Journeying to Justice provides the very first comprehensive appraisal of the tumultuous journey towards equity and reconciliation amongst British and Jamaican Baptists across two centuries of Christian missionary work, in which slavery, colonialism and racism has loomed large.

This ground-breaking text brings together scholars and practitioners, lay and ordained, peoples from a variety of culturally and ethnically diverse backgrounds, all speaking to the enduring truth of the gospel of Christ as a means of effecting social, political and spiritual
transformation. Journeying to Justice reminds us that the way of Christ is that of the cross and that grace is always costly and being a disciple demands commitment to God and to others with whom we walk this journey of faith. At a time when the resurgence of nationalism is threatening to polarise many nations this text reminds us that in Christ there is solidarity amongst all peoples.

Whatever the myriad reasons that people had for voting Brexit there is no doubt in my mind that a good deal of that was to do with British (really English) notions of exceptionalism (we are not like or indeed are better than the rest) and a melancholy for the loss of Empire and the grandeur of imperialism. Ironic that those who want to rest control back from unelected officials governing them without any mandate to do so, often harken back to a time when Britain did that to 23% of the world - the bits marked in pink. In the grand scheme of things, it won't make any difference, but the book I am presently editing is a modest attempt to lay bare the crushing levels of hypocrisy that lie beneath the Brexit construct. Many good people voted for Brexit. of that I am sure, but as a Black liberation theologian I will never be convinced that in the final analysis Brexit wasn't simply fueled by a deep seated, residual nostalgia for the time when Britain stood alone, effortlessly condescended the rest of the world, which in its way has always had that racist underpinning to it.23% of the world - the bits marked in pink. In the grand scheme of things, it won't make any difference, but the book I am presently editing is a modest attempt to lay bare the crushing levels of hypocrisy that lie beneath the Brexit construct (Journeying to Justice  - Milton Keynes: Paternoster press, 2017). Many good people voted for Brexit. of that I am sure. But as a Black liberation theologian I will never be convinced that in the final analysis Brexit wasn't simply fueled by a deep seated, residual nostalgia for the time when Britain stood alone, effortlessly condescending to the rest of the world, happily wallowing in her imperial hubris.
This was a vote for a particularly noxious and unappealing descent into a nasty form of revisionist romanticism that wants to remind 'us' of the time when we were special and considered ourselves better than the rest. It is not remotely surprising that the Brexit vote has given rise to greater levels of racist incidents and xenophobia, for what else could emerge from a vote that wanted to reinstate Britain's imperial past? Empires are always constituted on the binaries of 'them' and 'us' and we know who the 'them' are (i.e. immigrants being told to go back to where they came from) and who are the 'us', i.e. White British people who have the right to be here. Empires are predicated on the hypocrisies of imposing on others the kinds of things you would never tolerate for yourself.
As a Black theologian who has spent the past twenty years critiquing and challenging White privilege, Brexit simply laid bare what many of us had always known, that beneath the seemingly gentile world of manners and cold politeness that often characterises the English (as opposed the Celts on this island), there lies a subterranean torrent of racism and xenophobia. But whereas Enoch Powell was sacked from the Conservative Shadow cabinet for his 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968 (although 70,000 trade unionists supported him), Farage and co were rewarded with an election victory and then an inglorious retirement into hopeful obscurity having imperilled all our futures in the meantime. This is a strange time to be living on this island as a person of African descent and as the descendant of enslaved peoples - the people who built this empire with their blood stained bodies, for which Britain has NEVER apologised. My hope is that the alternative side of British identity will reveal itself - a much overlooked tradition. One that goes back to the Lollards, the Levellers, the Chartists, the Tolpuddle Martyrs. One where ordinary people stood alongside each other and recognise their shared conditions of struggle as being more determinative than notions of mythologised privilege that is nothing more than a vacuous dream peddled by the ruling classes to keep poor people as passive supplicants. So I still have the residuals of hope for this country, but they are being solely tested at the moment!

