historic churches in Britain. The silence of many White church leaders over Brexit, however, is a reminder that such quietism is a form of false consciousness. What Caribbean theology has bequeathed to Black theology in Britain is the desire to refashion language and concepts to reconceptualise the very intent of the Christian faith in Britain. Central to this work has been the continued necessity of invoking a Black Christ that is in solidarity with all those who are othered as visible minorities within the British context. Whether in terms of Beckford’s dread Jesus,76 who borrows from optics of Rastafari, or in terms of Jagessar’s Anansi-informed trickster and Christic figure,77 Black theology in Britain has offered radical models of the divine that have not been afraid to push at the boundaries of respectability. Central to any theological critique of Brexit must be the oppositional figure of an iconoclastic Black Christ that is in solidarity with the poor and marginalised Black people in Britain. This Christ is not a colourisation version of the benign and emollient figure at the heart of mission Christianity. Conversely, this Black Christ is not simply dressed in a Black visage, but rather, as outlined by the great James Cone, is ontologically Black,78 in order to be in true solidarity with those postcolonial subjects who have been traduced and scapegoated by a White supremacist Brexit phenomenon. This Black Christ is not synonymous with White privilege. He is the one who has always been reflected in social mores of Caribbean life, particularly in the dynamic improvisation of Caribbean cricket. This Black Jesus is one who will take a good-length ball pitched outside off stump and will then whip it over mid-wicket, defying every coaching manual in the book, much to the delight of those watching him. He is the Christ who says, ‘All things are possible. Come follow me!’

Notes 1 The respective works of Beckford, Jagessar and me have been assessed and articulated in Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Black Theology in Britain: A Reader (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 81–108, 181–186, 191–227, 246–248 and 279–286. 2 See Israel Olofinjana Reverse in Ministry and Missions: Africans in the Dark Continent of Europe: An Historical Study of African Churches in Europe (London: Authorhouse, 2010); Israel Olofinjana Turning the Tables on Mission: Stories of Christians from the Global South in the UK (London: Instant Apostle, 2013); Israel Olofinjana Partnership in Mission: A Black Majority Church Perspective on Mission and Church Unity (London: Instant Apostle, 2015). 3 See Anthony G. Reddie, Wale Hudson-Roberts and Gale Richards (eds) Journeying to Justice: Contributions to the Baptist Tradition Across the Black Atlantic (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2017). 4 See Anthony G. Reddie ‘Introduction’. In Anthony G. Reddie, Wale HudsonRoberts and Gale Richards (eds) Journeying to Justice: Contributions to the Baptist Tradition Across the Black Atlantic (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2017), pp. 1–4.

Doing it our way 221 5 See Michael N. Jagessar ‘Spinning Theology: Trickster, Texts and Theology’. In Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Postcolonial Black British Theology: New Textures and Themes (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2007), pp. 124–145. 6 Anansi (sometimes spelt ‘Anancy’) the spider is a trickster figure whose origins are in West Africa and whose mythology travelled with enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Caribbean via the transatlantic slave trade. In the Caribbean, Anansi can be seen as the contextual equivalent of the African-American ‘Brer Rabbit’ in that both are mythic figures who seek to manoeuvre and establish agency within oppressive contexts of slavery, colonialism and reconstruction. Anansi uses cunning and subterfuge to subvert and circumvent the status quo to his advantage. For further information on Anansi, see the following link: https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anansi – accessed 7 August 2018. 7 Oral Thomas ‘A Resistant Biblical Hermeneutic Within the Caribbean’. In Anthony G. Reddie (ed.) Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity (Basingstoke: Ashgate, 2010), pp.  69–80. A  more emollient reading of Anancy can be found in Michael N. Jagessar ‘Unending the Bible: The Book of Revelation Through the Optics of Anancy and Rastafari’. In Anthony G. Reddie (ed.) Black Theology, Slavery and Contemporary Christianity (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 81–94. 8 ‘Colourisation’ is where the theological underpinning and practices of Black Christianity are simply a ‘colourised’ version of White, Eurocentric Christianity. In colourisation Christianity, Black Christianity internalises and echoes all features of Eurocentric mission Christianity, save for the fact that the version practised by Black people has particular ‘cultural elements’ to it, such as expressive preaching or exuberant singing. Colourisation Christianity is an artefact of colonial mission Christianity and the failure of Black people to establish their own forms of radical Christian faith that has greater substantive differences to it than the relatively cosmetic touches of cultural exotica when viewed through the lens of White hegemony. See Anthony G. Reddie Working Against the Grain: Reimaging Black Theology in the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 20–24. 9 See George Mulrain ‘The Caribbean’. In John Parratt (ed.) An Introduction to Third World Theologies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 163–181. 10 See Michael N. Jagessar ‘Early Methodism in the Caribbean: Through the Imaginary Optics of Gilbert’s Slave Women – Another Reading’. In Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.5, No.2, 2007, pp. 153–170. 11 See Rafael Hernandez ‘The Cuban Revolution and the Caribbean: Civil Society, Culture and International Relations’. International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol.12, No.1, 2010, pp. 46–56. 12 See http://cubastudies.org/fidel-castro-hero-of-the-disinherited/ – accessed 7 August 2017. 13 ‘Fidel Castro, African Hero’. The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/ news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/28/fidel-castro-african-hero/?utm_term=.9705 a9d80e9e – accessed 7 August 2017. 14 See Michael N. Jagessar ‘Cultures in Dialogue: Contribution of a Caribbean Theologian’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.1, No.2, 2003. pp. 139–160. 15 Philip A. Potter, Andrea Frochtling, Michael Jagessar, Brian Brown, Rudolf Hinz and Dietrich Werner (eds) At Home with God and in the World: A Philip Potter Reader (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2013). 16 George Mulrain ‘The Caribbean’, p. 165. 17 George Mulrain ‘The Caribbean’, pp. 165–168.

222  The critical challenge of the other 18 See Noel Leo Erskine Decolonizing Theology: A Caribbean Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981). 19 For further information on Jamaica’s national heroes, see the following: http:// jamaicans.com/jamaica-national-heroes/ – accessed 7 August 2018. 20 Noel Leo Erskine Decolonizing Theology, pp. 121–125. 21 One cannot overestimate the significance of Michael Manley’s socialist government in Jamaica on the wider consciousness of the Caribbean. Manley, a confirmed democratic socialist, sought to develop close ties with Fidel Castro’s Cuba during Manley’s first spell as prime minister of Jamaica, between 1972 and 1980. His first period in government created the favourable sociopolitical context for the birth of the CCC and the initial emergence of Caribbean theology. For further details on Michael Manley, see the following link: https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Michael_Manley – accessed 8 August 2017. 22 Noel Leo Erskine Decolonizing Theology, p. 122. 23 Noel Leo Erskine Decolonizing Theology, p. 123. 24 Kortright Davis Emancipation Still Comin’: Explorations in Caribbean Emancipatory Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990). 25 Lewin L. Williams Caribbean Theology (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1994). 26 Kortright Davis Emancipation Still Comin’, pp. 101–104. 27 Fashion Me a People [Caribbean Conference of Churches.] (Kingston, Jamaica: CCC, 1981). 28 See Anthony G. Reddie Growing into Hope: Christian Education in MultiEthnic Churches – in two volumes [Vol.1 ‘Believing and Expecting’. Vol.2 ‘Liberation and Change’.] (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House, 1998). 29 Lewin L. Williams Caribbean Theology, pp. 177–181. 30 Lewin L. Williams Caribbean Theology, p. 180. 31 See Michael N. Jagessar Full Life for All: The Work and Theology of Philip A. Potter: A Historical Survey and Systematic Analysis of Major Themes (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1997). 32 Michael N. Jagessar Full Life for All, pp. 126–151. 33 Michael N. Jagessar Full Life for All, pp. 132–140. 34 Michael N. Jagessar Full Life for All, p. 136. 35 See H. Richard Niebuhr Christ and Culture  – 50th anniversary edition (San Francisco: Harpercollins, 2002). 36 See Stephen B. Bevans Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002). 37 See Robert Schreiter Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985). 38 See Gerald A. Arbuckle Earthing the Gospel: An Inculturation Handbook for Pastoral Workers (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002). 39 An excellent text in this regard is Michael N. Jagessar and Stephen Burns Christian Worship: Postcolonial Perspectives (Sheffield and Oakville: Equinox, 2011). 40 See Stephen B. Bevans Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004). 41 Stephen B. Bevans Models of Contextual Theology, pp. 3–4. 42 Stephen B. Bevans Models of Contextual Theology, pp. 70–87. 43 One of the best texts that outlines the various ‘types’ of Contextual theology (as opposed to ‘models’ or ‘methods’ can be found in Angie Pears Doing Contextual Theology (London: Routledge, 2009). 44 Stephen B. Bevans Models of Contextual Theology, pp. 70–87. 45 Angie Pears Doing Contextual Theology, pp. 110–117. 46 The following are the best examples of Caribbean theology that correspond to the modus operandi of this essay: See Noel Leo Erskine Decolonizing Theology; Kortright Davis Emancipation Still Comin’; Lewin L. Williams Caribbean Theology (New York: Peter Lang, 1994); Michelle A. Gonzalez Afro-Cuban Theology:

Doing it our way 223 Religion, Race, Culture and Identity (Gainesville: University of Florida, 2006); Delroy A. Reid-Salmon Home Away from Home: The Caribbean Diasporan Church in the Black Atlantic Tradition (London: Equinox, 2008). 47 The nomenclature of ‘theologies of liberation’ refers to a group of sociopolitical theologies that seek to reinterpret the central meaning of the God event in history, particularly in regard to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. They provide a politicised, radical and socially transformative understanding of the Christian faith in light of the lived realities and experiences of the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed. For further details on the wider family of ‘theologies of liberation’, see Marcella Althaus-Reid, Ivan Patrella and Luis Carlos Susin (eds) Another Possible World (London: SCM Press, 2007). 48 See Cobus Van Wyngaard ‘The Language of “Diversity” in Reconstructing Whiteness in the Dutch Reformed Church’. In R. Drew Smith, William Ackah and Anthony G. Reddie (eds) Churches, Blackness and Contested Multiculturalism: Europe, Africa and North America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 157–170. 49 Emmanuel Lartey provides a helpful analytical synthesis of theologies of liberation that articulates the central tenets of contextual theology alongside a commitment to practical theological engagement with the lived realities and experiences of people in a particularised time and space. See Emmanuel Lartey ‘Practical Theology as a Theological Form’. In James Woodward and Stephen Pattison (eds) The Blackwell Reader in Pastoral and Practical Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 128–134. 50 The centrality of this concept to theologies of liberation, particularly that of Black theology is addressed in Anthony G. Reddie SCM Core Text: Black Theology (London: SCM Press, 2012), pp. 1–26. 51 Lewin L. Williams Caribbean Theology, pp. 31–53. 52 Lewin L. Williams Caribbean Theology, p. 45. 53 An excellent example of this form can be found in Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth (ed.) Righting Her-Story: Caribbean Women Encounter the Bible Story (Geneva: World Communion of Reformed Churches, 2011). 54 Private correspondence by email in 2007 55 See Marjorie Lewis ‘Diaspora Dialogue’, pp. 85–109. 56 Marjorie Lewis ‘Diaspora Dialogue’, pp. 99–102. 57 See Carolyn Cooper, ‘ “Resistance Science”: Afrocentric Ideology’. In E. Kofi Agorsah (ed.) Maroon Heritage: Archaeological, Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives (Kingston: Canoe Press, 1994). 58 Dianne M. Stewart Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 139–187. 59 Dianne M. Stewart Three Eyes for the Journey, pp. 225–241. 60 See Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas ‘ “Be Real Black for Me”: The Icon, Idol, and Incarnation of America’s First Black President’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.16, No.1, 2018, pp. 61–72. 61 For an excellent dissection of the contextual and sociocultural issues in reimagining how God is conceived and faith practised, both in Africa and in the African Diaspora (particularly in the United States), see Dwight N. Hopkins Being Human: Race, Culture and Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), pp. 53–80. See also Emmanuel Y. Lartey Postcolonializing God: An African Practical Theology (London: SCM Press, 2005). 62 See Robert E. Hood Must God Remain Greek? Afro-Cultures and God-Talk (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990). See also Gay L. Byron Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature (New York: Routledge, 2002). 63 Other useful texts in this category include Michael N. Jagessar ‘Unending the Bible’, pp.  81–94; Steed Davidson ‘Leave Babylon: The Trope of Babylon in

