Are rural parishes racist?

When Rev Augustine Tanner-Ihm moved to rural Dorset, he found the church to be welcoming and kind. But that isn’t the experience of all Black priests, and there were racist attitudes in the wider community, he says 

A few months after the Brexit referendum, I moved to rural Dorset to serve as a lay leader in a Church of England parish church. It was a time of uncertainty and shifting identities, with conversations across the country increasingly divided and charged. In the wake of Brexit, many were grappling with the implications of change and what it meant to belong.

Entering into this context as a person of colour was both an honour and a challenge, especially in a region where many had never had a person of colour as a neighbour, let alone as a spiritual leader.