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed the proliferation of adverts encouraging us to enjoy the dubious merits of online gambling.  Having received my religious formation from within the Methodist tradition, where all forms of gambling were strictly prohibited, I know that I am bound to have a very jaundiced view of the merits of this practice. I am not naïve enough to believe that we should seek to ban gambling.  Nor am I a complete religious puritan or killjoy who would want to wag a reproving finger at those who indulge. What I am concerned with, however, is the way in which many of the recent adverts for online gambling seek to portray it as a glamorous, non-problematic practice without consequences. I know that millions gamble and do so safely and responsibly as suggested by the adverts. The adverts are very specious, however, as they portray online gambling as a sexy, lifestyle choice of the comfortably off, middle class.

What they don't show, of course, is the abject misery that is often caused by gambling. Offering people free tokens to get started or to extend their gambling activities is a cynical move that is as ethically dubious as pay day loans that give you so called control and an abundance of choice.

I know that people will always want to gamble and online forms of the practice are inevitable, given the new platforms that now exist. The adverts displaying happy, contented, aspirational couples all enjoying a harmless little flutter is concerning and nauseating. As a former member of the Labour Party (I left the party when Blair took Britain to war in Iraq), the deregulation of gambling was one of the less auspicious acts of Blair's three governments. Many millions may gamble responsibly, but what of the others, often those at the bottom of the social pyramid for whom misery and hardship is their reality of the culture of increased gambling? I know that many will argue for self-control and personal responsibility, but it's much easier to speak of these things when flashy, insincere and cynical adverts are not proliferating our airwaves promoting a world that is barely recognisable to anyone with eyes to see.

My hermeneutic of suspicion will be turned up to 11 as I continue to monitor the adverts extolling the virtues of sexy online gambling.

I can remember sitting in a meeting when a senior White church leader turned to me and said “No disrespect, but don’t you think you are a ‘one-trick pony’, in that all you ever write about is racism. What will you write about when racism comes to an end?” I remember sitting there looking incredulous at this naive and disingenuous fool. Cornel West has outlined the ‘Genealogy of race’ where notions of race are not static or monolithic. Sadly, racism has been with us for centuries and in changing form and in embedding itself into systems and structures, they  have enabled seemingly 'good people' to collude with and sustain them, often as unwitting gate keepers.So the notion that racism is going anywhere is absolute nonsense. 

I was tempted to try and find this individual and ask him what he made of Ferguson, but more critically, the uncaring, unfeeling, blithely ignorant racism of the media in the US and across the world to the callous killing of Michael Brown. A Black man can be unarmed and hold his hands up high to demonstrate the case and yet he can be shot dead, his body riddled with bullets and he is to blame for his own demise?

Closer to home I endured a torrid time for over 18 months trying to find an academic job after been made redundant in 2012. The nadir was being told by a Head of a university department that I was not shortlisted for an academic post because “your publications are not good enough”; this from a man whose department consists of several White members of staff with little or no publications at all. So I asked how did the White people who had never written anything get senior jobs in his department and yet I was not good enough to even get an interview with a wealth of books, articles and essays to my name? He was speechless and refused to answer.

Again, I was reminded of this previous conversation that I was a ‘one trick pony’. What struck me about the previous encounter was the barely veiled accusation that somehow my attempts to critique and challenge racism was either self serving or perhaps more problematic than the existence of racism itself. Looking at the recent media portrayal of Ferguson it is not too difficult to see the classic signs of misdirection. Michael Brown is to be blamed for his own death. The peaceful protesters are to be held to account but not the police department or the District Attorney. The largely Black activists are to be critiqued for their cynicism but not the right wing ideologues on the Fox network?

Racism isn’t going anywhere. It requires activists, scholars and all people committed to equity and justice, to join forces to repel this vicious leviathan that has stalked the lives of millions of peoples across the world and across several centuries. The post-racial vision peddled by some is a dangerous myth that will not be realised by cynically attacking those seeking to name and unmask the toxic and noxious reality that is racism. 

I'm proud to have an essay in this new book. Well done Mitzi!

"That Christian missionary efforts have long gone hand-in-hand with European colonization and American imperialist expansion in the 19th and 20th centuries is well recognized. The linchpin role played in those efforts by the "Great Commission"—the risen Christ's command to "go into all the world" and "teach all nations"—has more often been observed than analyzed, however. With the rise of European colonialism, the Great Commission was suddenly taken up with an eschatological urgency, often explicit in the founding statements of missionary societies; the differentiation of "teachers" and "nations" waiting to be "taught" proved a ready-made sacred sanction for the racialized and androcentric logics of conquest and "civilization."

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