224  The critical challenge of the other Rastafarian Discourse’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.6, No.1, 2008, pp.  46–60. More recent explorations in Caribbean Theology and Caribbean religious history include Ennis B. Edmonds and Michelle A. Gonzalez Caribbean Religious History: An Introduction (New York and London: New York University Press, 2010), pp 1–14; Hemchand Gossai and Nathaniel Samuel Murrell (eds) Religion, Culture and Tradition in the Caribbean (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000); and Michael St. A. Miller Reshaping the Contextual Vision in Caribbean Theology: Theoretical Foundations for Theology Which Is Contextual, Pluralistic and Dialectical (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007). 64 See Oral Thomas Biblical Resistance Hermeneutics in a Caribbean Context (London: Equinox, 2010). 65 Cricket is, in many respects, the quintessential game of the English establishment that was exported to the British Empire, including the Old Commonwealth of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, and the New Commonwealth of India and the Caribbean. Details of the game itself can be found in the following link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cricket. 66 See CLR James Beyond the Boundary (London: Hutchinson, 1963). 67 Speaking as a postcolonial outsider-insider to the Caribbean by dint of my British birth and Jamaican parents, it strikes me that the issues of convention and propriety remain at the heart of the struggle for contextual relevance for Caribbean Christianity as a whole. What makes a pipe organ more intrinsically Christian than, say, a steel pan? Why is the King James Bible more authentic than, say, the developing resource of the Patois Bible in Jamaica? I hope that the metaphor of cricket and the differing ways of playing the game can be a helpful metaphor for re-examining this seemingly perennial problem. 68 One of my earliest memories concerning the West Indies cricket team was listening to my uncle celebrating Garry Sobers’s 150 at Lords in 1973; I  was eight years old. I seem to remember him shouting expressions not unlike the one that this note links to every time Sobers struck a boundary. 69 For an excellent exploration of the improvised ingenuity of Fidel Castro, see Rachele (Evie) Vernon ‘Fidel and the Spirit of Anansi’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.16, No.2, 2018, pp. 125–132. 70 For the most substantive work that critiques the overwhelming Christian hegemony of Caribbean theology, see Dianne M. Stewart Three Eyes for the Journey. 71 See Ben Ryan (ed.) Fortress Britain: Ethical Approaches to Immigration Policy for Post-Brexit Britain (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2018), pp. 7–8. 72 For further analysis on the questions of hybridity in postcolonial discourse, see R.S. Sugirtharajah Postcolonial Reconfigurations (London: SCM Press, 2004); R.S Wafula, Esther Mombo and Joseph Wandera (eds) The Postcolonial Church: Bible, Theology and Mission (Alameda, CA: Borderless Press, 2016). 73 See Michael St. Aubin Miller ‘He Said I Was Out of Pocket: On Being a Caribbean Contextual Theologian in a Non-Caribbean Context’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.9, No.2, 2011, pp. 223–245. 74 This was highlighted in the opening chapter of this book. 75 One can argue that this is the case with the comparatively new Centre for Black Theology at the Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education. 76 See Robert Beckford Jesus Is Dread: Black Theology and Black Culture in Britain (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1998). 77 Michael N. Jagessar ‘Unending the Bible’, pp. 81–94. 78 See James H. Cone God of the Oppressed (New York Seabury Press, 1975), pp. 108–137.

10 Telling the truth and shaming the devil

In this final chapter  of the book, I  explore another mode of theological resistance to Brexit. I am returning to the piece of research work that I had undertaken with a group of Black elders many years ago.1 I am returning to this work because I believe the methodology outlined in it is crucial to mounting a Black liberationist and postcolonial critique of Brexit. The importance of this work lies in the ‘bottom-up’ model of theological engagement it proposes, seeking to conscientise ordinary people, helping them to see the inherent power they possess, which they can exercise if only they are enabled to access and deploy it for the purposes of socioreligious and political change. This chapter uses the wisdom and agency of elders of the Windrush Generation and their offspring to create a participative, practical Black theological model for challenging the doubtful logics of Brexit and its underlying strain of White privilege and entitlement, masquerading as the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Contextual background to this work My work has always existed at the nexus of (systematic and constructive) Black theology and practical theology. Being located at the intersection of two major points of departure in the arsenal of contemporary theological studies can lead to acute feelings of displacement. I have often found myself not entirely understood by either branch of this theo-methodological divide. I am often considered too theological for the practical theologians and too concerned with practice and religious performance for systematic and constructive theologians. Yet I argue that it is in this complex nexus that issues pertaining to the performative qualities of Black theology, suffused by the agency of practical theology, need to be addressed. This work I am about to describe arises from my ongoing engagement with African Caribbean people of the Windrush Generation in the United Kingdom and their children and grandchildren. The title of the chapter emerges from a phrase I used to hear my mother say when she was challenging me and my three siblings to appreciate a deeper awareness of the nature of our existence, as compared to the seemingly blithely common-sense realities that

226  The critical challenge of the other faced us. For my mother and many of her generation, who had migrated to the United Kingdom from the Caribbean, life was lived between the intersections of the surface reality, in which racism, discrimination and being perceived as second-class citizens, was juxtaposed with a subterranean form of epistemology that spoke of the mendacity and the egregious nature of the former. The lives of Black people of the Windrush Generation remain constant battles of seeking to wrestle with the ongoing dialectic between the promises of sociopolitical and religious belonging and the forms of negation and racism as experienced in the Conservative government’s attempt to deport them. One of the means by which the constant struggle for truth was evinced was through a delicate and complex diet of religio-cultural forms of African retentive beliefs and practices, some of which I have detailed in chapter 6 of this book. My parents and many in their generation became great storytellers and speakers of carefully coded aphorisms and wise sayings that provided a means of interrogating the world around them. It took me many years before I realised I was being inducted into and socialised within a religiocultural world view that was markedly different from my White peers at the local school I attended.2 As the elders congregated in the ‘front room’ of our small terraced house and we younger folk were banished to the more mundane climes of the back room, my siblings and I would occasionally peer around the door to get a glimpse of the adults at play. Peering through the gap in the slightly opened door, I saw my parents and their peers laughing, joking and expressing their exuberant and defiantly hopeful selves in a manner that so rarely found expression in their more public identities in the wider society of Bradford. People who, so often, were repressed and diminished by the forces of racism and economic and societal struggle were, in this particular setting, wonderfully expressive and unselfconscious entertainers. In effect, the Black elders in my family could hold in tension the struggles and travails of their surface existential realities in inner-city Britain and the deeper truths of their ontological selves that were supplemented and informed by a range of informal religio-cultural practices that enabled them to deal with the former.3 This subterranean world of religio-cultural practices was also infused with a form of spirituality that enabled them to transcend the sterility of their moribund existence. This dialectical balance of holding together the immanent and the transcendent has been both the ‘curse’ and the ‘gift’ of being Black in a world where that very Blackness was a pernicious construction of Whiteness and White hegemony. Black people have long learnt the art of being dialectical improvisers!4 One of the features of these familial settings, with the extended network of family and friends in attendance, was the expressive orality of ordinary Black Caribbean people. One often heard them using such phrases as ‘tell the truth and shame the devil’, often directed at a speaker who was about to recount some narrative concerning their latest brush with the world of

Telling the truth and shaming the devil 227 White people in Bradford, West Yorkshire, where I was born. These older Caribbean people often spoke of God in immanent terms, seeking to invoke God’s presence through their enacting of folk tales and aphorisms within this cultural, communal setting. Accessing the presence and the power of God in the lives of Black people often takes expression in the ability to sense what is truthful about the people one encounters in the daily routine of life. I am reminded of a conversation with my maternal grandmother, a Jamaican woman who was born and died in a region named East Portland. She was not a learned woman by the standards of the present day, and yet she had a remarkable gift for being able to suss out the motives and truths of others. On the occasions of meeting people she did not trust (and therefore did not care for), she would say out of earshot of that person ‘mi spirit noh tek to dem’. The phrase in English (it is spoken in Jamaican) means ‘my spirit does not find favour with that person’. In using this phrase, my grandmother, like many before her, was invoking a deep-seated wisdom of Black (in this case Caribbean) people who have been able to fuse orthodox Christian faith with African-derived religions in a manner that holds together the present and past.5 This ‘present’ and the ‘past’ are articulations of the dialectical nature of Black Christianity that has emerged from many diasporan African peoples and the African traditions that accompanied them across the Atlantic, in the Middle Passage.6 Black British pastoral theologian Delroy Hall has written movingly and persuasively on the Windrush Generation in Britain, describing our existence as one of ‘existential crucifixion’.7 Hall argues that diasporan African peoples have endured the horrors of ‘Good Friday’ and our existential crucifixions at the hands of White hegemony, through the privations of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism, but the exulting freedom of ‘Easter Sunday’ has yet to materialise. In effect, diasporan African peoples are still wrestling with an acute sense of being mired in ‘Low Saturday’ or ‘Holy Saturday’, stuck in a socioreligious and political form of liminality that speaks to the transformative nature of redemptive suffering that has thus far proved to be anything but redemptive.8 The continued marginalisation and suffering of Black people has raised an important, if not seemingly insoluble, theological problem: trying to correlate the agency of an omnipotent God with the ongoing negation of faithful peoples who have repeatedly called on God to end their existential travails, but to no avail. I am not contending that my mother and her peers were able to fathom the mysteries of God’s seeming inaction in the face of Black suffering more so than many of the luminaries of Black theology and scholars in Black religion. I believe, however, that their learnt and rehearsed repertoire of religio-cultural African retentive beliefs and practices operated as a bulwark against the avalanche of vituperative rhetoric and racist policies that constantly called into question the mysterious presence of the divine.9 In effect, where is God when you most need a God to shield you from the mendacious and sometimes vicious operations of White hegemony?10

228  The critical challenge of the other It is in this context that the theological apparatus of dialectical spiritualities of Black Caribbean people in seeking to hold in tension suffering and negation alongside hope and transformation acts as an existential marker against the persuasive Black theodicy critique of William R. Jones.11 Jones has argued against the dogmatic certainties of God having any particular or special relationship with Black people that is predicated on God’s active involvement in Black peoples’ lives. My grandmother’s faith was part of a larger repertoire of religio-cultural experiences that frame the broader contours of this essay. What I took from this world of storytelling and colourful narratives was the importance of being able to tell a story and hold the attention of an expectant audience. The great champion storytellers were my mother and my auntie Dotty,12 my mother’s only surviving sister. These two individuals were the special women in my early life, and they were very different. My aunt was strident, ebullient and headstrong, whereas my mother was more quiet, reflective and circumspect; but both of them were united by an amazing ability to tell a good story.13 Witnessing the elders in my family and wider community waxing lyrical as they told stories from the dim and distant past and those of a more recent vintage, I learnt one of the central truths of Black cultural life: the diasporan Black religio-cultural world was one of painting vivid pictures and images in the mind of the listener.14 Black religion and its resultant spiritualities was one where the listener was inspired by tales of another mythic word. The power of inspired oratory transported the listener to ‘another space and time’. When the elders in my family were regaling their younger charges with dramatic stories of ‘back home’ (in this case, the Caribbean island of Jamaica), it often felt like you were there while the narrative was unfolding. ‘Back home’ remained a mythical and tantalising reality not unlike the notions of home in postcolonial literature,15 the eschatology of Black Christianity16 or the powerful notions of homeland for the exilic people of Israel in the Hebrew Scriptures.17 The power of this narrative was that it held in dialectical tension the realities of the ‘now’ (life in inner-city Bradford, West Yorkshire) and the ‘not yet’ (the anticipated hopes of postcolonial return to the seemingly romantic idyll of the Caribbean) in a manner not unlike the often perilous balancing acts to be found in normative diasporan Black Christianity.18 AfricanAmerican religious scholar Lawrence Jones contends that the notion of ‘hope’ in Black Christian religious communities possesses two essential dimensions. First, it is a dialectic between the here and now and the promises of eternity, and second, it is the struggle for truth between the immanence and transcendence of God.19 Lawrence Jones continues by stating that The Black religious community has not had the luxury of dichotomizing faith and work, or religion and life, or the sacred and the secular. This is surely one beam of light it has to cast. The interface between time

