Equal Opportunities: PC or JC?Equal Opportunities: PC or JC?
What do you think of when you hear the phrase ‘Equal Opportunities’?
Political Correctness gone mad? Not another policy we have to write and file away?
Or … something central to the work of Jesus and his followers?
There can be no doubt that ‘Equal Opportunities’ is an idea that has been badly abused. Sometimes it is used not to enhance the opportunities for some but to stifle opportunities for many; ‘no you can’t do that because not everybody can join in’. At other times it is given an idea which receives only lip service; a policy is written to satisfy a funder and then filed away and never acted on.
More often equal opportunities is something to be manoeuvred around. I have been asked (in a previous role, in another town, far far away …) ‘How do we avoid having to spend money to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act?’ and ‘why do we need disabled facilities, we don’t have any disabled people in our church?’
What would Jesus’ reaction have been?- He touched lepers that were not allowed to live in the villages of ‘clean’ people.
- He stood alongside a ‘sinner’ who was accused of adultery.
- He made friends with social outcasts like tax collectors who collaborated with the Roman occupation.
- He told stories which held foreigners and people of other faiths to be heroes and examples to follow.
- He listened to people whom the crowd wanted to silence.
What if there was someone who physically or emotionally could not get into one of our churches; perhaps the people in the church are all white (or even all black) and they were given the feeling that the colour of their skin did not fit, perhaps they can’t read and are embarrassed at being expected to read a hymn book or service sheet, perhaps they are in a wheel chair and don’t want to ask for help to get into church or go to the toilet.
What if Jesus attended our church and heard about someone who felt excluded; what would he do?
Just imagine him standing up, walking out and sitting and talking with them, leaving the rest of us to sing our hymns and say our prayers alone.
"Does [the Good Shepherd] not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?"
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Faith in Action has a section about developing a vision for our church and one of the activities it suggests is finding out the sort of people who live in our neighbourhood and asking if they are reflected in our congregation. Do we have the same proportions of disabled people, ethnic minorities, men and women, young and old? If not, why not? Is there something that we are doing (or not doing) that makes people feel unwelcome, people that our Lord longs to care for through his church? See chapter 2 of Faith in Action – ‘Getting Started’ about developing a vision for Christian community mission - it describes just such an activity.
Were you aware that Diocesan Synod adopted an Equal Opportunities policy in 2003:Equal Opportunities? Why not develop your own policy, not to tie your hands and be ‘politically correct’, but to allow God to challenge and enable your church in an authentically Christian ‘equal opportunity’ mission and ministry?
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A brief history of Human Rights ... and wrongs
Challenging ... what are We doing Now about abuse?
(Thank to United for Human Rights: see www.youtube.com/user/unitedforhumanrights)