A Church of England archdeacon is facing calls to resign amid a “woke” row over “anti-white” comments she made online.
The Ven Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, Archdeacon of Liverpool, had said on social media: “Let’s have anti whiteness, and let’s smash the patriarchy.”
But her comments prompted a litany of outraged reactions, with some online commentators describing them as “racist”, “divisive” and “nonsensical”.
When one social media user said: “Slightly confused by this , so being born white is wrong?”, Dr Threlfall-Holmes replied: “No, that was my exact point! Seek out the training.”
Online commentators described the Archdeacon of Liverpool’s comments as “racist”, “divisive” and “nonsensical”PA/X
Another said: “Oh GROW UP. What the heck is wrong with you? Why do you seek to DIVIDE when your job description is literally to bring people together?? It’s utterly grotesque.”
However, the archdeacon hit back, telling the Telegraph: “I was contributing to a debate about world views, in which ‘whiteness’ does not refer to skin colour per se, but to a way of viewing the world where being white is seen as ‘normal’ and everything else is considered different or lesser.
“I do however understand that this is not a definition that is widely shared as yet outside of academic circles, and regret that Twitter was perhaps not the best place for a nuanced argument.”
Last October, Dr Threlfall-Holmes, who advises church leaders on implanting safeguarding reforms, attended the “Racial Justice Conference” in Birmingham on “waking up to and addressing whiteness in the Anglican church”.
The day-long event, organised by Reconciliation Initiatives, a charity working with Coventry Cathedral to help churches “contribute to reconciliation in wider society”, aimed to “encourage white participants to take next steps in facing their own whiteness, and in addressing institutional racism within Anglican churches and provinces”.
Reconciliation Initiatives also runs a “Being White” course aimed at church members who “identify racially as white” which addresses “the ways we are caught up in a system of white superiority and white advantage in UK society”.
This is only the latest in a string of racism rows involving the Church of England this month; earlier in March, it emerged Church of England Dioceses in the West Midlands were looking to hire an “Anti-Racism Practice Officer” – a role which pays £36,000.
The job posting said it wanted a candidate to “help us ensure that structures, practices and behaviours throughout our Church and churches embrace people of GMH (Global Majority Heritage) and UKME (UK Minority Ethnic) backgrounds and enable them to flourish.”
The posting also said it was looking for someone who “actively engages in anti-racist initiatives and demonstrates sensitivity to changing culture within recruitment practices [and] can provide experience of successfully navigating challenging conversations related to racism.”
But this drew ire from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rev Justin Welby, who said he rang the team to ask why they were recruiting for a role with the phrase “deconstructing whiteness” in the title.
He told Times Radio: “I said, ‘Look, this sounds a bit like W1A, can we please do these things in English? I think ‘deconstructing whiteness’ is a technical term. It’s like saying we want someone to do an epistemological analysis of our annual reports. No one would know what we were talking about.”
Dr Threlfall-Holmes told GB News: “This has been greatly exaggerated and comes down to a misunderstanding of what the academic term ‘Whiteness’ (with a capital W, though I omitted that in my tweet) is used for.
“Obviously I regret very much that my comments have been construed as racist.
“As the story of the Good Samaritan shows, Jesus was very clear that none of our cultural or religious barriers should divide us from our neighbours; each and every one of us, no matter what the colour of our skin or our cultural background, is beautifully and wonderfully made in the image of God.”