Telling the truth and shaming the devil 229 and eternity has always defined an area of tension in the Black religious community, the hopes of which have been directed to both.20 In using this spiritualised sense of wisdom that comes from Africa but that has been moulded and transformed by four hundred years of suffering and struggle in the Caribbean, my grandmother (and many others besides) was drawing on a rich heritage. This heritage was a means of learning to decipher the perils that accompanied Black, Caribbean people in the world of plantation slavery and colonialism in the Caribbean. The Black Christian faith of my grandmother, like many of her peers, was a complex amalgam of Western evangelical imperial mission theology and largely West African religious traditions. The Black Christianity that emerged in the Caribbean was a response to the reality of oppression.21 A significant outworking of diasporan Black religious faith that was forced to wrestle with the privations of slavery and colonialism was that people had to learn to accept that the world as constructed by White people was not a safe one for them. The world of White people was one in which Black communities lived in fear, trepidation and the constant threat of annihilation.22 Consequently, many Black communities became cautiously conservative in their dealings with White power and used a form of spiritually derived discernment to work out how one engaged with the oppressive and retributive power of English colonialism and empire. The existential threat that confronted Black life ensured that Black people soon learnt the gift of ‘second sight’ – that is, being able to see beyond the outward façade of materially constructed truths and a reliance solely on cognition. James Perkinson has shown the extent to which Black people, drawing on aspects of African retentive belief structures, have fashioned forms of religio-cultural practices that have provided richly textured forms of resistance to mission Christianity.23 Jawanza Eric Clark’s work explicates a form of Black theology that attempts to draw more exclusively on Africanderived religious practices and less on Western Christianity and its doctrinal exclusivity, particularly as it applies to Christology.24 The importance of Clark’s work for this essay lies in how he attempts to outline the praxiological dimensions of this ‘indigenous’ approach to Black theology, in which the movement from theorising to ecclesial practice represents much of what I am hoping to achieve in this chapter.25 Clark juxtaposes African-American ecclesial experiences within the Black Church tradition but expands the modus operandi of ‘church’ beyond the normative gaze of Western-derived traditions and denominations and into an African-centred conception of religious practice that draws on African ancestors and the religio-cultural memory of diasporan Africans living in the United States.26 This approach towards a praxiological model of Black theology that draws on the religio-cultural memory of diasporan Africans living in Britain (in this case, African Caribbean people) differs from Clark’s in two important respects. First, my approach is more practical than theoretical, meaning

230  The critical challenge of the other I  am beginning with the experiences and existential realities of ordinary people as my first point of departure, interspersing theory with narrative.27 Conversely, Clark, operating more as a constructive theologian, deals with theoretical, theological analysis, only latterly moving to reflect on the practical or practised aspects of this work as the final point in his discourse. This is not to suggest any particular qualitative differentiation in our respective pieces of work. Rather, it is simply a recognition of the differing procedural approaches to theological work undertaken by two different Black theologians. Second, while Clark is attempting to work explicitly with AfricanAmerican religious believers who are attendees of ‘First Afrikan Church’ in Lithonia, Georgia,28 in an ecclesial body that renders the African dimensions of Christianity in an explicit and systematic manner (via codified forms of worship within the purview of ‘being church’), my work is more covert and improvisatory. Clark’s work, which draws on the pioneering scholarship and ministry of Reverend Albert Cleage and his work in fusing Black nationalism with Christianity,29 functions as a more distinctly operational model of African-centred Christianity than what currently exists in the United Kingdom. As I have detailed in chapter 2 of this book, Black Christianity in Britain has emerged from the direct tentacles of British imperial mission Christianity, in which the blandishments of neo-colonial theology, replete with the tropes of empire and White supremacy, have impacted directly on the explicit evocation of Blackness. In the British context, the absence of any substantive form of ecclesial framing that can be likened to the church founded by Albert Cleage Jr can be partly explained by the colossal edifice that is mission Christianity and how it has stained every manifestation of Black Christianity in Britain. This chapter is largely drawn from the participative work I have undertaken with ordinary Black people who are not trained theologians. Many of them are older Black people, who find it difficult to render any explicit sense of the African dimensions of their Christian faith for fear of transgressing the fixed binaries in mission Christianity between orthodoxy and heterodoxy/heresy. I have therefore adopted a more improvisatory and pragmatic theological method than that used by Clark in his work. This chapter explicates my use of the concealed, subjugated wisdom30 of Black people of the Windrush Generation as a means of undertaking a participative model of Black theology that seeks to resist the monological racism of Brexit. The work is predicated on the narratives and lived expressions of the Windrush Generation and their ancestral memory, drawn from the Caribbean and Africa. This cultural memory is one that is replete with spiritual wisdom for engaging with and interpreting the surface reality of life. When Caribbean migrants came to Britain in the post-Windrush era, they brought with them this legacy of spiritual wisdom from Africa, via the Caribbean. Upon arrival in the United Kingdom, these people encountered a deluge of racism,31 and what enabled many of them to cope with their

Telling the truth and shaming the devil 231 experiences of rejection was a direct sense of God being with them. This God who was with them was largely understood in the form of an imminent Christology, whose divine presence was suffused with an equally prevalent spirit that offered alternative ways of interpreting one’s experience and dealing with the reality of rejection and hurt. An important outworking of this facet of Black Caribbean Christianity is the feature of proverbial wisdom in the experiences of the believers of the Windrush Generation.

The function of proverbial wisdom32 Many cultures have their reservoir of ‘wise sayings’. These proverbs often take the form of pithy and concise aphorisms that often work as shorthand forms of pedagogy for elucidating and articulating the truth, as it has come to be understood by the wider community in which the sayings have emerged. It is often claimed that proverbs are part of the outworking of oral communities in which the proverb operates as the distillation of the collective consciousness of the community. It is a means of expressing a salient truth in a form that is portable and can be transported. I believe that one can see aspects of proverbial wisdom at work in the Hebrew sacred texts.33 One may argue that the knowledge-based systems of the ancient Near East have more in common with African-derived forms of knowledge than that which emerges from Europe or European-related sources.34 African Caribbean forms of proverbs or wise sayings operate in a manner similar to their counterparts in the biblical canon, in the Hebrew Scriptures. They work through (1) relationship, (2) repetition and (3) remembering.35 (1) There is always a relationship between the person giving the wise saying and the hearer who receives it. Proverbial wisdom works if there is a relationship between the two. When the wise saying is said, the hearer has to try to work out (a) what the meaning of the saying is and (b) what the point of it is, but (a) and (b) are rarely explained in explicit terms. By this, I mean that the person who gives the saying does not usually explain what they have said. Rather, the statement is simply made. The importance of the resultant learning for the hearer is to try to sort out for themselves what the saying means and why it has been said.36 This is a major part of the cognitive function of proverbial wisdom – that is, part of the challenge for the recipient of the proverb is to use their intellectual abilities to decipher the meaning of the wise saying that has been shared with them.37 (2) Repetition aids the hearer in learning about (a) and (b). The hearer comes to understand the meaning and the point of the saying through repeated exposure to the wise saying. When it is used well, it is done in context, that is, in response to a particular event or incident from which the speaker wishes the hearer or recipient to learn. When the saying is

232  The critical challenge of the other used over a period of time and is seen to be linked to certain events or incidents, then the hearer comes to an understanding of the meaning and the basis of the wisdom of the proverb. (3) Remembering is the final product that enables the proverbial wisdom to take root. When (1) and (2) have been continually practised, the hearer will begin to link the wisdom from the wise saying with particular lessons about or on life to be learnt and applied in their future life. Proverbs are concentrated, applied wisdom for living. What I  mean by this statement is that proverbs operate based on an economy of words. Look at how many words are required to explain the proverb compared to the relative lack of words in the proverb itself. The proverbs are also applied wisdom as the contexts in which they are used are nearly always related to real life, existential issues, specific events or situations of concern. This form of wisdom emerges from experience, meaning it is the daily encounter with the world that gives rise to communities creating wise sayings as a kind of ‘shorthand’ product of learning that is intended to instruct and guide the hearer. The hearer is nearly always younger than the individual sharing the proverb. This latter point is crucial because it speaks to the ancestral folk memory by which proverbs have been passed down, often by maternal familial figures. This is especially the case in Caribbean cultures and amongst them the Windrush Generation living in Britain.38 As stated previously, while this work does not contain an explicit rendering of African-centred cultures as detailed in Jawanza Eric Clark’s approach to indigenous Black theology, it does contain a more concealed, subterranean appreciation of African retentive religio-cultural practices, often cloaked in the experiences of hitherto colonised Black Christians of Caribbean descent. The theological basis for the epistemological framing of this form of knowledge production emerges from the Hebrew Scriptures. In Hebrew religious culture, wisdom is often personified as a woman. Jewish scholars often term this wisdom ‘Sophia’.39 Interestingly, in the Bible (e.g. see Proverbs 8:1–12) and in African and Caribbean cultures, ‘wisdom’ as the speaker and teacher of truth is nearly always a woman. It is the wise woman who imparts wisdom to her younger charges, and they will learn (1) if they trust and have a relationship with her and (2) if they are willing to listen to her wise sayings. In the context of the Caribbean proverbs used in this study, all of them emerged from African Caribbean women in the 1960s and 1970s, when the research first began.40 In the context of Old Testament theology, wisdom is relational. In making this claim, I  distinguish a relational and embodied form of knowing from that which is often the dominant form of epistemology one sees in the Western intellectual tradition, usually associated with Greek philosophical thought. In Greek philosophy, epistemology is often abstract and has

Telling the truth and shaming the devil 233 no embodied form. It is not physical and has no shape. It certainly is not personified. This form of knowledge is also individualistic. Moreover, it is hierarchical, with the custodians of knowledge often experts whose training and position at the apex of society distinguishes them from those who are located in less elevated places in the societal construction.41 Often, this form of knowledge is characterised by extremely learned and formally educated people sitting in libraries or, sometimes literally, towers (probably not made of ivory, however), thinking deep thoughts and trying to wrestle with complex, abstract ideas and concepts, which they will later (if they choose to do so) share with others. This form of epistemology does not emerge from the bottom up but rather is often a top-down form of knowledge construction. You will notice that I have made a distinction between knowledge (knowing things) and wisdom (the process of being wise). In Old Testament theology, wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Wisdom always contains knowledge, but not all knowledge is necessarily wisdom. My maternal grandmother would talk about certain people being ‘educated fools’. By this, she meant that some people (usually wealthy White overseers on the banana grove that existed close to where she lived) may have been to school and had “plenty knowledge, but dem nuh know one diam ting” (“They may have plenty of knowledge, but they don’t know one thing!” (or anything worth knowing)). They may have been book smart, but they were dunces when it came to the applied wisdom of how to live and especially how to treat others. One could argue that the architects of Brexit were indeed ‘educated fools’ in the parlance of my grandmother. In this work, I  reflect on the significance of practical wisdom. It is this facet that has enabled Black people to survive and, in some cases (not as many as one would like), to thrive. It has been our connection with the wisdom of God through the power of the spirit that has provided us with the animus that has enlivened and strengthened our flesh to withstand the machinations of White supremacy. This spirit is not abstract or without form, for ‘she’ is often manifested in the wisdom of our ‘mother figures’.42 In African Caribbean cultures, our mother figures are the ones who often embody wisdom and have been the custodians of the collective knowing of a community as that community attempts to make sense of the world as they have experienced it. African-American practical theologian Robert L. Smith has explored the role of Black phronesis or the ‘practical wisdom’ that emerges from ordinary Black people in Christian faith communities as an important theological resource for undertaking Black theology.43 Smith argues that this facet of Black Christian faith communities has significance because by using the usually subversive aspect of this form of concealed, submerged epistemology, one can close the semantic gap between the supposedly pietistic nature of Black folk theology and the more ideological and radical tenets of Black theology.44

