Welcome to this year’s Racial Justice Sunday (RJS) resources for the British and Irish churches, which have been compiled by the Racial Justice Sunday Writers’ Group (RJSWG) and produced by Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.
This year is an important one for racial justice on these shores as it marks the 30th anniversary of RJS. RJS was established by the Methodist Church in 1995 following the tragic racist murder of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence in southeast London in April 1993. The Lawrence family attended a local Methodist Church in that part of the capital, and the Methodist Church agreed to support the family’s justice campaign to find young Stephen’s killers. A few years later, the Churches’ Commission for Racial Justice (CCRJ), a Churches Together in Britain and Ireland programme, agreed to mainstream the special Sunday so that all the churches could engage with it. We will discover more about this history from the Revd David Haslam, a former Methodist minister and head of the CCRJ during these times, who reflects on the anniversary and what it means for racial justice on these shores today.
This year’s theme has the title ‘Coat of Many Colours’, reflecting the increasing diversity that exists in the churches in Britain and Ireland. Both the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament are replete with references to diversity, in this world and the Kingdom to come. One only has to reflect on verses that speak of a ‘house of prayer for all nations’ (Isaiah 56:7), the events of Pentecost (Acts 2) or the ‘multitude … from every nation’ (Revelation 7:9-17), which all include words meaning ‘every tribe and nation’, to see that ethnic diversity is part of God’s divine plan. There is little doubt that British churches, especially in the larger cities, are a microcosm of the world in a congregation, which is indeed a blessing that must be celebrated. Equally, the fact that the diversity of believers has breathed some much-needed spiritual life into our churches reveals that this is a movement of God for which He must be praised. In our reflections and sermons, members of the RJSWG and others, who hail from
many parts of the globe, describe their experiences of being part of the Coat of Many Colours.
