Is the Church of England still institutionally racist?

It’s three years since the Church of England pledged a sweeping programme of reform to overturn racist culture in the Church. Following Racial Justice Sunday, Tim Wyatt asks what progress has been made 

In the febrile atmosphere of 2020, as the world was locking down to save itself from Covid catastrophe, the murder of George Floyd sparked an international reckoning with racism. And just like countless other institutions, the Church of England also began to wrestle with its own record on inclusion and diversity.

Even before the pandemic and Black Lives Matter, months before any bishops were pictured taking the knee or a statue of the prominent Anglican slave-trader Edward Colston had been hurled into Bristol harbour, the Windrush scandal had already prompted the Archbishop of Canterbury to declare in February that the church he led was “institutionally racist”. Into this potent mix, two explosive cases of racism emerged almost as if to prove his point.

First, was the tale of Rev Augustine Tanner-Ihm. American by birth, Tanner-Ihm had felt a call to serve God in England during a ministry trip and by 2020 had almost completed his three years of training to become a vicar. But when he applied for a curacy post in Hertfordshire a local diocesan official shut down the negotiations on the grounds that the parish was a “monochrome white working class” community which could make the black priest “feel uncomfortable”.