234  The critical challenge of the other Smith amplifies this point: By delving beyond that which is surface and most readily apparent in our modes of praxis, we can begin to uncover, identify and then recover modes of Black phronesis. In this way, phronesis becomes a bridge between theory and praxis and a useful way forward. It provides an historical and cultural bridge between the past, present and future, by drawing on the Black religio-cultural heritage that informs Black faith communities to ‘fund’ the creation of new forms of Black phronesis, which will be available as a resource for the future. This understanding of Black phronesis, I am asserting here, is valuable for Black theological work because it grounds phronesis historically, culturally and contextually, therefore becoming an important theological resource for Black religious scholars.45 I agree with Smith in his belief that Black phronesis has an important role to play in enabling theologians to locate a framework by which the practical wisdom of ordinary Black people like the Windrush Generation can be harnessed to create a critically conscious model of resistance to the underlying racism of Brexit. This book has sought to explore the theological challenges faced by Black people and other visible minorities in Britain in our Brexit epoch. What is the significance of Black phronesis for predominantly Black people of faith as we seek to make sense of our experience in Britain? I believe it means for us that we have to acknowledge that our imagined future must be a communitarian one that continues to rehearse the valuable rubrics of the repository of wisdom which emerges from the collective experience of being Black human beings. This wisdom should be deployed by Black people as a means of continuing to call the Church and the nation to account. It should be seen as an important form of resistance to the bounded and exclusionary optics of Brexit and the fallacy and false consciousness of White entitlement and privilege. I am not suggesting that White English cultures do not have their share of proverbial wisdom, because they do.46 Think of such wise sayings as ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ or ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’. These sayings were made by the poor and the marginalised of their day. These people never ran the ‘Church of England’, for example, and that remains the case. These examples of White English phronesis continue to be important facets of the folk religion of the English, which Nigel Rooms has investigated in his work looking at the Christian faith of English people.47 The history of different peoples and their accompanying cultures across the world shows that richer, more-powerful peoples are not only more likely to lose the art of working with proverbial wisdom but often come to despise it as well, claiming that it lacks sophistication and is simplistic, superstitious and old-fashioned.48 The exercise I  am about to describe and the resulting reflections is a constructed form of Black phronesis. It is an attempt to

Telling the truth and shaming the devil 235 harness the practical wisdom of ordinary Black people and to place it into a critically pedagogical form for the purposes of conscientisation and radical, liberative praxis as a response to Brexit.

An exercise in proverbial wisdom I have used the following exercise (first developed several years ago but adapted and modified over that time)49 to enable Black Caribbean participants to reflect on the nature of how wisdom and knowledge have often operated in African Caribbean religious cultures and history. The sayings were all given to me by older Black Caribbean Christian women in Birmingham, in the West Midlands of the United Kingdom when I was doing my PhD at the University of Birmingham in the late 1990s. The women were generally Pentecostals but included some Methodists, Anglicans and Baptists. In this revised exercise, I worked with a group of 12 people of African Caribbean descent, all aged between 25 and 40. All 12 were born in Britain of Jamaican parents. They came from a variety of denominational backgrounds: four were Pentecostals, two were Baptists, two were Methodists and the other four did not belong to any specific church • ‘If yu wan’ good, den yu nose mus’ run’. (If you want to prosper, or move forward, then you will have to make some sort of sacrifice or have to work for what you want.) • ‘If yu ’ave ears fi ’ear, but cyaan ’ear, den yu mus’ feel’. (If you have been given an opportunity to learn something, or have been given a warning, but refuse to listen or heed the advice, then you will have to feel the consequences and then will learn the hard way.) • ‘Yu mus’ learn fi dance at home before yu dance abroad’. (You must first learn how to behave or act at home in front of your family, where your actions will not be held against you. It is better to learn in this environment than to embarrass yourself in the outside world.) • ‘Wantey wantey nuh getty, but getty getty nuh wantey’. (Very often, when we really want something, we don’t get it. When we finally get that same something, then we no longer want it.) • ‘If wishes were horses, den beggars wud ride’. (If wishing for something were all that was required for dreams to come true, then everyone would get what they wanted.) • ‘De higher de monkey climb is de more ’im get exposed’. (You may think that you are fooling people with your thoughts, attitude or behaviour, but the higher up the ladder you climb and the more important you become, the more people will see you for what you are.) • ‘Yu mus’ tek sleep mark death’. (When a particular event or a set of circumstances arises, you should use that as an indication or a pointer for possible worst things that may follow.) • ‘Tell de trut’ an sleep a door’. (If you tell the truth, you must expect to be thrown out and made unwelcome.)

236  The critical challenge of the other To encourage discussion and conversation, I asked the group to consider the following questions as they reflected on the Caribbean proverbs. 1 Do your own experiences agree with these sayings? 2 Can you think of times when it would have been a good idea to apply this wisdom to your own life? 3 Do these sayings help you to better understand people’s feelings and behaviour? 4 Do you think these sayings are ‘true’? 5 How is this truth connected to other truths and, ultimately, to God?

Reflecting on the exercise At the beginning of the reflections on the exercise, I asked the group how many of them had heard these Caribbean proverbs before. All 12 said they had. I  was not entirely surprised at this given that they were all of Jamaican extraction, like me. When I asked from whom they had heard these sayings, all members of the group spoke of hearing them from older women, much like the ones who had given me these proverbs initially, over 20 years ago, when I had conducted the initial research. When I asked them how they had been exposed to and learnt these proverbs, all said their engagement had happened aurally. Namely, the proverbs had come alive through hearing them said amid intergenerational, familial contexts where the elders of the community offered the product of their learnt and inherited wisdom for their younger counterparts through the facility of proverbial wisdom. When I asked in what circumstances the sayings were spoken, one woman said, “I heard these sayings in the family home, by my grandmother and my mother”. Another followed up, “It was usually said when an older person (usually a mother figure) wanted you to learn something about life from an incident or event that had just taken place”. This exercise invites participants to reflect on not only ‘what they know’ but also ‘how they have come to know it’. The participants through conversation and interaction have to come to an understanding of what they have come to know as truth. However, who decides what is true? How do we decide what the meaning in the various sayings is? How have time and space subtly changed the meaning or the intent of the proverbs? I have sometimes been struck by the extent to which there are interesting regional variations on the different sayings. African Caribbean people whose families come from the different parts of Jamaica have discovered different versions of some of these sayings (which are predominantly Jamaican in origin, according to my initial research). So in the context of our conversing, how do we decide whose version is best understood as an authentic rendering of that particular proverb, and does that matter? With whom will we, as individuals and communities,

Telling the truth and shaming the devil 237 converse in the process of seeking to discern the truth of any wise saying, and what does that tell us about the world or the society of which we are a part? The latter point is of significance due to the reality that many Black people by necessity have to reside in particular spaces and places where the majority of people are ‘not like us’ and who do not share our inherited world view. In the context of Brexit, this is the challenge that confronted the 12 participants. How can Caribbean proverbial wisdom be of any significant use in this context of Brexit, with racism on the rise and an increasing intolerance to visible minorities? This is a critical challenge, because the use of Caribbean proverbial wisdom is contextual and because the epoch in which we are presently residing is markedly different from those in which these religio-cultural facets were first created. What would happen if participants were forced to share their wise sayings and their interpretations of the proverbial truths in them with an imagined ‘other’? When using this experiential exercise, I  have challenged the Black participants to reflect critically on their own experiences. The exercise calls for a profound sense of judgement for the people taking part in the exercise; there is the necessity for a sense of discernment to discover the truth of any situation, one that also calls for interpretive skills and understanding of the wider world of which they (and others) are a part. In more macro terms, the exercise calls for a form of embodied hermeneutic that challenges the participants to perceive the best way of operating for Black people in Britain. How does one use the facet of Caribbean proverbial wisdom as a means of assessing one’s relationship with aspects of White hegemony in Britain? How does the facility of Caribbean proverbial wisdom enable such participants to work cross-culturally, in overarching settings where, notwithstanding the visceral realities of racism and White hegemony in Britain, this has not led to complete separation between peoples belonging to different cultural and ethnic groups? Rather, difference and cross-cultural and class struggles have been contained by the use of parallel realities.50 In effect, in ecclesial structures, for example, Black people and White people have separated into tribal territories, often fuelled by ‘White flight’ in which demographics and geography account for separation, but both often remain housed within the one ecclesial body. Despite the challenges of history and the nuances of differing contexts, the goal of existing and remaining in the same paradigm remains an important challenge for all Christian communities. This exercise highlights the real challenges that are in evidence when one attempts to exist within a shared context, where all, if only notionally, are engaged in a shared and similar task but may have radically different ways of recognising wisdom and interpreting truth. Caribbean proverbial wisdom was used by the respective parents of these participants to interpret the surface reality of living in a racist country like the United Kingdom. Can it continue to provide that form of epistemological grounding in the 21st century, in our Brexit milieu?

238  The critical challenge of the other

Hermeneutical challenges of using proverbial wisdom In reflecting with the group after the exercise, I learnt that while there was a great deal of commonality between them in how they assessed these proverbs for meaning and truth, there was no unanimity on the implications for what they meant for contemporary life in Britain. Take, for example, the reactions to the final proverb ‘tell de trut’ an’ sleep a door’. The group disagreed on whether ‘telling the truth’ was (a) a necessarily ‘smart’ or advisable thing to do. And if so, (b) would it always result in one being ‘shown the door’ – that is, being thrown out? The point of the exercise was not to come to an agreed position on the hermeneutic of the proverb. Rather, in pedagogical terms, I  wanted to assess how their critical reflection on its meaning helped them to come to a nuanced understanding of how truth is constructed, by whom and for what purposes. As we reflected on this proverb, for example, many in the group asked whether there is any realistic proposition of Black people telling our truth in this present context and being listened to and being heard. In response to this latter comment, I shared my experience, detailed at the beginning of chapter 1, where I had discussed the impact of the forthcoming Brexit vote with a White ordained minister and the fact that she had ignored my claims to experiencing a visceral existential threat if Britain voted in favour of Brexit. I explained how my views of the truth, which were grounded in practical experience of being a Black body in Britain, were juxtaposed with her theoretical concerns, which would have no marked impact on her existence, whichever way the vote went, and yet she still insisted on serving her own abstract interests. I then linked the task of interpreting these proverbs with the question of how we assess truth, as we understand it, and how others might understand it. In effect, are there occasions when disagreement is fine or even healthy and when the opposite is the case? Reflecting on this proverb, the group began to consider the environmental factors that would have necessitated this proverb being created. What are the dangers of subaltern peoples telling the ‘unvarnished’ truth as they know and experience it? As the individuals reflected on the narratives they had heard from their Caribbean parents and grandparents, our attention was focused on the present epoch. How was contemporary Britain similar to and different from the contexts in which their immediate forebears had lived? Given the toxic rhetoric of the Leave campaign, it could be argued that community relations have been pulled back to an era when racism and discrimination was more prevalent and a greater disruptive presence in the lives of Black people than in the years immediately prior to Brexit. Despite this assertion, the whole group agreed that the overwhelmingly middle-class professions occupied by all members (social workers, teachers, lecturers, accountants, local government officers) were testaments to the substantive changes in the positionality of Black peoples in Britain since the 1950s and early 1960s.

