Welcome to Montero - Response to BBC 'Is the Church Racist?' documentary
What does a pop song by a black gay man have to do with the experience of racist exclusion in the Church? Our trustee Augustine Tanner-Ihm explores from personal experience:
American rapper and singer-songwriter Lil Nas X
Last month, American rapper and singer-songwriter Lil Nas X released a smash hit called Montero (Call me by your name).
The video has since received more than 160 million views on YouTube. Montero, (especially the music video) gathered much attention because of it is homosexual and demonic overtones,which led to American evangelical groups denouncing and attempting to cancel his work. The song comes from his own experiences of growing up in the American Christian south as a homosexual black man in the Church. The sense of otherness is the most apparent motif depicted in the song and video.
Closer to home, in the UK last week, BBC’s Panorama premiered an episode entitled, Is the Church racist? The programme interviewed several clerics in the Church of England, plus the Archbishop of York and the former National Adviser for Minority-Ethnic Anglican Concerns, Dr. Elizabeth Henry.
The clergy interviewed had disappointing experiences with direct racism and microaggressions in training for ministry and leading congregations. Derald W. Sue, who has written several books on racism and microaggressions, defines the term:
Augustine Tanner-Ihm is an African-American activist, writer, speaker who recently trained for Anglican ministry at Cranmer Hall, St. John’s College, Durham, and is now a Doctoral Student in Leadership, Culture, and Practical Theology at Bakke Graduate University. He was also the winner of the 2020 Church Times Theology Slam competition.
WATCH Augustine’s video intro to the Open Table Network [2 mins]
The presenter Clive Myrie, while interviewing the Archbishop of York, displayed stack of 25 reports dating back 40 years, about racism, and actions to do something about it that never materialized. The most divisive comment came from Dr. Elizabeth Henry who said, ‘The Church of England is not fit for purpose.’
What does a pop song and have to do with this experience of racist exclusion in the Church?
Both are clear signs of how God’s people can use power and authority to weaken and harm people in the name of Jesus. I have struggled with the church not accepting me for my sexual orientation, race, disability, class, and nationality. For many, this can be painful and disrupt people’s sense of vocation and even livelihood. I know from personal experience, it can take a toll on your mental health. What Lil Nas X and the people in the Panorama documentary have in common is a deep pain because people that were supposed to let them in, kicked them out.
In the Gospel of John chapter 10, Jesus explains that he is a Good Shepherd. This Good Shepherd is always searching for the sheep. They know his voice and there are things of this world that attempt to steal sheep or even kill them.
There are people in our churches who have a toxic heretic doctrine of exclusion rather than inclusion. The Church has had this problem for a very long time. In the early church, when God opened the Church to gentile believers, this became extremely hard for Jewish believers. Questions of how to live became a more pressing issue: In order to be a Christian, do I have to conform to a Jewish lifestyle? This was not so.
But people even today forget that that is not the Gospel message. It is not about transforming yourself into a white Christian or a heterosexual Christian, but rather to be transformed by the outworkings of the Holy Spirit. The Christian Scriptures proclaim that all are welcomed into God’s Kingdom and there is no exception.