Abstract
Ten papers organized into an introduction and three parts make for salutary and indeed chilling reading. Reddie states that his book is not about whether Britain should or should not remain in the EU; and he wrote before it became clear that whereas some 37 per cent of the population opted for ‘leave’ in the notorious referendum, only some 31 per cent were likely to have voted for the same move in the more recent election, with now three devolved Assemblies voting against the Brexit Bill. Percentages one way or another do nothing to help focus on the ‘underlying constructs’ of English/British identity, and its origins in ‘the religious sensibilities informed by empire and Christianity’ (p. 1). He writes from within ‘the prism of Black experience’ (p. 5) to advance a liberation and postcolonial critique needed (among other targets) to eliminate the shameful ‘hostile environment’ that already existed before it was exacerbated by UK Home Office policy, many features of which were brought to light with the injustices of the 2018 ‘Windrush Scandal’ (see the Wikipedia entry and the Guardian newspaper campaign).
‘Black’ embraces any and all of those not perceived to be ‘White’ (which he charitably does not paraphrase as ‘imperialist pink’), the latter arising from the nationalism, sense of entitlement and privilege developed from post-war and conquest exploits, slave owning and trading, followed by missionary endeavour, xenophobia, racism – all fostering a well-developed White sense of entitlement and privilege (which he refrains from explicitly listing as arrogance). Reading his work may well prompt attention to the present UK preoccupation with ‘trade’ on the one hand and a culture of potentially toxic ‘mission’ strategies in the Church of England, insofar as ‘mission Christianity’ may propagate being ‘White’ – a possibility so far unexamined?
Reddie argues for ‘Pentecost-inspired’ lives of ‘cooperation, mutuality and sacrificial living’, embodying ‘the gifts of multiculturalism and the grandeur and beauty of difference’ (pp. 80–1). While ‘Black’ congregations do not escape his critiques, his book recommends a range of different learning strategies to enable profoundly disenfranchised communities in the UK to find personal and community identity and self-esteem (e.g. pp. 51–6, 82–4), drawing in addition on traditional religious practices from different cultures and on ‘proverbial wisdom’ (pp. 177–244). As a Methodist ‘liberation theologian’, he commends learning to read the Bible ‘to see what is said and what is not said’, because learning to think critically about power relations in the texts studied may well also transform attention to what may and may not be truth for someone in exploration of their form of multiple religious belonging (pp. 135–53).
This book is a superb resource for directions in which to pursue further reading via exemplary chapter notes, and as such it is thoroughly ‘academic’. That apart, it is important in reading it to attend to what Reddie himself refers to as its ‘visceral’ origins and present experience, from his recollections of his family’s experience as well as his reflection on his own, growing up in working-class Bradford. He has not forgotten either the dehumanizing conditions in which his father and his four brothers-in-law worked – his father leaving home at 5 a.m. to walk the 90 minutes to work in an industrial foundry (p. 163) – nor his mother sharing her discrete anti-colonialism with an Irish neighbour (p. 111), let alone being on the receiving end of being non-White, which he analyses at intervals in one or other of his chapters and that bring his ways of thinking alive to his readers.