I’m glad to welcome the Revd Dr Charles Clapham, Vicar of St Peter’s Church Hammersmith, as a guest contributor to the Unconditional Love blog. Charles describes how Anglicans are socialised into a way of doing church in which polite listening, mutual respect, and institutional unity are prioritised over truthfulness and moral courage. What a difference it would make to the well-being and flourishing of LGBTQI people in the church, if those of us who are heterosexual, and especially those who are in positions of power, were able to learn that the process seems designed to protect heterosexual fragility and had the courage to speak and act accordingly.
In her book White Fragility, author and anti-racism trainer Robin Diangelo explores why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism, in a discussion of what she calls ‘white fragility’. i Most of us - whether black or white - will have experienced what she is talking about. In the context of racism awareness training, whether in the workplace or the church, however sensitive facilitators are, and however carefully issues of racism are explored, white people so often end up feeling attacked or accused, and become angry, defensive, or upset. Time that should be spent understanding and challenging racism is diverted into soothing fragile white egos.
Part of the problem, Diangelo argues, is that we have been taught to think of racism as a set of discrete acts, committed intentionally by morally bad individuals, based on personal antipathy. On this definition, those of us who are white like to imagine we cannot possibly be racist. We are (in our view) not intending to discriminate, we want to treat every one equally, and we are appalled or offended when it is implied, in even the gentlest way, that something we’ve said or done might be racist.
In place of this individualistic model, Diangelo argues it is more helpful to see racism as an interconnected system, with deep historical routes, into which we are socialised. Racism, on this understanding, is not simply individual prejudice and discrimination; it is when a racial group’s collective prejudice is backed by legal authority and institutional control, transforming it into a system beyond the intentions of individual actors, which becomes reproduced through time. It is a system into which we are all socialised, and from which those of us who are white benefit, whether we recognise it consciously or not.
But challenging this kind of racism is uncomfortable and difficult. Racism awareness training, for example, often stresses the need to create an atmosphere of trust, in which we agree to refrain from judgment, assume good intentions, speak our personal truths, and exercise mutual respect. These sorts of ground rules sound attractive. But Diangelo argues they are often simply about protecting white fragility. They are intended to ensure that white people can feel ‘comfortable’ in discussions about race. They result in us ignoring the history of racism or the continuing inequalities of institutional power, and presuppose that all perspectives are equally valid. And the danger therefore is that these sorts of rules prevent the possibility of real challenge or learning.
I have been pondering the implications of Diangelo’s discussion of white fragility for the current debate over Living in Love and Faith, and the place of LGBTQI people in the church. Of course, the history and social dynamics of racism are different from the factors that produce discrimination on the basis of sexuality and gender identity. But there are useful analogies and parallels nonetheless. Like racism, heterosexism is not merely a matter of personal prejudice; it is a system, constructed historically through a whole set of discourses and practices, into which we have been socialised. But rather than reflect critically upon how this system came to be, and whose interests it serves, the LLF report takes it largely for granted: this, it proclaims, rather over-confidently, is ‘Christian marriage’. In this respect, the treatment of history offered in LLF is regrettably weak, as others have observed. ii
In its discussion of ‘the science of sexual orientation’, this means as a result that LLF therefore focuses largely on trying to understand why some people are gay, as though this is the issue that requires explanation. It does not, by contrast, really explore why some people are heterosexual; this is assumed. Similarly, the discussion of ‘the science of gender identity’ in LLF is in fact a discussion of transgender and gender diverse people: the production of cisgender identities are not explored. (Contrast this, for example, with Simone de Beauvoir’s famous statement that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”, and the development of this insight in the work of Judith Butler.) For LLF, this lack of a critical and historical analysis of heterosexism as a system means that it is deviance from heterosexual and cisgender norms that are to be explained, and (perhaps, or perhaps not) justified: the production of the ‘norm’ itself is taken for granted.
The ‘Pastoral Principles’ set out to guide the church in its conversations about human sexuality are similarly problematic. In abstract, they sound attractive and plausible: acknowledge prejudice, speak into silence, address ignorance, cast out fear, admit hypocrisy, and pay attention to power. Who could object? But, as with Diangelo’s ground rules, the emphasis is all on process, not on substance. It’s about how we discuss, not about the ethical conclusions we come to. It presupposes good intentions, moral relativism, and a flat playing field. It ignores the unequal distribution of institutional power, and the histories and practices of criminalisation, medicalisation, pathologisation, discrimination, bullying and abuse of LGBTQI people in wider society - and which continue in the church even as we enter these conversations.
In the light of Diangelo’s work, one might suggest that too much of LLF as a process seems designed to protect ‘heterosexual fragility’. It is intended to soothe the anxieties and calm the fears of those who are de-stabilised by the challenge to heterosexual and cisgendered privilege, rather than achieve genuine learning and change. I find myself contrasting it with a text that was required reading as part of my own training in theological ethics many years ago - Heterosexism: An Ethical Challenge, by theologians Patricia Jung and Ralph Smith - a book which (as the title makes clear) unashamedly identified heterosexism as the ethical problem that needed to be interrogated by Christians. iii Despite being written more than twenty five years later, Living in Love and Faith doesn’t even come close to posing the issue in the decisive way Jung and Smith achieved back in 1993.
As we continue to reflect on George Floyd’s killing and the Black Lives Matter campaigns, Diangelo’s White Fragility offers a powerful challenge to those of us who are white, socialised into a system from which we benefit and with which we collude. For people of colour, she argues, the racial status quo is hostile and needs to be interrupted, not reinforced. But interrupting racism takes courage and intentionality; it is by definition not passive or complacent. In the face of systemic racism, what is needed from white people is moral vision, critical reflection on the ideological systems that have shaped us, and the courage to break with unspoken patterns of white solidarity.
“To continue reproducing racial inequality”, she concludes, “the system only needs white people to be really nice and carry on, smile at people of color, be friendly across race, and go to lunch together on occasion. I am not saying that you shouldn’t be nice. I suppose it’s better than being mean. But niceness is not courageous. Niceness will not get racism on the table and will not keep it on the table when everyone wants it off.” (p.153)
‘Niceness is not courageous’, says Diangelo. There’s a line to challenge all of us who have been socialised into the Anglican way of doing church, in which polite listening, mutual respect, and institutional unity are prioritised over truthfulness and moral courage. What a difference it would make with respect to racism if those of us who are white were able to learn this lesson, and to speak and act accordingly. And what a difference to the well-being and flourishing of LGBTQI people in the church, if those of us who are heterosexual, and especially those who are in positions of power, had the courage to do so too.
Revd Dr Charles Clapham
Vicar, St Peter’s Church Hammersmith
i Robin Diangelo, White Fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism (Penguin 2018)
ii See, for example, Helen King, ‘Living in Love and Faith: doing history’, at https://modernchurch.org.uk/prof-helen-king-living-in-love-and-faith-doing-history; or Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘Living in Love and Faith’, at https://modernchurch.org.uk/prof-diarmaid-macculloch-living-in-love-and-faith .
iii Patricia Beattie Jung & Ralph F.Smith, Heterosexism: An ethical challenge (SUNY Press 1993)