Black PoliticalChurch Mobilisation A

Manifesto for Action

the removal of oppressive forces. The liberating agency, the Church, with its message of salvation from sin, has to locate the good news in the spiritual, physical, social, psychological and political realities that dehumanise and diminish the image and likeness of God in persons of colour.

in the United Kingdom. Its inherited task is to garner the substantial human, social, intellectual, economic and political resources into a focused, workable programme for the local church. This would result in significant impact on the community beyond the church walls. The work of the NCLF going forward is to further assist the bishop, pastor, elder, deacon, youth leader, choir leader, Sunday and Sabbath school teacher in this theological and ecclesiological process.

Alongside the church and trustee boards must come the social justice committee that will flag up the inequalities in treatment at the education and penal institutions. Items for prayer must be identified for the prayer warriors, but they cannot stop there. Collections and fundraising events will also be organised for the financing of legal and advocacy work.

The NCLF have already established eleven forums on their website, www.nclf. org.uk, covering the eleven policy areas of the manifesto. African and Caribbean Christian communities will be able to engage in these online discussion groups. Further to this, the NCLF will roll out a national programme to help the African and Caribbean churches to network and enter into collective action around the Manifesto’s policy areas.

Jesus’ teaching, the Gospel, is littered with symbolic and intentional challenge to the status quo of the first century that corrupted the body, mind and spirit of the human community. The Black Church Political Manifesto is therefore a clear indication of a theological shift taking place in the minds of the leaders of African and Caribbean churches in the United Kingdom. This shift in theology anticipates a shift in mission, ie., mobilisation of the faithful in the pews. The Manifesto illustrates by its eleven policy areas that there is work to be done and that this call to action is part of our civic duty and Christian discipleship.

The NCLF, by its very existence, represents a call for unity between the diverse expressions of Black Christian faith

In the foreword of the Manifesto for Action, several church leaders point out that, ‘considering this post-Brexit era, the Black Lives Movement, and the creation of a United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, more is required of the NCLF and of this Manifesto.’