The Church of England has decided to commission an expert to prepare a report on the church’s “deeply, institutionally racist” history following an official apology for its past.
The General Synod, the church’s legislative body, voted Tuesday to issue an official apology for the racism that “countless black, Asian and minority ethnic people” have experienced in the past 70 years. The church is also commissioning an expert to prepare a report on the racism of the church, CNN reports.
“I’m ashamed of our history and I’m ashamed of our failure,” the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the church’s most senior bishop, said. “There is no doubt when we look at our own church that we are still deeply, institutionally racist.” (Related: Church Apologizes For Saying Sex Is For Married Heterosexual Couples)
At #Synod: “I have often wondered how the German church in the 1930’s managed to ignore what happened to the Jews. They just took it as normal & perhaps that’s what we have done since Windrush. We are still deeply institutionally racist. I’m personally sorry” @JustinWelby pic.twitter.com/oXWOabDQP7
— Martin Bashir (@MartinBashir) February 11, 2020
Welby said that “basic rules” were needed to address the issue, such as representation of ethnic minorities in panels within the church. The legislative body also voted to “stamp out conscious or unconscious” racism.
Welby’s statement is in response to a speech Reverend Andrew Moughtin-Mumby, a member of the synod from Southwark Diocese in London, gave about the experiences of a Caribbean family that was barred from entering a London church in 1961 because of their skin color. Moughtin-Mumby introduced the motion calling for the apology. The church’s statement specifically mentions the Windrush generation, the first large influx of Caribbean migrants to settle in the U.K. after World War II to help rebuild Britain.
“We did not do justice in the past, we do not do justice now, and unless we are radical and decisive in this area in the future, we will still be having this conversation in 20 years time and still doing injustice,” Welby added.