A welcoming embrace

Last week Lynsey wrote about invitations. When I invite friends to my home I always look forward to welcoming them. I wonder if you are like me? In my excited anticipation I dust, polish, vac and tidy to make sure everything is ‘just right’. On arrival, I embrace my visitors, welcome them. I want them to be at their ease, to feel they belong, that they matter and that they can be themselves.

In 1 Peter 4 v 8-10,  the author encourages Christians to welcome one another,

 ‘above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms’

I know that all our church schools offer very warm welcomes and that these are extended to all in your community - pupils, parents, governors, visitors and one another. I know how you welcome the most needy and vulnerable and I especially hear about how you welcome those who are newly arrived including those who are refugees.

One of the priorities in our diocese is racial justice. Building on the concept of ‘welcome’, the theologian, Miroslav Volf uses a metaphor of ‘embrace’ to describe a vision for true racial diversity.  You can read more about it in, ‘Beyond Tokenism’ by Anjali Kanagaratnam (Grove education eD56,  2023)

Volf describes an embrace as having 4 parts.

1. Opening the arms - an invitation and welcome, a gesture of reaching for others and a desire to learn from them.

2. Waiting – an embrace is reciprocal. There is a need to wait to see if the other person will participate.

3. Closing the arms – people here are both active in ‘holding’ and passive in ‘being held’ - each enters the space of the other.

4. Opening the arms again – having entered the space of the other person, we do not lose our own uniqueness. This is as much true of the one being welcomed as the one doing the welcoming.

Volf compare this to ‘true racial diversity’.

I know that all our schools offer sincere welcomes but there is a need to consider the culture people are welcomed into.  Our British education system has been developed over many years and has been shaped by white, Eurocentric thinking. As a result, a ‘welcome’ can unintentionally result in an expectation of ‘assimilation’ into a white, Eurocentric norm.

We know that many of you, inspired by the Church of England’s theological underpinning for racial justice, are intentionally working to make your schools more diverse. Reviews of curricula, resources, policies, representation and more are taking place. We know that schools are reflecting on their recruitment processes and engaging with the Leaders Like Us programme.  Volf would describe this as the period of waiting where repentance for the past, reconciliation, adaptation and forgiveness occur.

When ‘embrace’ finally occurs it is important that all are changed by it - this is about reciprocity and equality. True racial diversity is about everyone being able to be their genuine selves and being open to change through relationship and encounter. As a result, when the embrace ends and arms are opened,  culture and shared space should be changed not homogenised – we see this where our schools celebrate, learn and change as a result of the richness and diversity of culture, knowledge and perspective that each unique person brings.

Perhaps this week you can think what ‘welcome’ means to you or consider the description of embrace that Volf provides.  Perhaps reflect as a staff team on what this means for racial diversity in your school.  Consider what it might mean to be changed when someone new enters your community, rather than unconsciously trying to change the newcomer so that they fit the ‘us’ that is already there.

from June Richardson, School Effectiveness Advisor