Church of England drops plan to appoint racial justice officers

THE Church of England has dismissed the plan to appoint 42 'racial justice officers' after archbishops said they could not afford to create the roles, reported The Times.

The report added that campaigners, who wanted to tackle racism within the church, have expressed 'shock and disappointment' over the decision.

A report in April found that the church had to take urgent action to tackle “racial sin” in its ranks. It also warned that further inaction would force many black and ethnic minority worshippers to leave for other churches, the newspaper report added.

The report recommended creating posts of ‘racial justice officers’ in every diocese and suggested that it should be funded centrally for five years.

“While there will be a cost to implementing these recommendations, there will be a greater cost in failing to do so," the report pointed out.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, conceded that non-white people had been “bullied, overlooked, undermined and excluded” within the church and pledged to take action.

The report, produced by the church’s anti-racism taskforce, criticised successive generations of church leaders for having failed to implement recommendations made in a raft of previous reports on racism in the church.

It identified 161 recommendations dating back to 1985, finding that few had been followed.

In a written question to the church’s governing general synod, Debra Walker, a lay member, asked: “What progress is being made to release funding for the appointment of racial justice officers around the dioceses?”

The Archbishop of York, the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, replied: “The Archbishops’ Council has concluded that it cannot support this recommendation in this formulation at this time, given the need to reduce costs in diocesan and national administration.”

“The aspiration for a full-time racial justice officer in every diocese is something the national church would have liked to support. But we think more work is needed to think through how to drive change at all levels of church life and what role dedicated diocesan officers might have.”

The Rev Arun Arora, co-chairman of the anti-racism taskforce, lamented the decision.

He told The Times: “It’s rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find that before the first ball is bowled, their bats have been broken by the team captain.”

“It was something of a shock and disappointment to learn … that there are no plans to implement one of our key proposals … The failure to resource this work and these recommendations will inevitably lead to conclusions as to how much or little this matters to decision-makers in the church.”