Telling the truth and shaming the devil 239 Clearly, notions of progress are difficult to discern, and the glass can be tantalisingly half full and half empty at the same time. I argue that this kind of facility for critical thinking around the ambiguities of life is an important feature of Black phronesis. This exercise in proverbial wisdom is one that challenges Black participants to use wise sayings as a hermeneutical tool for asking critical questions vis-à-vis their positionality in postcolonial Brexit Britain. For example, if it is still the case that telling the truth will get one thrown out, then what are we to make of those Black people who now occupy prominent positions in major institutions like the Church of England, parliament and the media? Does adherence to this proverb help to build much-needed hermeneutics of suspicion around the nature of whether any Black person can ever really feel at home in any White majority institution in Britain, or does it simply lead to cautious and negative traits of silence, as a safety-first ethic continues to hold sway? The exercise challenged the participants to reflect critically on the essential meaning of these proverbs and how they can be used to interpret Black positionality in Britain Brexit. As the group wrestled with interpreting each proverb, the ultimate challenge lay not in each individual hermeneutic proffered by different group members but rather in the extent to which it was possible to hold these various interpretive readings in tension, as a fledgling community. I reminded the group of the source of these proverbs and the fact that they emerged from what at the time were relatively homogeneous and compact communities.51 When I had first acquired these Caribbean proverbs from maternal Black elders back in the late 1990s, there was little dissention on the meaning of the various wise sayings, and crucially, there was complete unanimity in their hermeneutic of Britain and their positionality in it. These individuals all lived in Black working-class communities in inner-city areas of the major urban conurbations in Britain. All of them were working class, and all self-identified as Christians. In this contemporary group, most of them (like myself) lived in predominantly White middle-class areas, and their connection to other Black communities was not as strong as that of their forebears. The challenge presented by these proverbs is one of communitarian solidarity. To what extent is it both desirable and realistic for Caribbean proverbs to continue to distil a communitarian hermeneutic of meaning for Black people in Britain? There is no doubt that for their forebears, these wise sayings provided a point of commonality and shared experience, as individuals remembered their formative upbringing in the Caribbean and their early years in post–World War  II Britain. Undoubtedly, these proverbs provided an element of nostalgia and favourable expressions of their socialisation into Black Caribbean cultural life, much as I evoked at the start of this chapter in remembering my parent’s front room in our tiny terraced house in inner-city Bradford. Is this effort at warm nostalgia sufficient for a radical response to Brexit?

240  The critical challenge of the other Clearly, my answer to this question is no. And yet it would be fallacious to assume that one can simply replicate a previous era and assume that notions of communitarian living amongst Britain’s African Caribbean communities remain static. The utility of Caribbean proverbial wisdom is best expressed when it is part of a wider, shared narrative of meaning amongst communities of people. The functionality of proverbial wisdom, operating as a form of Black phronesis, is best realised when it is undertaken in community. As Joe Aldred and Keno Ogbo have reminded us, Black majority churches (of all typologies and traditions) remain important sites for the communitarian ethic of belonging, and these sites, in which individuals find meaning, remain hugely significant as a basis on which Black resistance has been predicated.52

Post-Brexit postscript In order for proverbial wisdom to be a resource for Black people in Britain today, we must have a strong formational and relational role in Black majority churches. In the words often attributed to St  Augustine, “the Christian faith is more caught than taught”.53 How do we as Black people seek to influence and inform the wider workings of power in our respective churches and the broader society? How will younger Black people ‘catch’ the wisdom of their forebears? In talking of relational wisdom, I am referring to the task of applying wisdom to the overarching challenge of fighting for racial justice and inclusivity in British society as a whole. This is a struggle for defining how we live as people in Britain.54 This relational challenge to live a life worthy of the calling of Christ, in the power of the spirit, is summed up in Jesus’s summation of the whole of the Deuteronomy code and the Judaic teachings of the law: to love God with all that you possess and to love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:37–39). The challenge for these Black Christians is to use their access to relational wisdom to speak critically against the wider injustices that remain in British society. I  am talking of the challenge not only to engage with racism but also sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, heteronormavity, classism and ageism in British society. Racism, sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, ageism, classism and all forms of injustice intrinsically deny the love of God, because they fail to love the wisdom of God that has given them relational opportunities to love their neighbour, often when that neighbour is not like them. The ‘beloved community’55 of which Martin Luther King Jr spoke and for which he died is a challenge to cultivate that love of and love for wisdom that connects us with God and with others. It is the wisdom that gives substance to knowledge and which ultimately leads to understanding. I believe the communitarian basis of the aforementioned speaks to the very heart of the Brexit phenomenon and its narrow, sectional self-interest

Telling the truth and shaming the devil 241 for the majority, the White population of the country. I believe that Christianity speaks against this, and the critical perspectives on truth offered by Caribbean proverbial wisdom have more in common with the expansive and elusive nature of God’s self than the rigid bombast of the god of White mission Christianity that underpinned Brexit. The use of wise sayings that emanate from the wider context of African Caribbean life provides a communal approach to knowledge production in that they invite the hearer to wrestle with the dialectical nature of truth telling. Like the biblical versions found in the Book of Proverbs within the Hebrew Scriptures, they invite listeners to wrestle with seemingly simple aphorisms, seeking to find meanings in and applications for life in relationship to the saying itself and in relationship to others. To what extent is the truth extant within the saying of a trans-historical nature that transcends time and space, or is it simply a contextualised truth that speaks to the historical moment in which it was first uttered? Applying this form of dialectical epistemological religio-cultural pedagogy can challenge the growing incidences of individualism and class-based notions of individual forms of respectability ethics that seeks to adhere to the internal logics of mission Christianity as a form of nationalistic belonging. Having witnessed a small but worrying trend of Black middle-class Christians adhering to conservative politics and supporting Brexit at the behest of defending Christian Britain, I  juxtapose these thoughts with the  more collectivist ethic of proverbial wisdom – one that moves beyond the false consciousness of an individual ‘self-interested’ expression, towards a sense of belonging in a wider communitarian mode. So, for example, the utility of the proverb ‘de higher de monkey climb is de more ’im get exposed’ becomes readily apparent when read through the lens of Black middle-class privilege that wants to link itself to the respectability politics of Christian Britain and mission Christianity. Given the punitive nature of Brexit Britain and the hostile climate to immigration, will there be a reckoning for conservative Black leaders who have sought to align themselves with policies and legislation that attacks and further marginalises Black people and other visible minorities on the margins of society? Similarly, the proverb ‘if yu ’ave ears fi ’ear, but cyaan ’ear, den yu mus’ feel’ might be read as a hermeneutical verdict on the so-called leaders of the Leave campaign, who in their hubris of right-wing nationalism sought to drag the country into a particular direction against the warning of many leading economists. Sadly, the punitive element in this proverb will not backfire on the wealthy White people who called for Brexit but on the poorer White people who were fooled into believing the tendentious ‘truths’ that were served up to them as appetising, poisoned morsels that will ultimately make them sick as opposed to satisfying their hunger. Using the facility of critiquing the veracity of received knowledge and truth, through the lens of the dialectical spiritualities that have enabled

242  The critical challenge of the other diasporan African people to hold alternative forms of truth in balance, one can use proverbial wisdom to critique the ‘officially sanctioned’ truth of the Brexit phenomenon. This is not a new facet of course. What I am proposing is a more deliberate use of this facility in the individual and communal approaches of African Caribbean people in Britain, as we seek to interpret the nature of our existence here and ask, what type of praxis is necessary for us to thrive in Brexit Britain? I believe that enabling marginalised and oppressed peoples to engage in the rehearsed repertoire of proverbial wisdom as a form of critical pedagogy is one that lies at the heart of the kingdom of God and the communal ways in which we learn to live with and for one another. This sense of the kingdom is lived out in community with others, who are also trying to discern what is the truth of the past, present and future existence of themselves and others; it is one that finds echoes in the construction of the Book of Proverbs itself, in the wisdom literature and also in African Caribbean communities in the United Kingdom. This notion of community is one that eradicates the restricted and discriminatory, bounded realities in which we presently live. It does not start from the basis that there is a fixed or unchanging truth to which we all have to adhere, which sadly was the virulent bombast of the Leave campaign and their intolerance of alternative perspectives of those who held to a different vision for the country.56 This notion is a radical and profound challenge to accepted wisdom and authority in which truth and the discernment that gives rise to any truth is best expressed in and through solely ordained authority figures or formally educated White male leaders on the political right who argued vociferously in favour of Brexit. Indeed, Paulo Freire has argued that the poor, in spite of their continued oppression, marginalisation and denigration at the hands of the rich and the powerful, have access to forms of wisdom and knowledge that arise through experience.57 This form of wisdom and knowledge is one that is denied the rich and the powerful as the latter are unable to identify with Jesus’s own suffering and marginalisation, which is the source of this faithful form of learning that belongs to the poor. The notion that proverbial wisdom can be a shared as a collective means of wrestling with and searching for truth is a proposal that forces us all to reframe what it means to belong in postcolonial, Brexit Britain. What does it mean to live in Britain as a Black person or a person perceived as a visible other, who is largely disparaged and traduced or as a White person who is perceived as belonging in a more authentic way than the former? Perhaps a practical and participative model of Black theology such as this one can assist in enabling us to find more creative ways of engaging with the other. This model for encountering self and the other, which is located in an experiential learning exercise, is one that attempts to embody in this educative and learning approach a commitment to multiple truths and alternative

Telling the truth and shaming the devil 243 and differing perspectives of God and the life we seek to live together and alongside one another. Given the monological optics of Brexit that assumed one limited and bounded truth, that some people mattered more than others, this belief in the contested nature of truth and its application via community and a collectivist ethic and ethos can only be a good thing. I hope that via the radical and subversive nature of Black phronesis, ordinary Black people may come to be at the vanguard of a bottom-up challenge to the corrosive insularity of Brexit. I hope that a Black liberationist gaze on Brexit will be one that is emboldened to ‘tell the truth and shame the devil’.

Final thoughts This book has been concerned with the underlying sociocultural and theological constructs that underpinned Brexit. I have not attempted to argue for the merits of the European Union, although I did vote Remain. This book in many respects has been a delicate balance between deploring Brexit and the racist, xenophobic nationalism that underpinned the Leave campaign while remaining benignly ambivalent about the European Union. In undertaking the research for this work, I  remain certain that Brexit will be seen as an embarrassing stain on the collective psyche of this nation. Brexit exposed the racist and xenophobic underbelly of Britain, particularly amongst the English. It has shown us at our worst. The ambivalence of the Church in challenging it was palpable. The silence in the face of White supremacy, especially amongst the White majority historic churches was a reminder of its similar silence in the face of colonialism and, further back in history, chattel slavery. The collective entity of White Christianity in Britain has invariably found itself on the wrong side of the moral and ethical argument when it comes to wrestling with notions of ‘race’ and its obverse iteration of ‘White supremacy’. This text is a radical challenge to White Christianity to do and be better! It is a challenge to live out the radical, egalitarian dimensions of the transnational identity of the gospel of Jesus Christ that calls us to love our neighbours as we would want ourselves to be loved. This historic ethic is a direct challenge to notions of nationalism, tribalism and the naked self-interest of ‘looking after one’s own’. The blandishments of empire, neo-colonialism and nationalism need to be resisted if the gains accrued from the post-war multicultural epoch of the latter half of the 20th century are not be squandered. There is no ‘making Britain great again’ if the mechanism for doing so is to take us back to a time when White supremacy and entitlement and the trappings of empire were rampant and unapologetic in their post-imperial hubris. Theologising Brexit is a bold restatement for the type of inclusive and fair Britain that is often evoked but not so often revealed in our daily operations of being citizens in this nation. I hope that this text will make a small semblance of difference in this ongoing

244  The critical challenge of the other public discourse of this country. I am not sure if I want the reader to have enjoyed reading this text, but I hope that it will challenge the thinking of us all.

