Rosemary Mallet: “Jesus calls us to achieve justice. But we can’t do it without him’ | Interviews

by admin
Rosemary Mallet: “Jesus calls us to achieve justice. But we can’t do it without him’ | Interviews

The Most Reverend Dr Rosemary Mallet, Bishop of Croydon, describes herself as “one of the abandoned children” – minors who stay with family members while their parents seek economic opportunities elsewhere. As a child, she remained in her native Barbados – then a British colony – while her mother and brothers traveled to the UK as part of Generation Windrush. They reunited in 1966, by which time her parents had settled in Coventry.

Rosemary remembers her childhood in Barbados as content but “extremely poor”. She lived in a mobile home – “a little house that you could literally pack up and put on the back of a wheelbarrow if you were told to hurry off the ground”. Her ancestors were enslaved on sugarcane plantations; her last name reminds of that brutal story – “we think it’s possible a very small plantation owner who gave this name [Mallett] to a very small plantation”.

Racism was not something Rosemary experienced until she arrived in the UK at the age of seven, where the color of her skin suddenly became an ‘issue’. She recalls the humiliation of being rejected from a disco as a teenager, along with her white boyfriend, who was not wanted in the relationship. This experience, along with a growing awareness of the US civil rights movement, left her “politicized” and with a lifelong passion for racial justice.

Despite struggling with the Church’s historical involvement in colonialism and chattel slavery, Rosemary says she was “chosen” by God for ordination and in 2022 became the first female Bishop of Croydon. She began to see her role as a means of ushering in the kingdom that Jesus was calling his followers to build.

This June marks the 75th anniversary of Empire Windrush arrival in the UK. What does it mean to you?

I think of all those people who came on that boat not knowing what the world would hold for them, but with a sense of hope. They would do something amazing—build the “mother country”—and then come back [to their countries of origin] and build their own communities and grow their families. So there was this sense of joy and anticipation. And then what they found, in so many cases, was rejection and rejection and marginalization, and they had to fight that with tremendous resilience.

I became so detached from any kind of institution that could have been a part of my ancestors’ journey of pain

This [year] is also the 75th anniversary of the NHIF, and we I can not think of the NHS without thinking of the amazing ways in which people from the Caribbean and other diverse backgrounds have been part of building that institution. I look at the transportation systems in this country, I look so a lot that benefited because these people came… So I look back with pride, but I also realize – as I look back at slavery – the costliness; the amount of racism that so many faced and the challenges that their children faced when they came here. It wasn’t easy.

We still have a lot of work to do to fix the bugs of [Windrush] scandal; to recognize the contributions of these amazing people and build a legacy and a platform going forward where no one else feels they are unwanted, that they are marginalized, that there are any hint they are told that this place is not their home.

Do you see racial justice in terms of activism—Christians joining groups like Black Lives Matter, for example?

I think we have to work on a theological level – that’s it thinking and on creature – we need to understand each other better. We really need to deepen our understanding of how scriptures have been used to create this binary racism, and at the same time, we need to be out there in the world making a difference—whether it’s joining the Black Lives Matter protests, or joining the protests for climate justice. Some people will choose to do this – this is how they live out their understanding of social justice. Some people will work on it academically because theorizing and theology is what allows us to learn and grow. It can’t be everything doing; it should be as much a sense of learning and growing as it is of being and doing.

We must be committed to bringing about justice because that is what Jesus tells us to do. But in every moment of time we must turn as Jesus does; we must pause, we must pray, and we must ask our Lord to nourish us, to nourish us, to be with us, and to guide us, with all wisdom, grace, and mercy. We cannot do it unless we bring everything together as a whole.

If Mark Rowley continues to claim that the Metropolitan Police are not institutionally racist, he has lied to the experience of so many

The Archbishop of Canterbury has set up a £100m fund to address past wrongs linked to the Church’s historic links with slavery. Do you think this goes far enough to repair the damage done?

I don’t think it went far enough. But I do i think we’re all on the road and don’t know what “far enough” is. this point in time. This is a significant step forward in terms of recognizing past sin, repenting of past sin, and then putting in place a process to move us from where we are. This will help us get some of this repair work done.

