Chaplaincy

Who is my neighbour?

The world continues to be beset with the COVID-19 virus with many countries still in the grip of thousands of new daily cases. The United States of America is the worst hit country with well over 100,000 deaths. The USA has also seen significant uprisings and protests as a result of the death of George Floyd, an African American man, at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis on 25 May. The world has sat up and taken notice and there has been a renewed push to eradicate racism in the Western world. The slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ has been used in protests and acts of solidarity in numerous countries around the world, including New Zealand. In fact, thousands of New Zealanders joined in marches of solidarity with the BLM movement. Some people have responded with a challenge that ‘all lives matter’ but as Year 9 student Talia Wood explained in her winning speech, if you go to the doctor with a broken arm wanting it treated, you would not be happy for the doctor just to say, “Well, all bones matter!” At the moment, many black and indigenous peoples all across the Western world feel broken and in pain. They feel that systems have been designed to favour white people and discriminate against black people. The situation in the US is very concerning and it is clear that there is widespread discrimination against black citizens.

Here in New Zealand it is, perhaps, not so clear to many people. However, one area in which it is quite clear is in criminal justice. In 2018, Stuff published an interactive exploring New Zealand’s prison population. It uncovered that Ma -ori are more likely to be imprisoned than non-Ma -ori for exactly the same crime, more likely to be imprisoned for almost every category of crime for which non-Ma -ori were given different types of sentences. While this information is not new to many people who show an interest in our criminal justice system, it is a reminder that even though many people know about this, little has been done to confront the injustice that exists. Systemic racism has been part of the fabric of our society since the colonial government began in 1840. But, it is not just Ma -ori who experience racism in New Zealand.

Racial inequities are hard to talk about because they engender emotional responses. No one wants to be labelled a racist and there are so many stereotypes about so many different groups of people, and jokes that are made about different cultures, that people feel threatened when it is labelled as prejudice. But, how deeply has each of us really looked into our hearts to check ourselves for seeds of racism and prejudice? Do we have different reactions and responses to people with different skin colour or ethnic identity to us? Do we make assumptions about a person’s character, values, motivations, or backgrounds just based on the colour of their skin or the shape of their eyes? People of other ethnicities do too and have had people yell at them in the street to go back to their own countries even though they were born here, and their parents were born here, and their grandparents were born here. People on the street and in some work places are told to stop speaking their own languages. These things all stem from our prejudices and biases. Any statements like ‘all black people are…’, ‘all white people are…’ and so on, are never going to be accurate, and stem from prejudice rather than fact.

Christians have been associated with much racism in the past. Some of the most damning examples are: beginning in the Early Church, as Christianity became its own religion rather than merely an aberration of Judaism, and then became the state religion of the Roman Empire, antisemitism and the denigration and humiliation of Jews and Judaism has continued through the centuries; the Crusades against Muslims that occurred between the 9th and 13th centuries; slavery justified by scripture; British colonisation of many non-European countries and the assumption that the colonisers brought civilization with them; and association with the Nazi regime in WWII. These are only a few examples but it is a history that is hard to deny and that highlights the dominance of European attitudes in the Christian Church, to the exclusion of other races and ethnicities. It seems that Christianity became a euro-centric religion that effectively made a darker

“It is the mission of the Church to respond to human need with loving service, to show mercy to those in need and to actually do something to help. The voices of need are loud in our communities at the moment.”

skinned, radical, refugee Jesus into a blonde, white, meek and mild Jesus.

We have a teaching in the Christian Church about the sanctity of life and it is very relevant when we are thinking about racism. The main tenets of the belief about the sanctity of life are that all life is God-given, all life deserves respect, all human life is precious, life is not to be destroyed, and God has a plan for every life. Another significant concept is that all people are equal in the sight of God – no one is of more value than anyone else, and we are all made in the image of God. In the Genesis creation stories, right at the beginning of the Bible, it says, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.” (Genesis 1:27) God made human beings in God’s image and saw that they were very good. That is human beings in general, not just one group of human beings. There has been a lot of theological debate and discussion over what ‘made in God’s image’ actually means but, whatever it means, it is pretty clear that it has nothing to do with the colour of a person’s skin, their ethnic background, or where they were born.

Our Anglican Church here in the province of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia endorses the Five Marks of Mission of the Church set out by the Anglican Consultative Council (a representative body that seeks to facilitate cooperative work among the provinces of the Anglican Communion) as follows: The third and fourth marks of mission are particularly relevant when thinking about the current situation regarding BLM in the USA and racism here in our own country. We are called by Jesus to love our neighbour. In the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) we learn that being a neighbour is about showing mercy. Jesus changes the question from, “Who is my neighbour?” to “What does it mean to be a neighbour?” According to the third Mark of Mission it is the mission of the Church to respond to human need with loving service, to show mercy to those in need and to actually do something to help. The voices of need are loud in our communities at the moment. The Good Samaritan did not approach the man on the road and say how sorry he was that the man was in such a situation and then leave him there! It is not enough to just hear the voices and either sympathise or empathise. In this context love is a verb – something that we do.

This flows into the fourth Mark of Mission – to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of any kind and pursue peace and reconciliation. Again, the imperative here is to activity, not passivity. All Christians are called to act to make a change to promote justice to challenge that which is unjust. Each of us has a sphere of influence in our workplace, our living situation, and our families. We have the opportunity to lobby government, to make decisions about who to vote for based on justice and mercy, to protest like the BLM solidarity people, to treat every person we come across with respect and dignity, and there are no doubt many other ways we could act to challenge injustice also.

Here at Diocesan, one of the ways we have decided to act in this space is by significantly increasing the education our students receive around Ma -tauranga Ma -ori so that every student who leaves Dio will have a good understanding of what Ma -ori culture is, of what matters to Ma -ori, of the injustices of the past and how this learning can help shape a better future for Ma -ori in New Zealand. We are on an exciting journey of learning and development as a staff and as a school, and we are looking forward to seeing where this journey takes us – hopefully further towards equality and justice for everyone in our society.

THE FIVE MARKS OF MISSION:

The mission of the Church is the mission of Christ

1 To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom

2 To teach, baptise and nurture new believers

3 To respond to human need by loving service

4 To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation

5 To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth.