Church of England scraps plans for ‘racial justice officers’

The Church of England has scrapped a proposal to appoint dozens of “racial justice officers” across the country.

The proposal to hire 42 officers was one of the recommendations from its report on tackling racism in the institution.

There were a total of 47 proposals made by the Archbishops’ Anti-Racism Taskforce in April to address institutional racism and improve diversity in an attempt to end a “rut of inaction” spanning several decades.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has conceded that people of minority ethnic backgrounds had been “bullied, overlooked, undermined and excluded” within the Church.

The taskforce had warned that failure to act against racism would convince people that the Church was “not serious about racial sin”, and one of its recommenations was for paid, full-time racial justice officers to be in place in every diocese by this autumn for a five-year term.

However, the idea has been scrapped due to financial reasons, it has been reported by The Daily Telegraph.

The newspaper reported that when asked about the idea by a lay church member at an online meeting on Friday, the Archbishop of York, the Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell, said: “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 council understands the rationale for this recommendation and will do more work on how best to support racial justice across the country through a network of officers who would be suited to different contexts.

“The council will look at whether and how this might be supported in a different way as part of looking at funding priorities for the next [three years].”

The decision was met with disappointment by one of the taskforce’s co-chairs Rev Sonia Barron.

According to The Church Times newspaper, she told the online meeting: “I’m deeply shocked and disappointed by this decision and know that the other members of the taskforce will share these sentiments.

“As a taskforce, we remain hopeful that the Council, together with the Church Commissioners and House of Bishops, may still reconsider that decision, rightly prioritise, and fund the work of racial justice.

“As I have previously commented to Archbishops’ Council directly, ‘If not now, when?’”

Rev Arun Arora, the other co-chair of the taskforce, who is the Vicar of St Nicholas’s in Durham, also described the decision as a “shock and disappointment”.

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The taskforce’s other recommendations in the report From Lament to Action included that shortlists for senior clergy should include at least one appointable candidate of a minority ethnic background by September, with an expectation this occurs for all other jobs in the Church.

It is also calling for annual reporting on recruitment, and mandatory training in dioceses to learn anti-racism practices.

Just days before the report was published in April, a BBC Panorama documentary revealed that the Church of England had been using non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to silence staff from speaking publicly about racism within the organisation.

Mr Welby had said that the documentary was “rightly shaming”, adding that he was “horrified” to hear the extent of racist abuse within the Church and that NDAs were being used.

Dr Elizabeth Henry, the Church’s former adviser on race relations, quit her job last year because she said she felt disillusioned and “frustrated” by the lack of progress with issues of racism.