Churches are emptier than ever since Covid. Fewer clergy have more and more parishes to look after; the buildings themselves are falling down, with little money available to repair them. In the face of these existential problems, what high-profile subject was discussed over the weekend by the General Synod of the Church of England? Encouraging more worshippers, perhaps, or possibly improving finances? Not quite. You’ve probably guessed the answer: racial justice.

The Synod ran what can best be described as a consciousness-raising session to cheer on the work of the Archbishops’ racial justice commission. It’s aim, it seems, is to push race towards the top of the ecclesiastical agenda.

St Paul would have had little time for identity politics

After the Archbishop of York started proceedings by describing the promotion of racial justice as ‘how we are the body of Christ’ and demanding a ‘compelling agenda for racial justice and racial change in the Church,’ it was the turn of the Bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin. She was uncompromising. On race, she said, being ‘woke’ was not only acceptable but necessary:

‘The racial justice mandate flows not from identity politics, but from our primary identity in Christ. The gospel calls us to prophetically address head-on the evils in our society, indeed in our world, which leave some parts of humanity dehumanised.’

Others spoke in similar vein. Synod members nodded sagely and approved the proceedings. Parishes will now be encouraged to draw up ‘race action plans’.

Neither the vote, nor the speeches that preceded it, have any legal force. Any thinking Anglican, however, has good reason to be depressed about this episode, for both practical and theological reasons. The latest intervention on racial justice isn’t a one-off. The Archbishops’ racial justice commission, set up three years’ ago and headed by ex-Labour minister Lord Boateng, used its latest report in February to call for racial justice to ‘be a regular and compulsory topic in all relevant deliberations and decision making processes on all levels of Church organisation.’

Is this really necessary? After all, distracting from the Church’s primary work of saving souls and ministering to individual spiritual needs is hardly a good way of attracting new worshippers. Nor does this particular focus do much to persuade existing ones not to forsake it, whether in favour of other churches or simple Sunday laziness. When it comes to lectures on political theory or managerialist solutions to problems of inequality, there are plenty of capable organisations already out there. Why the church hierarchy should think that people will sit in chilly pews to hear it done less well by those whose proper business lies elsewhere is a mystery.

The racial justice being promoted in the Synod appears to involve a demand for jobs in the church, whether in parishes or in the organisation’s increasingly top-down management, to reflect the racial make-up of this country. Not only is this idea likely in principle to drive away many of the faithful. It also cuts across the fact that the church is a people (or at least souls’) business. Parish incumbents must be congenial to their congregations, however unenlightened the latter may be in the eyes of church bigwigs; and senior ecclesiastics must be able to attract and inspire the clergy under them. Regarding the appointment of priests and prelates as an exercise in managerialism and the need to correct perceived power imbalances between racial identities may please intellectuals and church administrators: but it is a sure-fire way to remove any lingering affection between the ordinary worshipper and the church they frequent.

There must also be doubt about this as a matter of theology and doctrine. True, deliberately devaluing someone because of their colour or origin is un-Christian: it flatly contradicts the shining Gospel message that Jesus died for all of us, Jews or Gentiles, and that Christ offers grace quite indiscriminately. It also ignores Jesus’ decision to deliberately associate with different people, such as the woman of Samaria described by St John, not to mention assorted publicans and sinners.

But when St Paul wrote to the Galatians that, for him, there was neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, this suggests he would have had little time for identity politics, or for seeing people as anything other than souls to be saved. For that matter, Jesus himself, when asked why he had not addressed head-on the evils in Judaean society (in particular his arrest by the chief priests), had a simple response. ‘My kingdom,’ he said, ‘is not of this world.’

The General Synod, and anyone who wants the Church of England to remain a national institution rather than degenerate into a dwindling sect of activists increasingly irrelevant to anyone other than those administering it, could do worse than ponder these words.