‘Reconstructing Inclusion’ – engaging with Amri B Johnson. # 225. 07/04/2026.

Welcome, to engagement with a black American diversity consultant to businesses seeking fresh light on the church in England. I hope you find it illuminating and stimulating.

‘Reconstructing Inclusion’ – engaging with Amri B Johnson.

‘Inclusion’ is clearly a buzz word in the Church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury has said the gospel is about ‘inclusion not exclusion, dignity not denigration, empowerment rather than exploitation, and affirmation rather than marginalisation’ (from Andrew Atherstone’s biography of the Archbishop, p 83). This is in line with her ‘2020 vision for a [London] diocese marked by justice, inclusion and a transformed culture’. One noted quality in the appointment of Anderson Jeremiah as Area Bishop of Edmonton was his involvement in Diverstity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) whilst on the staff of Lancaster University. In a similar register the six West Midlands’ dioceses’ Racial Justice Initiative’s Mission Statement notes that ‘Guided by the ‘From Lament to Action’ report, we aim to cultivate an inclusive church where diversity is not only welcomed but celebrated’.

In this the Church has followed the widespread emphasis throughout the West on emphasising racial inclusion, supercharged by the ‘racial reckoning’ of 2020. This is part of an across-the board emphasising of inclusion, covering also physical and mental disability, gender and sexuality. As regards the latter, an observer of the recent General Synod debate said he had to give up counting the number of speakers in the debate who used the word. Yet only uncritical progressivism lumps them all together and ignores that each one raises distinct and different issues, with race and ethnicity perhaps being the simplest in that there is little objective basis for distinctions. (See blog # 87 on ‘Race and Sex, a Category Confusion’).

However there has been pushback over whether both the rationale and the outcomes of expensive DEI programmes justify themselves. Professor Doug Stokes ‘Against Decolonisation’ (reviewed at blog # 131) cast a critical eye over their rapid proliferation and value, notably in universities. Most notably Donald Trump’s massive cuts have removed the programmes from government expenditure.

It is this immediate context and its expansion that is addressed by the black American diversity advisor Amri Johnson, who notes that whist references to DEI in the annual reports of the top 500 USA companies averaged12.5 in 2022 they dropped down to only 4 in 2024. The plug has clearly been pulled. Johnson has written a book on ‘Reconstructing Inclusion’. Here I want to discuss his recent post (‘Inclusion is Polysemous’, 27/03/2026) from the Journal of Free Black Thought - a site of ‘heterodox’ thinking on race - and paying particular reference to how this might re-shape the Church of England’s commitment to ‘inclusion’.

As a preface it is important to beware of the dangers of unreflectively importing business models into the life of the church. The energy of local congregations comes from members who are essentially volunteers, there is understandably very little coercive authority over them. But even in the ‘professional’ ranks of clergy there is very little authoritative line management. As the Bishop Chelmsford recently observed, bishops have very little leverage in their leadership. However, hopefully passion for the common task ‘that God’s wisdom, in all its rich variety was to be made known’ should provide a powerful bonding unity in taking forward the church’s mission.

Johnson’s overall thesis.

‘Polysemous’, just in case you are wondering, refers to when something has multiple meanings that are inherently connected. That connection comes in any action, ‘a daily manager habit, a design decision, and meeting norm, a promotion criterion. . . that action has a dual purpose: human thriving and organisational value generation’. Johnson emphasises that this approach focuses on ‘creating conditions for contribution’ as opposed to orthodox DEI which focused on ‘representation’. That is to say, his emphasis is on how people can be fulfilled to generate positive outcomes, rather than simply concerned about numerical diversity. There is, in fact, very little in his article that directly references ‘race’. He is ‘Reconstructing Inclusion around Humanity, not Identity Categories’. Rather, ethnic diversity is a natural outcome when ‘human thriving and organisational value generation’ are operating at full potential. Applied to the Church of England this might mean not being preoccupied with how many minority ethnic leaders there are but rather how people of all ethnicities might effectively work together to take forward its mission.

