Follow up resources and ideas
There is a wide range of resources both within and outside Baptists Together that can help you delve more deeply into particular areas of difference, or into the topic of equality and diversity as a whole. These can be found on the related webpages listed below. If you have suggestions of resources that would enable a better understanding of these or other areas of diversity, please email the Ministries Team.
However, if you are a minister, we ask you especially to engage next with Visions of Colour. This is a resource designed for Baptist ministers to develop their awareness of and response to racial, ethnic, and cultural discrimination. It aims to provide theological and practical resources to develop anti-racist churches. It will eventually consist of six hour-long videos and a handbook to help you reflect on what you learn and to create a journal. The six episodes look at an anti-racist approach to mission; worship; the Bible; preaching; theology; and culture. At present, the first four episodes have been published and the final two will become available over the coming months. We strongly commend this resource to you.
Disability
Our disability justice pages contain a large number of short articles for personal learning, together with discussion material for group work, a list of theological articles, book reviews and testimonies. They are grouped together under Talking about Disability, Church and Faith. This is a project created by the Baptists Together Disability Justice Group. It aims to help churches, pastors and anyone else who wants to think more deeply about disability from the point of view of Christian faith and church practice. Many churches have excellent inclusion statements and a real desire to get to grips with what those statements say. The point of the project is to provide some Christian theological and wider resources to help make those statements a living reality for all of us. The material can be viewed online and a printed version, designed to help ministers have small group conversations has been sent to ministers.
Gender
Our gender justice pages list various resources for you to explore more about gender justice. In particular, please see the ‘Good reads about gender’ page that has been published as part of Project Violet. (Project Violet aims to investigate women’s experiences in ministry whilst developing women ministers. The project will help us to understand more fully the theological, missional, and structural obstacles women ministers face in the Baptist community in Great Britain and identify ways forward.)
Race
In addition to Visions of Colour mentioned above, our racial justice pages highlight a wide range of resources. This includes a reading list, a series of racial justice blogs, details about the Sam Sharpe Project and lecture, and resources to help you, say, foster a multicultural church, or develop young people with African, Caribbean or Asian heritage backgrounds. In addition to our own resources, Baptists have been involved in the well-established eight-evening course called Black Light, a joint initiative between Urban Expression and Ascension Trust.
Sexuality
We are not in a settled place on matters to do with sexuality. So we are collecting resources to share. Please see our Listening pages on Human Sexuality for a range of different views, articles, courses and books.
Equality and Diversity in general
Beyond our own Justice pages and Listening pages, there are a number of introductory and in-depth resources for equality and diversity on the internet. Not all of these take the same approach, but we offer them here for you to investigate further for yourself.
The Methodist Church has an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Toolkit. This is a comprehensive course which may prove useful to you, though please note that not all of it is applicable to a Baptist context.
The Evangelical Alliance has a section entitled Relationships and Identity within their public policy area. This contains a variety of articles on contemporary issues relating to equality and diversity.
The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has some material on equality and diversity in the workplace, focussing especially on race, gender, disability, LGBT+ and age. These pages are aimed at those responsible for learning within trade unions so is not wholly applicable to churches, but there are some useful definitions, examples, and questions.
Keeping within the law
The Equality Act 2010 spells out nine 'protected characteristics' against which it is illegal to discriminate. There are a number of exceptions which churches may rely on to discriminate in certain circumstances. We are just finalising a suite of leaflets that will offer an overview of the law, an explanation of the exceptions relating to employment and the provision of goods, facilities and services, and advice on how churches can operate within the legal framework. The leaflets will be published in January 2023 and we will update this page as soon as they are ready to download.