Notes 1 See Anthony G. Reddie Faith, Stories and the Experience of Black Elders: Singing the Lord’s Song in a Strange Land (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2001). 2 For a more literary exploration of how Black young people in Britain of Caribbean descent are socialised into an alternative world view to their White peers, see Caryl Philips The European Tribe (London: Faber and Faber, 1987), p. 2. 3 See Anthony G. Reddie Faith, Stories and the Experience of Black Elders. 4 See James W. Perkinson White Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 51–114. 5 For aspects of this African retentive form of spiritual wisdom, see Marvia E. Lawes ‘A Historical Evaluation of Jamaica Baptists: A Spirituality of Resistance’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.6, No.3, 2008, pp. 366–392. 6 Caribbean-African-American theologian Dianne Stewart explores this interchange between the ‘present’ and the ‘past’ in her highly influential work on the Jamaican/Caribbean religious identity since the era of slavery. See Dianne M. Stewart Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 7 See Delroy Hall ‘The Middle Passage as Existential Crucifixion’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.7, No.1, 2009, pp. 45–63. 8 Delroy Hall, ‘The Middle Passage as Existential Crucifixion’, pp. 46–54. 9 See Lerleen Willis ‘The Pilgrim’s Process: Coping with Racism Through Faith’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.4, No.2, 2006, pp. 210–232. 10 See David Goatley, Were You There? Godforsakenness in Slave Religion (New York: Orbis Books, 1996). 11 See William R. Jones Is God a White Racist? (New York: Beacon Books, 1973). 12 It is not uncommon for many Caribbean people to be given ‘pet names’, which become the popular means of identification of the person, often in preference to their given names. 13 Anthony G. Reddie ‘An Unbroken Thread of Experience’. In Joan King (ed.) Family and All That Stuff (Birmingham: National Christian Education Council [NCEC], 1998), pp. 153–160. 14 See Carol Tomlin, Black Language and Style in Sacred and Secular Contexts (New York: Caribbean Diaspora Press, 1999), pp. 103–124. 15 Richard Werbner (ed.) Memory and the Postcolony (London: Zed Books, 1998). 16 See Lewis V. Baldwin Toward the Beloved Community: Martin Luther King Jr and South Africa (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 1995) for excellent analysis of Martin Luther King’s Christian eschatological vision, juxtaposed alongside the Black anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. 17 See Richard Coggins The Book of Exodus (Epworth Commentaries) (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2000), pp. 3–8. 18 For an excellent distillation of the inherent existential dialectical balancing act that is replete in Black Christianity, see Noel Leo Erskine Plantation Church: How African American Religion Was Born in Caribbean Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 19 Lawrence N. Jones, ‘Hope for Mankind: Insights from Black Religious History in the United States’. Journal of Religious Thought, Vol.34, No.2, Fall–Winter 1978, p. 59. 20 Lawrence N. Jones ‘Hope for Mankind’, p. 59. 21 See Anthony B. Pinn Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), pp. 81–156.

Telling the truth and shaming the devil 245 2 See Anthony B. Pinn Terror and Triumph. 2 23 See James W. Perkinson Shamanism, Racism, and Hip Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 24 Jawanza Eric Clark Indigenous Black Theology: Toward an African-Centered Theology of the African-American Experience (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 25 Jawanza Eric Clark Indigenous Black Theology, pp. 127–162. 26 Jawanza Eric Clark Indigenous Black Theology, pp. 75–100. 27 For a critical analysis of the different model of Black theology that I had developed that moves away from the more normative posture of systematic and constructive theology and ethics, see Anthony G. Reddie ‘People Matter Too: The Politics and Method of Doing Black Liberation Theology’ (The Ferguson Lecture  – The University of Manchester, 18 October  2007). Practical Theology, Vol.1, No.1, April 2008, pp. 43–64. 28 Jawanza Eric Clark Indigenous Black Theology, pp. 153–162. 29 See his more recent book, Jawanza Eric Clark Albert Cleage Jr. and the Black Madonna and Child (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), where the author brings together a range of voices seeking to explore the legacy of Albert Cleage Jr and his explicitly African-centred model of Black liberation theology. 30 Sharon Welch describes such forms of epistemology as being intrinsic to liberation theologies, in that they emerge from the embodied realities of ordinary people, who are often the subalterns in their respective societies. See Sharon Welch Communities of Resistance and Solidarity: A Feminist Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985), pp. 25–51. 31 See Mukti Barton Rejection, Resistance and Resurrection (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005) for perhaps the best scholarly first-hand account of the experiences of Black and Asian peoples’ experience of dealing with racism in the Church of England. 32 I make no claims to being a specialist in the linguistic or historical analyses of proverbs as either a literary form or a category of writing in the scared literature of the Hebrew Bible. Rather, I am appropriating this genre as a decolonial, religious educator, seeking to mine their use in a pragmatic form for developing a model of critical pedagogy for and with Black Caribbean people in Britain. 33 See Randall C. Bailey ‘Race, Racism and Biblical Narratives’. In Cain Hope Felder (ed.) Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), pp. 165–184. 34 The relationship between the two schemes of epistemologies (sources and frameworks for knowledge and truth)  – Hebrew/Old Testament and African (some will argue that the two are essentially the same things) – is dealt with in great detail by Jamaican theologian Marjorie Lewis. See Marjorie A. Lewis Towards a Systematic Spirituality for Black British Women (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 2007). 35 See Charles E. Melchert Wise Teaching: Biblical Wisdom and Educational Ministry (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998). 36 Jack Daniel and Geneva Smitherman-Donaldson ‘How I Got Over: Communication Dynamics in the Black Community’. Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol.62, February 1976, p. 35. 37 See David Day ‘Apples of Gold: The Role of Proverbial Wisdom in Christian Education’. In Jeff Astley and David Day (eds) The Contours of Christian Education (Great Wakering: McCrimmons, 1992), pp. 162–176. 38 For an excellent distillation of the significant role played by Caribbean mothers (actual mothers, (biological or otherwise), ‘mothers in the faith’ and mothers in the wider community), see Dianne Watts ‘Traditional Religious Practices Amongst African-Caribbean Mothers and Community Othermothers’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.2, No.2, 2004, pp. 195–212.

246  The critical challenge of the other 39 Further details on theology and learning of ‘Sophia’ can be found in Charles E. Melchert, Wise Teaching. 40 I am indebted to Diane Watts for her framing of the role of Caribbean mothers as a resource for constructing a familial, experiential base for a participative, practical model of Black theology. See Diane Watts ‘Traditional Religious Practices Amongst African-Caribbean Mothers and Community Othermothers’. 41 An excellent distillation of this mode of knowledge construction can be found in Thomas Groome Sharing Faith: A Comprehensive Approach to Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry (San Francisco, CA: Harper International, 1991). 42 See Diane Watt ‘Traditional Religious Practices Amongst African Caribbean Mothers and Community Othermothers’, pp. 195–212. 43 See Robert L. Smith ‘Black Phronesis as Theological Resource: Recovering the Practical Wisdom of Black Faith Communities’. Black Theology: An International Journal, Vol.6, No.2, 2008, pp. 174–187. 44 Robert L. Smith ‘Black Phronesis as Theological Resource’, pp. 177–181. 45 Robert L. Smith ‘Black Phronesis as Theological Resource’, p. 181. 46 When this work was in its early genesis, a White scholar asked, quite pertinently, if I  was claiming any special place or understanding of or for African Caribbean proverbs and their concomitant wisdom and whether I had thought about White English versions. This caused me to think, and I agreed that I wasn’t so much claiming special importance for them. Rather, as a Black theologian, my work and interests are contextual. So I  am writing purely from a perspective that speaks to me experientially and to those with whom I share this broader heritage. 47 See Nigel Rooms The Faith of the English: Integrating Christ and Culture (London: SPCK, 2011). 48 This issue is dealt with in one of my earlier books. See Anthony G. Reddie Faith, Stories and the Experience of Black Elders. 49 See Anthony G. Reddie Growing into Hope, Vol.2: Liberation and Change (Peterborough: The Methodist Publishing House, 1998), pp. 33–37. 50 Black Methodists, Anglicans and those in the Baptist and Reformed traditions in the United Kingdom have not left to form separate churches but to attempt to create their own self-identified spaces in the corporate whole. A similar strategy has been used by Black members of White-dominated churches in Southern Africa. For the British context, see Heather Walton A Tree God Planted: Black People in British Methodism (London: Ethnic Minorities in Methodism Working Group, The Methodist Church, 1984); John Wilkinson Church in Black and White: The Black Tradition in Mainstream Churches in England (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1993). In terms of the latter see Jean Knighton-Fitt Beyond Fear (Cape Town: Pretext Publishers, 2003). 51 For an excellent articulation of the fledgling Black communities in early years of post–World War II Britain, see Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (London: Harpercollins, 2009); David Olusoga Black and British: A Forgotten History (London: Pan, 2017); Paul Gilroy Black Britain: A Photographic History (London: Saqi Books, 2001). 52 See Joe Aldred and Keno Ogbo The Black Church in the 21st Century (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010). 53 See Ella P. Mitchell ‘Oral Tradition: The Legacy of Faith for the Black Church’. Religious Education, Vol.18, No.1, 1986, pp. 93–113. 54 It needs to be stated that this view is as much aspirational as it is actual. What I mean by this is that while Black Christian communities should be centres of racial justice, inclusivity and good practice, based on our experiences or marginalisation and oppression, we have often fallen short of this ideal. A combination

Telling the truth and shaming the devil 247 of poor strategies for reading the Bible, coupled with religious-cultural prejudices, has often meant that Black Christian communities and churches can be as exclusive and intolerant as any other institution or body, despite our historical experiences, which should enable us to demonstrate better forms of practice. See Anthony G. Reddie Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 47–82. See also Iva E. Carruthers, Frederick D. Haynes III and Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. (eds) Blow the Trumpet in Zion: Global Vision and Action for the 21st Century Black Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005). 55 For further reflections on Martin Luther King Jr’s notion of the ‘beloved community’ see Lewis V. Baldwin, Toward the Beloved Community. 56 An example of this can be found in the following link: https://inews.co.uk/news/ brexit/treason-law-apply-eu-loyalists-brexiteer-tory-mep/ – accessed 13 August 2018. 57 See Paulo Freire A Pedagogy of Hope (New York: Continuum, 1994).

Index

Abbott, Diane 127 Acolatse, Esther 145 Adventist churches 80, 197n40 African Caribbean people 144 – 146, 150, 151, 155n32 African Diaspora 41, 97, 137, 157, 180, 191, 193 African population 92 – 93 Afrikaans theology 211 ageism 240 Aldred, Joe 15, 41, 42, 57n9, 202, 240 Alexander, Valentina 188 alienation 50, 111, 112 American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature 5 Anansi 204, 219, 220, 221n6 Anderson, Victor 116, 189 Anglican Church 23, 28, 32n7, 34n34, 44, 58n12, 80, 197n40; communion 27; students 113 Anglicanism 92, 93, 105 – 106n15 ASBOS (anti-social behaviour orders) 120 Asian people 105n6, 117, 170 – 171; categorising as ‘enemy within’ 125 – 126; cricket test 129n4; foreigners 112 – 113; immigration of 122 – 123; marginalized in body politic 180; as migrants 3, 5 – 6, 13; statistics for, in Britain 25, 119 – 120; see also Black people Assemblies of God church 80 Astley, Jeff 66 Ausar Auset Society 188 Bailey, Randall 138 – 139, 152, 184 Banks, James A. 98, 158 Baptist Church 28, 32n7, 58n12, 80, 93, 197n40, 235

Baptist Union of Great Britain 203 Barratt, Al 23 Beaudoin, Tom 100 Beckford, Robert 18, 42, 43, 49, 55, 57n6, 57n9, 60n57, 60n60, 68, 108n47, 123, 142, 186, 187, 202 Being Built Together 61n70 Believing in Britain (Bradley) 24 Belle Castle Baptist Church 203 belonging: Caribbean life and multiple religious 143 – 148; personal reflection on 121 – 123; precarious 119 – 123; Whiteness and 90 – 92, 120, 127 Berryman, Jerome 161 Bevans, Stephen 209 – 210 Beyond Ontological Blackness (Anderson) 189 Bhogal, Inderjit 124 Bible 135 – 136, 224n67; Black Christianity in Britain and 136 – 137; Black experience and 137 – 139; Black liberationist reading of 136, 139 – 143, 148, 150 – 153; ideological challenges in reading 139 – 143; multiple religious belonging and 143 – 148; will of God 212; see also Scriptures biblical literalism 213 biblical realism 213 Black, term 31n3, 135, 182 – 183 Black bodies 4, 8, 14, 25 – 26, 29, 47, 69, 74, 82, 84n24, 84n29, 114, 115, 117, 118, 126, 140, 189 Black Bodies and the Black Church (Douglas) 96 Black Britain Symposium 38, 48 Black British Pentecostalism 42 – 43 Black Christ 183, 219, 220; see also Jesus

