SHe is as far removed from the Anglican bishop stereotype as black, female and fearless. Despite being born and raised in poverty in Jamaica, deprived of the love of her parents, and beaten and abused as a child, Rose opened a stack of Christmas cards in her office at Canterbury Cathedral. Bishop Hudson-Wilkin radiates warmth and joy.
The cards she sent this year depicted a black Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus in a refugee tent on a hillside. It's a message that comes from her heart. As Bishop of Dover, the issue of immigration is always near the top of her mind, whether it's people fleeing war, persecution or economic hardship.
“For me, how we treat the most vulnerable is very important,” she says. “That includes refugees and people seeking asylum. We need to ask why people leave their countries of origin. I understand the obsession with stopping small boats. Of course we understand the need to prevent people from dying on the water, but we have to ask: Why do they leave their original locations?
She added with a smile: “No one in their right mind would leave a warm country to come to freezing cold Europe. So something is going on.”
From the sunshine of the Caribbean to the chill of a Kent winter, Hudson-Wilkin's own travels are the subject of a new memoir. montego bay girlwill be published next month. In it, she describes her difficult childhood, her growing faith and call to service, and the sexism and racism she encountered.
“Caring adults weren't always a reality in my life,” she writes with understatement. Her mother and father were absent for most of her childhood. “There were no kisses or hugs. No 'well done's.” Hudson-Wilkin was regularly beaten for minor infractions.
Although she felt “hurt, abused, lost and alone,” she “knew that God's hand was on my life and that my suffering was not in vain.” Her faith saved her, she says. observer. “At a time when I felt unloved and unvalued, faith grabbed hold of me and gave me expression in life.”
By the age of 14, Hudson-Wilkin knew he would become a priest, but he didn't know how that would happen. She was a “cradle Anglican,” baptized at three months of age and attended church throughout her childhood. However, women were prohibited from volunteering. It took another 20 years before she was finally ordained in 1994, within weeks of the Church of England allowing women to become clergymen. “God has traveled with me through the darkness of rejection,” she writes.
Even today, there are people in Region E and Region C who do not recognize the legitimacy of female priests, and the Church offers special arrangements to accommodate them. “It still hurts,” she says. “The message is that you're not authentic. It's painful to be in a church where there's a certain kind of theology that refuses you to play this role.”
Hudson-Wilkin has faced racism many times in a church with a long history in the field, and has faced the double whammy of prejudice and discrimination. transatlantic slave trade and completely rejected the black Anglicans who came to Britain during the Windrush era. “It's definitely changing,” she says. “But just because we have a few black bishops, we shouldn't think that everything is solved. Racism still exists. You have to ask, are the people who just did that not reflected?”
Hudson-Wilkin has been outspoken on these issues, which has made her unpopular with some conservative members of the C of E. But while she says the church's main job is to spread a message of mercy, forgiveness and peace, she says: We staunchly defend the need to speak out on issues of injustice and inequality.
“The Church absolutely must have a political voice. Jesus interceded with compassion on behalf of people. Therefore, the Church must also have a voice on political issues that affect ordinary people. I have to,” she says. Acknowledging that not everyone would agree with C of E's intervention, she added with a wide smile: We will not be silent and neither will I. ”
In quickly explaining this, she launched into a short, abrupt speech about the war in Gaza. “What Hamas did [on 7 October 2023] It was brutal, make no mistake about it. But I don't understand why Israel continued to destroy lives for over a year. War solves nothing and only creates more suffering. And when young people see their homes and families destroyed before their eyes, they think, God, we have created a dangerous world and the cycle of violence will continue.
“Israel has the right to defend itself, I strongly believe in that. But we don't have the right to deny medicine, water, food to civilians. That's different. And we in the West don't have the right to deny medicine, water, food to civilians. I didn’t speak clearly enough.”
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We look at the earthquake crisis that has engulfed C of E in recent weeks. It is rooted in the abuse of children and vulnerable adults and the church's failures in this area, including cover-ups, collusion, and prioritizing its own reputation over justice for victims. The church's failings led to the unprecedented resignation of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, last month, and has prompted calls for Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York, to follow suit.
Hudson Wilkin has experienced the effects of abuse firsthand. In her memoir, she confessed that she was raped and sexually abused from an early age. “Two of my older cousin's boyfriends were involved, but it didn't stop there. There was also church-related abuse by so-called religious people.” I had never talked about it until now, perhaps because of my determination not to be defined by what happened to me. I didn't intend to be anyone's victim. ”
Her abuse, she says, is “part of a larger story about a world where men exert their dominance by subjugating those deemed to be the weaker sex.” “My experience was not unique. I am not alone in this. Many girls and young women I know have been exploited as well.”
she says: “My heart goes out to everyone affected by abuse of any kind.” But C of E is taking steps to improve safety, deal with abusers and address survivor grievances, she added. Most of these measures were introduced over the past decade, when Welby was Archbishop of Canterbury, she said.
She warned of a “lynch mob effect” in calls for the removal of senior leaders, saying: “Demanding their resignations will not solve the problem. Proper There needs to be a process. I am proud of the safeguards in place at the parish level. We have faith, but we also have fear. People are afraid that it won't be done right, that they will be criticized. We need to stop the lynching and mob environment. And the flames are being fanned in some parts of the church.”
Mr Hudson-Wilkin, who is almost 64 years old, has six years until he reaches the compulsory retirement age for Bishop's C of E. “I used to think about moving back to Jamaica, but my children and grandchildren's lives are here, so this is where I am,” she says.
It's hard to imagine that the C of E, the state's first black female bishop, would abandon her fight for justice and equality and choose a quiet retirement. “I've carried the cross of rejection all my life from people who don't accept me,” she says. “But I know God is with me.”
