WHENEVER there is a discussion about the benefits of multicultural church, one of a range of metaphors is likely to be trotted out: the rainbow, the salad bowl, the quilt, the box of crayons, fruit salad, muesli. . . These speak to the diversity on offer if several cultures are present, when each is making an identifiable contribution and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is in preference to a smoothie, where the components have been mashed together so that no component is easily identifiable, and the whole takes on the character of a dominant culture.
What these metaphors do is to pick their way past the power dynamics inherent in any meeting of different cultures. They impose an ideological equivalence: no one culture is more important than the others. Ecumenism hasn’t helped. We’re all one in Christ, we all matter; but Paul’s trenchant use of the body with many parts is more realistic. Some body parts behave as if they are more important than others, or think that they could continue if other parts of the body didn’t exist.
And Paul makes a point about parts of the body which ought to be covered but should be treated with special honour rather than silenced or ignored. In other words, he acknowledges what multiculturalists and ecumenists would rather overlook: the power relations, which are in plain sight to those who are less powerful, but of which the dominant cultures are apparently unaware.
It would be bad manners to highlight these discrepancies. But the Church of England has been following a policy of assimilation which has become increasingly unworkable — as global-majority-heritage church members are beginning to point out.
AS THE debate about what post-colonialism might look like in the English Church gathers momentum, I would recommend the use of the Ames room. This is an illusion that uses forced perspective to make people in the room appear at dramatically different heights in relation to one another. The Ames room accentuates differences in comic and dramatic ways. A child can tower over an adult by virtue of moving only a few feet across the trapezoid floor.
When you enter a room, you cannot be equal in stature to those who have preceded you. Even if you are of identical height, the illusion creates and magnifies differences. This can be a helpful way to bring the power dynamics to the fore. If we look at multicultural church through the perspective of the Ames room, there are three questions to be answered.
First, where in the room are you standing, or how tall do you appear? For this, read: How much power do you hold in this church context?
Second, towards where in the room are you moving? Is the illusion making you taller, or are you shrinking — are those moving into the spaces you have left growing in stature? Are you increasing your power, or trying to give it away?
Third, and perhaps most significant, what is your stance towards others in the room whose height is different from yours? Do you give way to them? Do you ignore them? Do you speak for them? Remember, the point of the illusion is that you are all actually the same height: it is only the Ames room that creates the differences.
MOST of us would benefit from time in an Ames room. It would make us more aware of the power dynamics that are evident when different cultures come together, but which are rarely talked about. There is plenty of evidence that some cultures feel that they are invisible, or talked over, or stereotyped into particular roles. That is why most dioceses now have groups working on racial justice. But the levelling must take place at parish level.
The response is not to restate our equality as a given, or to create positive bias, but to realise that these differentials are in plain sight and cannot be concealed under a veneer of politeness. The paradox is that giving up power — losing altitude — is what creates a dynamic for change. That can be done much more effectively than hand-wringing, or delivering manifestos about equality, or celebrating how many flavours can be found in the salad.
Paul, writing to a church in a colony of Roman veterans in Philippi, nails it when he says (to paraphrase) that Jesus, the biggest person in the room, didn’t consider equality as something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the nature of a slave. In other words, Christ intentionally moved to the smallest place in the Ames room. And the Apostle suggests that, in a world where power dynamics are the very last thing to be flagged, we should be of the same mind, looking to value others more than ourselves.
John Griffiths is a Reader in the diocese of St Albans.