Index  249 Black Christian(s) 39 – 40; problematics of Black agency 62 – 66 Black Christianity 115, 126, 185, 197n40; agency of 68; Bible and 136 – 137; classical Black British Pentecostalism as 41 – 43; colourblind approach 185; contemporary examples 48 – 51; defining in Britain 40 – 41; growth of 28, 36n87; heteronormativity of 117; Rastafari and Black resistance 184 – 187, 192 – 194; as religio-cultural-theodissonance 44 – 48; Southern 96 – 97; typologies of 28, 185; in White majority churches in Britain 43 – 44 Black Church 40 – 43, 79, 96 – 97, 172n1, 229 Black LGBTQI+ 116; see also LGBTQI+ people Black liberation theology 135, 153n3; see also Black theology Black Lives Matter 190 Blackness 9, 64, 76, 82, 92, 104, 114, 189, 218, 230; anti- 38, 44, 49 – 51, 62, 96, 151; being visible and invisible 89 – 90; Black theology 182 – 186, 190, 193, 211; complexities of 94, 98; demonizing 69 – 70, 72, 96, 124; hierarchy of 97, 116; otherness of 25 – 26, 72, 124, 210; self-negation of 46; Whiteness and 25, 72, 90, 98, 214, 226 Black people: categorising as ‘enemy within’ 125 – 126; cricket test 129n4; foreigners 112 – 113; immigration encounter 122 – 123; intra-community conflict 126, 132n56; limits by Black Church 130n29; marginalisation and suffering of 125; see also Asian people Black phronesis 234, 240 Black Power movement 166, 182, 189 Black Religion and Black Radicalism (Wilmore) 55 Black theology 37n95, 108n47, 157; body of Christ metaphor 75; complex subjectivity and 97 – 101; critique of Whiteness 163; example of participative 160 – 162; James Cone 86n61, 86n63; legitimation and respectability 96; of liberation 40, 57n10, 57n9, 73, 76 – 77, 96, 121; participative educational approach to Brexit 162 – 170; participative-

practical 97 – 101, 104; postcolonial model of 7; Rastafari and 192 – 194; Rastafari and Christian 9; reading of Bible 136, 139 – 143, 148, 150 – 153; respectability and social ethics 118 – 119; sacredness of Black self 140; summary in Britain 182 – 184; transformative education 77 – 80 Black Theology of Liberation, A (Williams) 188 Blake, William 19 body politic of Britain 183, 185; Black life in 115, 118; of Black nation 189; Christianity in 70, 149; constructions of belonging 93; disaffected Black youth in 193; impact of migration 20; notions of respectability 118 – 119; othering in 19, 22, 65 – 66, 124, 203, 217; Whiteness in 4, 8, 25, 84n32, 90, 92, 120, 166, 194; Windrush Generation in 130n21 Bogle, Paul 206 Bolt, Usain 165, 167 – 168 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 169 Boycott, Geoffrey 215 Bradley, Ian 24 Brexit: beginning conversation about 1 – 6; Britishness and Whiteness 101 – 104; Caribbean theology and Black Christianity 217 – 220; Christian identity in 81; development of phenomenon 14; historical roots of 13 – 14; othering of visible minorities 119 – 120; postscript 240 – 243; reflections post- 25 – 28; term 10n5; vote for 170 – 172 Britain: Black Christianity in White majority churches in 43 – 44; Black detachment from postcolonial 112; classical Black British Pentecostalism as Black Christianity 41 – 43; defining Black Christianity in 40 – 41 Britain First 2, 3, 101 British National Party (BNP) 38 – 39 Britishness 4, 6, 20, 24, 26, 90, 101, 127, 145, 170 – 171 British Social Attitudes survey 20 Brown, Andrew 27 Burns, Stephen 68 Canada 146, 224n65 capitalism 27, 102, 162 – 163, 174n30, 212

250 Index Caribbean Conference of Churches (CCC) 205, 206 Caribbean Ecumenical Consultation on Development 206 Caribbean life: multiple religious belonging in 143 – 148; Pentecostalism 15, 42 Caribbean theology 9, 202 – 204; Black Christianity in Britain and Brexit 217 – 220; contextualising sacred texts and gender 213 – 214; introducing 204 – 208; roots of 205 – 208; theopolitical issues in contextualising Christianity 208 – 214; West Indies cricket for contextualisation 214 – 217 Carpenter, Delores H. 79 case study, enemy within 112 – 119 Castro, Fidel 9, 204, 205, 206, 208, 211, 211 – 212, 214, 216, 217, 218, 219 Catholic Church 28, 32n7, 58n12, 217 Catholicism 53, 92, 217 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies 17 chav 131n34 Chevannes, Barry 184 chickenpox virus 29 chicken tikka masala 19, 33n28 Christian Britain 39, 44, 53, 56, 62, 92 Christian education 66 – 67; personal construct psychology observations on 73; relationship of White normality to 69 – 70; role of 69; transformative, in Black experience 77 – 80 Christian faith, challenges to 149 – 150 Christianity 3, 7; British 14 – 25, 27 – 28; challenges to 149 – 150; claims of gospel 169; colonial mission 64, 83n8, 91; colonial missionary 146; colourisation 204, 221n8; denominations 32n7; imperial mission 38, 56n1, 66 – 67, 76, 111, 115; phenomenon of 4; teaching and learning in postcolonial context 62 – 66; theopolitical issues in contextualising 208 – 214; transformative Black Christian education and 76 – 80; Western 166, 229; White British 42, 46, 124; Whiteness in English 17 – 25, 74; see also Black Christianity Christology 124, 229, 231

Church of England 27, 32n7, 58n12, 93, 106n18, 106n19, 239 Church of God of Prophecy 41, 43, 80 City of Sanctuary (project) 124, 128, 131n50 Civil Rights movement 199n75 Clark, Jawanza Eric 53, 191, 229 – 230, 232 classism 148, 187, 207, 240 Cleage, Albert 230 Cleage, Albert, Jr. 230, 245n29 Clinton, Hilary 107n26 colonialism 5 – 7, 24, 39, 189, 204; Christianity and 69, 77, 91; empire and 14 – 16, 19, 21, 26 – 28, 31, 91, 93, 97, 147, 192, 229; imperialism and 127, 217; neo- 25, 31, 125, 140, 148, 191, 207, 227, 243; post- 45; racism and 77, 81, 166; slavery and 77, 91, 93, 97, 124 – 125, 137, 150, 166, 218, 221n6, 227, 229, 243 colonial mission Christianity 64, 83n8, 91 colorism 97 colourisation Christianity 204, 221n8 Columbus, Christopher 205 complex subjectivity 94 – 97; Black theology and 97 – 101 Cone, James H. 86n61, 86n63, 128, 166, 168, 169, 172, 185, 187, 191 consciousness 62 – 65, 71, 74, 95, 99, 120, 164, 186, 190, 193, 206, 207; contemporary 38; critical 40, 41, 101, 151; double 96, 139; false 23, 40, 144, 163, 166, 168 – 169, 219 – 220, 234, 241; public 26, 181; religious 162 conservatism 52, 53, 93, 212, 217 Conservative Party 13, 27, 93, 106n18 contextual theology 209 – 210 Cooper, Carolyn 189, 214 cricket 203, 204; game of English 215, 224n65; West Indies 214 – 217 cricket test 110, 129n4 Crowder, Colin 66 Crucible: The Journal of Christian Social Ethics (journal) 22 Cuban Revolution 204, 205, 206, 207 – 208, 211 – 212, 214, 216–217 Daggers, Jenny 23 – 24 Dalit theology 210 Davidson, Steed 5

Index  251 Davis, Kortright 206 Decolonizing Theology (Erskine) 206 Dickens, Charles 102 Dixon, Lorraine 188 Douglas, Kelly Brown 48, 60n47, 69, 84n29, 96 – 97, 130n30, 189 Dubois, W.E.B. 96, 139, 172 Duncan, Carol 146 – 147 Dunkley, Archibald 180 Dutch Reformed Church 211 Dyson, Michael Eric 116 ‘Easter Sunday’ 125, 227 ecumenical movement/ecumenism 202, 205, 208 education 157, 172n1; Christian 66 – 67; humour and 161, 173n22; participative approach to engaging with Brexit 162 – 170; race metaphor 165; Sunday schools 158, 172n2; traditional musical chairs game 164 – 165; transformative popular 157 – 160 Elizabeth I (Queen) 92, 93 Ellison, Ralph 104n1 Empire Strikes Back, The (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) 17 employment, migrants and companies 164, 174n30 enemy within: case study of 112 – 119; categorising Black and Asian people as 125 – 126; determining type of person 115 – 119 English Christianity 17 – 25, 165 Englishness 6, 19, 20, 28, 81, 90 – 93, 185 equality 91, 142, 165 – 169, 171, 207 Erskine, Noel 179, 179 – 181, 180, 206 evangelical Protestantism 146, 155n42, 191, 217 Evans, Curtis 155n50 exceptionalism 16, 20, 42, 91, 101; English/British 22 – 23, 29, 70; theological 27 – 28; White 30 – 31, 42, 94, 101 Eze, Emmanuel 160 faith development 70, 85n36 Faith of the English, The (Rooms) 18 fallenness 116 Fanon, Franz 182 Farage, Nigel 2, 39, 103, 162 Fashion Me A People (Bailey) 207

feminism 17, 187 feminist theology 210 FIFA World Cup 110 – 111 First Afrikan Church 230 fixed identity 94, 106n24 Fortress Britain (Ryan) 20 Fowler, James 85n36 Free Church 93 free trade, doctrine of 167 Freire, Paulo 98, 158 – 159, 242 Freud, Sigmund 71 fundamentalism 43 – 44, 51 Garvey, Marcus 180, 182 Gilbert, Nathaniel 15 Gilkes, Cheryl Townsend 188 Gilroy, Paul 90, 109n64, 129n5 Girma, Mohammad 20, 22 global economy 105n6 Global North 4, 9n3, 100, 108n62, 167 Global South 9n3, 30, 100, 102, 167, 171, 205 Glory House 42 Gonzalez, Michelle 53 ‘Good Friday’ 125, 227 Goodman, Douglas 130n25 Gorringe, Timothy 27 Gove, Michael 39, 103 Graham, Elaine 63 Great Commission 66, 67 Gregory, Howard 206 Grieg, Tony 129n3 Griffin, Horace 190 Groome, Thomas 161 Haitian Vodou 55 Hall, Delroy 124 – 125, 132n56, 227 Heath, Edward 13 Hebrew Scriptures 49, 228, 231 – 232 Hibbert, Joseph 180 Hinds, Robert 180 Holiness Church 80 ‘Holy Saturday’ 125, 127, 227 Holy Scriptures 137; see also Bible; Scriptures Holy Spirit 66, 80 – 81, 145, 197n41 homophobia 240 Hood, Robert 145, 146 hooks, bell 158 Hopkins, Dwight 52, 138, 168 Howard, Chas 193 Howell, Leonard 180 Hull, John 30, 31, 67 – 68, 85n42

252 Index human being, subjectivity and 94 – 97 hybridity 45 – 46, 106n20, 148, 218 identity politics 31n3, 110, 190, 210 If It Wasn’t for the Woman (Gilkes) 188 immigration procedures, experience 121 – 123, 125 imperialism 7, 27, 36n77, 127 imperial mission Christianity 66 – 67, 76, 111, 115; psychological damage arising from 67 – 70 interculturality 108n48 International Association for Black Religions and Spiritualities 147, 192 Irizarry, Jose 61n70 Isiorho, David 91 Islam 92, 181; nation of 189 Jagessar, Michael 15, 44, 45, 68, 108n49, 191, 202, 208, 213, 220 Jamaica 13 – 14, 29, 64, 68, 111, 127, 144, 156n56, 179 – 181, 188 – 189, 206; pardna 82, 87 – 88n94 Jamaica Baptist Union 145, 203 James, C.L.R. 215 Jennings, Theodore 85n46 Jennings, Willie James 75 Jesus (Christ) 22, 28, 31, 35n50, 81, 92 – 93, 99, 111, 116, 171; Black Christ 183, 219, 220; Black conception of 179; gospel of 166; Jewish 127 – 128; Jewishness of 124; ministry of 66 Johnson, Boris 39, 103 Jones, Lawrence 228 Jones, William R. 71, 228 Judaism 181 Keller, Catherine 46 – 47 Kelly, George 70, 70 – 72 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 116, 169, 240 Kingsway International Christian Centre 42 laissez-faire neo-liberalism 168, 174n38, 212 Lara, Brian 215, 216, 217 Lartey, Emmanuel 223n49 Latham, Steve 91 Leave campaign 4, 9n2, 10n6, 19, 20, 26, 31, 34n34, 39, 76, 101 – 102, 102, 119, 140, 168, 169, 238, 241, 243 Lewis, Marjorie 188, 245n34