Johnson identifies four qualities that he sees as marks of good leadership. These might be expounded as follows:

Curiosity.

He critiques an organisation where the leaders had preconceived views and only gave attention when staff confirmed this – they were critical, not curious. Rather it is the desire to hear from and learn from what is coming up from below that is the mark of inclusiveness. Describing the management faults in a pharmaceutical company, Johnson writes: ‘The ones closer to the ground and closer to the actual experimental work, were the ones who could see around corners. . . But the senior people around the table had not consistently created the conditions for that intelligence to surface’.

Instead of criticising the church for the lack of black leaders, we need the curiosity to ask ‘Why have we produced so few credible candidates’, so that instead of merely considering numbers and percentages, we should be exploring what happens at congregational level that either does or does not produce potential leaders. It depends upon rather more than simply describing ourselves as ‘inclusive’.

The wide variety of multi-ethnic communities is fertile ground for the curious. Yet it is squashed rather than stimulated by two common but flawed approaches: the ‘we must have a . . .’ approach whereby appointing a minority ethnic person is prioritised, and the persisting tendency to stay with bulking-up terms such as BAME or UKME/GMH. Both alike major on impersonal characteristics which by-pass the need to encounter individuals in their rich and lovable distinctiveness and reduce them to faceless representatives of categories. In Proverbs 8:31 God’s Wisdom is ‘rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race’. People of all ethnicities flourish under leadership that has the curiosity to delight in that diversity.

Lowering the cost of dissent.

I too often hear minority clergy say they are afraid to speak their mind for fear of being regarded as troublemakers at senior level. For Johnson such voices are essential for true inclusiveness. White people need to be listening to black voices, thus the wise recommendation of ‘From Lament to Action’ that bishops have trusted minority ethnic advisor’s that they can listen to.

Dissentient voices can be ignored and difficult questions get skirted around. The fear of being branded ‘racist’ can silence voices that are critical of the orthodox approach to race and mean that self-censorship allows ineffective policies to flourish. Harm comes with ‘the accumulated weight of every meeting where the truth was too costly to speak, every decision where the person closest to the problem stayed quiet because the room did not feel safe enough for candour’. Thus little has been said publicly about the damaging pressure on the church to make minority ethnic appointments. The last Bishop of Liverpool was appointed despite warnings of the risks and his unsuitability. I know personally of two black people whose appointments as archdeacons went disastrously wrong for the person involved as well as for the church because of the felt need to appoint a minority ethnic person without giving sufficiently serious thought about whether they were the right person for that job at that time. Yet the question of what has been learned from such mistakes, and what must change, has never been raised.

(In passing it is interesting to note Johnson’s reservations about the use of AI - it only can produce an overview of all that has been written or said, but there is no input reflecting all that has been left unsaid).

Noticing contributions.

A key word for Johnson is ‘mattering’: ‘it is one of the most powerful drivers of discretionary effort, motivation towards purpose, and retention available to any organisation’. Members who feel their views are disregarded or their contributions devalued increasingly disengage. ‘Lynne’s story’ (told in blog # 113) was of an able black woman whose suggestions at her work-place were ignored yet subsequent very similar proposals by a white colleague were accepted and celebrated. Consequently, not only did Lynne keep herself to herself at work but also became increasingly withdrawn from other sorts of involvement until her conversion to Christ awakened her to re-awaken her potential and become trained for lay ministry.

I think of a black woman who held an important job in the structure of the Church of England and yet who felt her very senior diocesan bishop simply didn’t give her serious attention. Such neglect preceded the ‘racial reckoning’ of 2020, when thereafter there was a heightened and guilty focus on black people by the various establishments. Much earlier, in 1997, the black legal scholar and journalist Patricia J Williams lamented ‘Who are we when we are seen but not spotlighted, when we are humble but not invisible, when we matter but not so much that mattering drives us mad’. She was highlighting the experience of being either ignored or receiving a heightened focus arising from the anxious fear of conflict and civil disorder – ‘of ricocheting between invisibility and hyper-visibility’.