For me, it’s not just about money. It is about creating a legacy in which those who feel part of the Church of England find a place in it for their full reflection as members of the kingdom. How do we ensure we do this? It’s not just creating a fund, but actually building a real platform and foundation for how we engage going forward with all the different people.

What we do we know that because of the way people were ripped out of Africa, it had such a knock-on effect on the countries they came from and the places they went. Racism—that dual combination of black and white—was born out of slavery. We have to find a way to deconstruct this racism—this whiteness, this blackness—that we have constructed as positive and negative. We have to find a way back from this. And [my hope is] this small amount of money allows us now to invest from the pain, to invest forward, so the coming ones [in the next generation] they will know that people have built a platform for them to be the best they can be, as God wants them to be.

There has been a lot of media talk about the Met Police and the institutional racism that has been prevalent there for many years. I know you’ve worked with the police, so what do you think of this organization?

It is similar to what I say about the Church: there are good people in both institutions doing good work – white and black – [but] I firmly believe that there must be complete repentance at the top. And then we can begin to see how this plays out in the institution. So while [Met commissioner] Mark Rowley means well – and I’ve met him and I don’t doubt his good intentions – if he continues to claim that the Metropolitan Police is not institutionally racist, he has lied to the experiences of so many people inside and outside the institution. You must recognize racism and repent of it.

I think Baroness Lawrence [mother of Stephen Lawrence] said, “If you don’t name it, you can’t deal with it.” Once they start naming it, they will start living it. And it won’t be immediate, but it will show that they can move from complaint to action.

thumbnail_image

You grew up in church. At what point did the faith become yours?

In the Caribbean, we went to church. I remember walking with my cousins ​​and brothers through the cane fields in my white dress, white stockings, white shoes, and my little, what we call in Barbados, a pocket-book—that’s what they called it in Elizabeth’s time—with a handkerchief and I feel very beautiful and proud.

When we came to Britain we joined the Church… it was just part of who we were. For me, as I became more and more political, that church space became less and less welcoming. My brothers stopped going pretty soon. I was in the Maiden Brigade and did all that, but I wouldn’t say I had a personal sense of my own faith until my teenage years. You struggle with your identity [in those years], and when I realized what the world had in store for me, I leaned very heavily on the Psalms. Whenever I was in trouble and couldn’t see the way forward, I just kept going back to Psalm 27: “The Lord is my…salvation” – it just kept me going when I thought things were going wrong, [and everything was] so crazy around me I would just Rest in Psalm 27, and it will give me comfort and sustenance, telling me to wait on the Lord, he will be there. It has helped me through so many difficult times.

Racism—that dual combination of black and white—was born out of slavery

It is interesting that you rejected the religious elements of the faith and yet chose ordination as your path in life.

I’ll just go with that word “chose.” I was selected. I was an academic for a very long part of my life. And actually, when I went to university, I went to one of the most radical (at the time) universities in this country, which was the University of Sussex. There were very few people I knew who went to church on Sundays because we spent most of our time campaigning or marching. I was very, very political. I really rejected the institution of the Church because as I learned more about the path the Church went along with colonialism, imperialism, chattel slavery, I became so detached from any kind of institution that could have been part of my ancestors’ journey of pain. I couldn’t find anything about the Church as an institution that would really allow me to want to be a part of it. But [in terms of] my personal faith, I still felt very connected. So I can do this dichotomous thing of saying, “I follow Jesus; I don’t need a church.”

Profile Podcast (1)

I lived in Tanzania for a few years as part of my academic journey and there I met a lovely Filipina nun. She worked at the university as an academic, but was also an embedded minister of faith. The order she was a part of worked with the local people to really engender that sense of social justice. And I just stopped and thought: There must be something about the institution and the work in cooperation, not just “me and my faith”. So I went back to the scriptures, back to Jesus calling his Church into being, and I looked at what Church Must be like, not what he is it was like – to see if I can find a way to play a part in creating the Church that Jesus called into being. This is a church where everyone is loved and [which] it reflects the beauty and wonder of the Creator. Where there is room for everyone and every part of the body has its role and is loved and respected. I got to the point where I said, “You know what, I have to be a part of this thatinstead of sitting outside and criticizing him.’

To hear the full interview, tune in to Premier Christian Radio at 8pm on July 1 or download The Profile Podcast premierchristianity.com/theprofile

Source Link

You may also like