OIL GIANT Shell police on 73 year old former Archbishop of York John Sentamu during this weekend’s The Big One Extinction Rebellion protests, after he tried to deliver a petition letter calling on the company to stop new fossil fuel exploration and extraction.
“I think it is the most arrogant experience I ever had” Sentamu said, after he was refused entry to the lobby of Shell HQ. “The security people are being put in such an impossible position.
“This is the sheer arrogance of Shell. They think they are the Masters of the Universe. You cannot be inhospitable when we were coming in peace”, he said.
When a “pilgrimage” march of Christian groups committed to climate action arrived at Shell, on its way from Waterloo to Parliament Square on Friday, the doors were locked. Sentamu knocked on the door a few times before leaving the letter on the mat of the revolving door entrance.
“The sheer arrogance of Shell… you cannot be inhospitable when we were coming in peace”
Minutes later, the march’s police liaison officers phoned Melanie Nazareth of Christian Climate Action to say Shell had reported Sentamu’s activities to the Met Police.
“I feel we were lucky I had done the police liaison,” Nazareth says. “It was disappointing Shell chose not to engage in any constructive way. Instead, they chose to lock the door in the face of an older Black man wearing a Christian Aid tabard.
“We had the Salvation Army and Salvation Army band with us”.
As of Monday morning, Christian Climate Action hadn’t received an apology from Shell.
Jasmine Browne, Minister of the United Church of St Paul’s in Balsall Heath, Birmingham since 2014 said, “Shell’s response is not only insulting to John Sentamu, it smacks of racism to me. Would they have treated Justin Welby the same way?
“Companies such as Shell exploit the planet and the poor for huge profits, and when you challenge them they use racist institutions to hide behind”.
Browne added that the St John’s Waterloo and Black Majority Churches services “set the tone and blessed proceedings with peace, love and calm.
“My motivation to get involved was to try and protect the planet and thus secure it for future generations.
“There are challenges attracting people from the global majority to activism, because in this country Black and Brown people are targeted first. There’s no justice if you’re Black in this country.
“But Friday’s and Saturday’s protests showed a complete turnaround over how we are going to get the Government to change”.
“I don’t think any of us are interested in an apology – words are cheap,” said Nazareth, a lawyer by profession who grew up in the Solomon Islands.
“What they should acknowledge is they should be able to engage with people who are harmed, instead of continuing their business as usual model of profit for the few and suffering for the many, with people of colour at the forefront of climate impacts. It’s racist not to do anything to address climate change.”
The march followed a packed No Faith in Fossil Fuels service at St John’s Church Waterloo.
The different emphasis of The Big One from earlier XR activism – on talks, gatherings and networking rather than direct action – “definitely made participation easier and it’s very valuable,” says Nazareth. “The change in tactic enabled us to invite faith leaders to come.
“I can see people having conversations with people they haven’t met before”.
On Saturday 22nd April there was a Black Majority Churches service of open air worship outside Parliament, led by Rev Delroy Henry, National Director of Education at the New Testament Church of God Leadership Training Centre, Charnelle Barclay, Director of the William Seymour Project’s Centre for Theology and Community, and Rev Ronald Nathan of Hoggard AME Zion Church, Barbados.
“It was really important we did this outside the Houses of Parliament,” says Nazareth. “It was a sense of reclaiming our position in the faith climate movement”.
“What we really wanted to do is to be visible. It’s a demographic that has been quite rightly sceptical about the value of protest – both because of the police and because of cultural difficulties”.
Reverend Ronald Nathan said: “Shell’s disrespectful action towards Bishop John Sentamu is a reflection of its disrespect to the millions of people in the Niger Delta whose waters are polluted by Shell’s exploration activities. It is reflective of Shell’s greed after having made a declaration of £33 billion profit last year.
“Climate Justice is akin to social justice and racial justice,” Rev Nathan added. “We understand the link between our spirituality and ecology, between our worship and need for social justice, between speaking in tongues and articulating concerns for the environment”.
“Our connections to Africa, Asia and the Caribbean gives us a clear insight into how developed countries fail to protect the most vulnerable people in our world, who are experiencing increased droughts, floods, heatwaves, and hurricanes”.
John Sentamu said: “Climate change is the greatest insidious and brutal indiscriminate force of our time. The people suffering the most have done the least to cause it. That is why continuing to search for new sources of fossil fuels, despite explicit warnings against this from the International Energy Agency, is such an offence against humanity”.
Acting Bishop of Birmingham Anne Hollinghurst, who joined the pilgrimage march, issued a call to prayer “for the impact of this lawful peaceful protest, the focus [being] on demonstrating the acknowledged urgency of net zero targets and the strength of feeling, especially against the opening of a new licensing round to explore oil and gas in the North Sea.
“Our modern world, built on the burning of fossil fuels, is damaging the creation God has given us to tend, with its poorest communities suffering most across the world”.
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The former Archbishop of York the Rt Revd John Sentamu, needs to become the poster image for the complete and utter disaster of overpromoting compliant African-heritage men and women, to meet the Anglican Churches’ Politically Correct, and Left-wing “diversity” antidote, against England’s institutional skin-colour discrimination.
The Ugandan born politically, and theologically compliant former Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, did not used his public clerical office to help; assist and provide rehabilitation to the millions of African, and African-Caribbean people; whose descendants either suffered two centuries of Anglican slavery: or Anglican supported colonialism on the African Continent.
To be clear.
It was the Anglican Bishops from the 15th Century; from the comfort of Her Majesty’s House of Lords, who made holding African men; women and children, respectable and biblically acceptable.
The Anglican Bishops taught and believed that African people lacked a God-Given Soul; and, therefore, should be regarded, and treated on the Anglican Churches’ extensive Caribbean Sugar Plantations as “cattle.”
The former Archbishop of York John Sentamu, failed to use his Clergy office, and authority to highlight and correct the Anglican Bishop’s massive abuse of the Semitic Hebrew Messiah’s Gospel Message and Crucifixion example, to make huge profits from enslaving African people for two centuries.
Instead, the former Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, gloried from the Left-wing praise of publicly cutting his Clerical Collar; on the Mr Andrew Marr shown in 2017; as a protest against the President of Zimbabwe, Mr Robert Mugabe.
England is entirely composed of African-heritage people in public office, who have utterly failed to use their authority; office, and influence to advocate; assist and benefit England’s African, and African-heritage Subjects.
The “sheer arrogance” and antipathy against African-heritage men; women and youth from the former Archbishop of York, John Sentamu is as bad and unacceptable as the “sheer arrogance” of Shell Oil.