In contrast to deliberate or self-conscious attempts to be attentive, Johnson draws attention to ‘the research on work friendships as one of the strongest predictors of contribution and satisfaction’. In church contexts such warmth of relationships ought to be a simple outcome of our faith in Christ rather than a ‘programme’ that needs to be worked on. A development of this emphasis on mattering to each other is the important focus by Bishop Martyn Snow in ‘An Intercultural Church for a Multicultural World’ on ‘Gift Exchange’ as the outworking of our recognition that different cultures have much to receive and to offer to each other (see blog # 153).

Surfacing what people know.

Referring to one company, Johnson speaks of ‘the gold in the building. And the senior leaders, for all their expertise, were not the only ones who could find it. In fact, they were often the last ones to see it, until inclusion created the conditions for it to become visible’. For the church, the ‘gold’ can be found in the long-term worked out faith of its members, often women and from ethnic minorities. But clergy need to create the conditions, perhaps especially the prayer spaces for it to be visible. Similarly the gold of pastoral experience of urban church clergy has been neglected in the creating of national policies on diversity. The church’s ‘From Lament to Action’ report did not include a single clergyman with significant experience of multi-ethnic ministry, leading to an over-emphasis on statistical and bureaucratic recommendations.

But it is from the surfacing of different and at times competing understandings that real learning and development happens. Uncovering the scandal of the widespread sexual abuse of teenage girls was hindered by the reluctance of the police and social services to draw together threads pointing to the commonly shared ethnic origins of the perpetrators.

The connections between multiple disadvantages and growing up in a fatherless household are plain across a wide range of statistics (see blog 173 reviewing Melissa Kearney’s ‘The Two-Parent Privilege’), and often surfaces in pastoral experience. Yet both government and the Church of England draw back from pointing to the need for measures to promote stable marriages as a major contribution to greater social and racial equality.

Conclusion.

Johnson’s aim is to for the inclusionary programme he recommends to ‘create conditions. It must do something structurally generative, not merely representationally symbolic’. Merely aiming at percentage appointments of minorities is far too superficial. Of the DEI cull of 2024 Johnson writes ‘Orthodox DEI, with its near exclusive focus on group identity, grievance and performative programming, was largely hollow, the focus on ERGs [employee resource groups of those with shared characteristics] as endpoints rather than starting points was at best decorative.’ Because it never actually aided ‘real organisational function’ (that is, it was merely a required task but not central to the organisation’s flourishing) it could be easily dispensed with. Instead Johnson has a different model: ‘inclusion is a set of capabilities that allows people to surface reality, influence one another and create the conditions for thick value’. It is a living, evolving, constantly mutating reality, not a set of statistical goals or top-down programmes.

In the past the Church of England has missed out on not welcoming or developing the ministries of minority ethnic people in its midst. We are now moving into a situation of increasing minority participation in the life of the church. The danger is that the fashionable ‘focus on group identity, grievance and performative programming’ will lead to policies and appointments that are superficial and merely ‘representationally symbolic’, rather than deep-seated commitments to draw on the rich and wide range of gifts in the church in taking forward its mission. Whilst it is possible that such a focus might not lead to more minority ethnic people being chosen for leadership roles in the short term, I believe that given the greater resources of faith, vision and commitment currently found amongst ethnic minorities, then long term they will emerge in substantial numbers as effective and fruitful leaders in the church’s ministry.

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Reflecting on Scripture.

Romans 15:15b, 16: ‘the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit’.

Paul assumes from the very start of his ministry that there will be a payback: that the Gentiles or nations will have their distinctive offerings to present to God, just as the Jews did. The idea that any people might be merely receptive of the gospel, or passively reproduce what they have received is alien to this passage. Each influx of ethnically distinct believers will also manifest a new type of offering to God.