Lewis, Tamara 92 LGBTQI+ people 116, 142, 189, 190, 199n80 liberation see Black theology Lightsey, Pamela 190 Livingstone, David 67 Lorde, Audre 117 ‘Low Saturday’ 125, 127, 227 McCalla, Doreen 42 Maclaren, Malcolm 171 manifest destiny 19, 21, 27, 34n43, 56n1, 152, 160 Manley, Michael 206, 222n21 marginalization 1, 6, 56, 79, 90, 125, 138, 152, 170, 181, 227, 242 Marley, Bob 181 Marley, Robert Nesta 193 Marxism 207 May, Theresa 113 Mercer, Kobena 116 Methodism 15, 85n46 Methodist(s) 5, 44, 99, 235 Methodist Church 28, 32n7, 44, 58n12, 64, 80, 129n7, 145, 174n34, 197n40; movement 31; students 113 mimetic theory 108n62 minorities: blaming 4, 103, 162; norms for 162; positionality of 66; visible 3, 8, 10n6, 31, 117, 119, 141, 157, 194, 220, 234, 237, 241 Mitchell, David 206 monotheism 130n30 Morgan, Piers 127 Morrison, Doreen 68, 84n20, 130n26 Mosala, Itumeleng 152 Muir, R. David 83n8 multiculturalism 22, 81, 82, 109n64, 112 multiple religious belonging: Caribbean life 143 – 148; term 143 Muslim(s) 3, 6, 39, 66, 122, 143 Must God Remain Greek? (Hood) 146 Nannyish T’eology 188, 189, 213 Nanny of the Maroons 188 – 189, 214 nationalism 4, 149; benefit of White privilege 70; Black theology and 179; Caribbean theology and 198n52, 203, 205, 210; fusing Black, with Christianity 230, 241; kingdom of God and 151; neo-colonialism and 243; rise of popularist, in UK 20 – 21, 37n95; rising White, in United States and Europe 79; toxicity of White

Index  253 British and English 194; as trigger for referendum vote 93; White British/ English 7 – 9, 10n6, 14, 39, 46, 82, 135, 218; Whiteness allied with notions of 91; xenophobic 243 nation of Islam 189 Nausner, Michael 46 neo-colonialism 25, 31, 125, 140, 148, 191, 207, 227, 243 neo-conservatism 25, 188 “New Empire within Britain, The” (Rushdie) 5 – 6, 10n10 New Testament Church of God 41, 43, 80 Niebuhr, H. Richard 208 – 209 Notes on Slavery (Wesley) 113 Obama, Barack 95 Occupy movement 23, 35n57 Ogbo, Keno 240 Olofinjana, Israel 58n25 outsider status 110 – 112 pardna 82, 87 – 88n94 Parker, Evelyn 63 participative-practical Black theology 97 – 101, 160 – 162 passive radicalism 185, 186, 197n43 patriarchy 17, 105n5, 148, 160, 188, 213, 214, 240 patriotism 111, 129n4 Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire) 158 Pentecost 81 – 82 Pentecostal Church 41, 80, 116, 197n40 Pentecostal(s) 24, 43, 55, 130n21, 235 Pentecostalism: African 42, 219; Black 36n88, 41 – 43, 50, 51, 55, 57n9, 59n33, 60n59 – 60, 68, 69, 108n47, 130n21, 130n25, 219; British 44; Caribbean 42; forms of 42 performance action, theology as 54, 61n70 performative action 98 – 99 Perkinson, James 74, 100, 229 personal construct psychology (PCP) 70 – 72; observations on Christian education 73; reflecting on subjective narrative 73 – 76; significance of 72 – 76 phronesis 234 Pinn, Anthony 47 – 48, 69, 71, 94, 95 ‘PM’ (Radio 4 news program) 111 populism 22 – 23 postcolonialism 45

postcolonial theory 46 – 48, 59n37 Potter, Philip 205, 207 – 208 Powell, Enoch 5, 13 – 14 Price-Mars, Jean 206 Protestant Christianity/Protestantism 32n7, 93, 99, 143 – 144, 146, 155n32, 191, 200n94, 217 proverbial wisdom 241; exercise in 235 – 236; function of 231 – 235; hermeneutical challenges of using 238 – 240; reflecting on exercise 236 – 237 queer theology 210 Raboteau, Albert 145 racism 19, 29, 49, 102, 108n59, 111, 117 – 118, 127, 150, 166, 184, 185, 187, 240 radicalism 30, 219; active 142, 185, 186; Black 82, 196n33; passive 185, 186, 197n43 Radio 4, ‘PM’ programme 111 Rajagopalan, Kumar 93, 105 – 106n15 Rastafari 179; antecedents of in UK 181 – 182; background and summary of beliefs 179 – 181; Black Christianity and Black resistance 184 – 187; challenges to Black theology and 187 – 191; Rasta as religious practice 179, 191 – 194 Rasta phenomenon 179; as Africanderived religious practice 191 – 194 Reddie, Anthony G. 99, 122 Redeemed Christian Church of God 42 Redfearn, Caroline 189 Rees-Mogg, Jacob 39, 103 Reformed Church 32n7, 197n40 religio-cultural-theo-dissonance: contemporary examples of 48 – 51; postcolonial theory 46 – 48; roots of phenomenon 44 – 46 Representations of Homosexuality (Sneed) 190 repressive representation 94 – 95, 106 – 107n25 Respect (Aldred) 15 Restore (project) 128, 132n64 Richards, Viv 110, 215, 216, 217 Rivera, Mayra 46 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech (Powell) 5, 13 Robin Hood 19 Rochampton University 61n71 Rooms, Nigel 18 – 20, 21, 165, 234 Rushdie, Salman 5 – 6, 10n10

254 Index Rustin, Bayard 199n75 Ryan, Ben 20, 22 Sachs, Jonathan (Rabbi) 22 Salmon, Philida 72, 73, 74 scapegoat(s) 6, 103 – 104, 113, 152 scapegoating 27, 70, 103, 108n62, 171 Schreiter, Robert 209 Scriptures: Christian tradition and 135; God-inspired authorship of 141; Hebrew 228, 231 – 232; theological challenges of 123 – 128; as Word about God 139, 152; as Word of God 136, 139, 152; see also Bible Second World War 13, 90, 93, 115, 205, 239 Selassie I, Haile (Emperor) 179, 180, 181, 186 sexism 107n26, 187, 240 Sex Pistols 171 sexual conduct 116 – 117 Shakespeare, William 16 Shakur, Tupac 116 shame 117 – 118 Shannahan, Chris 17 – 18 Sharpe, Sam 83n8, 206 shingles 29 Shockley, Grant S. 77 – 79 Shor, Ira 98, 158 Shrine of the Black Madonna 188 slaveholding 184, 196n38 slavery 4, 54, 60n51, 93, 97, 106n24, 113, 124, 184, 227; Joseph Paradigm 49 Smith, Robert L. 233 – 234 Sneed, Roger 190 Snyder, Susanna 20 – 21, 124 socialisation 65 – 67, 69, 76 – 79, 82, 203, 239 socialism 23, 30, 204, 206, 214 social justice 2, 3, 35n57, 80, 118 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in the Caribbean 68 Souls of Black Folk, The (Dubois) 96, 139 SS Empire Windrush 13, 29, 126 State of Black Britain Symposium 38, 48 Stewart, Dianne 144, 145, 150, 191, 214, 244n6 Stokes, Olivia Pearl 79 Student Christian movement 205 Sturge, Mark 42

Sudworth, Richard 23 Sugirtharajah, R.S. 15, 16, 27, 31, 45, 215 Susanna Wesley Foundation 61n71 syncretism 53, 60n66 Tafari-Ama, Imani 188 Tebbit, Norman 129n4 Terror and Triumph (Pinn) 47 Thatcher, Margaret 129n4 Their Own Receive Them Not (Griffin) 190 theology: Afrikaans 211; challenges in Scripture 123 – 128; contextual 209 – 210; Dalit 210; feminist 210; queer 210; see also Black theology; Caribbean theology; Rastafari There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack (Gilroy) 90 Thomas, Oral 138 – 139, 152, 204, 212, 215 Thomas, Velma 188 Three Eyes for the Journey (Stewart) 144, 191, 214 Towards the Prophetic Church (Hull) 30 Townes, Emilie 26, 201n97 Townsend, Pete 104 transformative learning 51 – 56 transformative popular education 157 – 160 Troupe, Carol 75 – 76 Truman, Harry S. 90 Trump, Donald J. 37n95 Turpin, Katherine 100 UK Border Agency 121, 128 UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) 3, 39, 56, 56n2 United Reformed Church 28, 32n7, 44, 58n12, 80 United States 26, 41, 43, 70, 78 – 79, 95 – 97, 100, 135, 138, 147, 155n50, 182, 192 – 193 University of Birmingham 85n42, 215, 235 University of Wisconsin 70 Usher Street Primary School 120 wages, migrants and companies 164, 174n30 Walton, Heather 63 Ward, Frances 63

Index  255 Webster, Alison 74, 100 Wesley, John 30, 113 Wesleyan Holiness church 80 Western capitalism 163, 173n24 Westminster Abbey 126, 132n60 White Euro-American fundamentalism 44 White flight 26, 41, 42, 237 Whiteness 5, 8, 34n34, 93; belonging and 90 –  9 2, 120, 127; Blackness and 25, 72, 90, 98, 214, 226; Black theology critique of 163, 166  –   1 67, 185  –   1 86; Britishness/ English identity and 20, 90 –  9 2, 101  –   1 04, 127; Caribbean theology and 210, 214, 218 –  2 19; Christian faith and 53, 66, 68 –  7 0; concept of 17; in English Christianity 17 –  2 5, 38, 46, 74, 146; ethnocentric notions of 56n1; invisibility of 8 –  9 , 16, 89; privilege of 25 –  2 8, 37n95, 56n1, 72, 82, 84n32, 95 –  9 8, 101, 114, 166; Rastafari on 192 –  1 94 White supremacy 5, 8, 26, 53, 68, 80, 82, 128, 139, 150, 166, 169 – 170, 172, 179, 182, 185, 230, 233, 243 White Theology (Perkinson) 74, 100 Wilde, Wilf 36n77 Williams, Delores S. 188 Williams, Lewin 206, 207, 212 Wilmore, Gayraud 53, 55, 86n62, 98 Wimberly, Anne 63

Windrush 6; Caribbean people on 13, 15; post- era in Britain 112; service at Westminster Abbey 132n60 Windrush Generation 9, 13, 29, 63, 78, 88n92, 156n55, 202; African Caribbean people of 225; Black Caribbean people of 93; Black Christianity and 136 – 137; Black people of 25 – 27, 144, 194, 226, 230 – 234; Black theology and 204; Caribbean theology and 21, 218; celebration of 126; Conservative government’s treatment of 39; Delroy Hall on 124 – 125, 227; deporting members of 53, 126 – 128, 202; experiences/accounts of 37n92, 132n62; legacies of 80 – 82, 130n21, 150; roots of Rastafari in UK 181 wisdom see proverbial wisdom womanist theology 106n20, 187 – 189 Woodhead, Linda 27, 106n18 Woodson, Carter G. 132n53 Working Against the Grain (Reddie) 4 World Council of Churches (WCC) 205, 208 World Cup 110 – 111 World War II see Second World War xenophobia 2, 3, 7, 9, 10n6, 19, 30 – 31, 101, 103, 120, 150, 205 Younge, Gary 102