Whiteness, Patronage and Bourgeois Respectability in the Methodist Church: The Fernley-Hartley Lecture, 2021

This article is the fuller version of the 2021 ‘Feanley Hartley Lecture’ that was given on 17 May. This paper is drawn from more current research and a reappraisal of my earliest post-doctoral scholarship, dating back twenty years, in order to assess the theological challenge of systemic racism and the socio-cultural, economic and political challenge of ‘Whiteness’. Utilising the scholarship of Willie James Jennings’ After Whiteness and my 2003 book Nobodies to Somebodies, I seek to reflect on the extent to which the contemporary and historic phenomenon that is the Methodist Church of Great Britain has been enshrined in and defined by ‘Whiteness’.