She is about as far from the stereotype of a Church of England bishop as you can get: black, female, fearless. She was born and raised in poverty in Jamaica, deprived of parental love, beaten and abused as a youngster, yet Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin radiates warmth and joy as she opens a pile of Christmas cards in her office at Canterbury cathedral.
The card she sent this year depicted a black Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in a refugee tent on a hillside. It is a message that came straight from her heart. As bishop of Dover, the issue of migration – whether it is people fleeing war, persecution or economic hardship – is always near the top of her in-tray.
“It is of great importance to me how we treat those who are most vulnerable,” she says. “That includes refugees, people seeking asylum. We need to be asking why people are leaving the places they come from. I see an obsession about stopping the small boats, and I understand the need to prevent people dying on the water, of course, but we need to ask: why are they leaving their places of origin?”
With a smile, she adds: “Nobody in their right mind leaves a warm country to come to a freezing cold Europe. So something is going on.”
Hudson-Wilkin’s own journey from the sunshine of the Caribbean to the winter chill of Kent is the subject of a new memoir, The Girl From Montego Bay, which is published next month. In it, she describes the challenges of her childhood, her growing faith and call to ministry, and the sexism and racism she encountered.
“Caring adults were not always much of a reality in my life,” she writes, with some understatement. Her mother and father were absent for much of her childhood. “There were no kisses or hugs; no ‘well done’s.” Hudson-Wilkin was regularly beaten for mild transgressions.
She felt “hurt and abused … lost and alone” but “I knew that God’s hand was on my life and my pain would not be in vain”. Her faith saved her, she tells the Observer. “In the midst of feeling unloved and uncared for, faith took a hold of me and gave me an expression of life.”
By the age of 14, Hudson-Wilkin knew she would be a priest, but she didn’t know how it would come about. She had been a “cradle Anglican”, baptised at three months old and attending church throughout her childhood. But women were banned from ministry. It took another two decades for her to be finally ordained in 1994, within weeks of the Church of England admitting women into the clergy. “God had journeyed with me through the darkness of rejection,” she writes.
Today, there are still some in the C of E who do not accept the legitimacy of female priests, with the church providing special arrangements to accommodate them. “This hurts, even now,” she says. “The message is that you’re not quite the real deal. It is painful to be in a church where there is a particular kind of theology that rejects you being in this role.”
Hudson-Wilkin has faced a double whammy of prejudice and discrimination, repeatedly coming face to face with racism in a church whose long history in this area includes financial benefit from the transatlantic slave trade and the outright rejection of black Anglicans who came to the UK during the Windrush years. “It’s changing, without doubt,” she says. “But we must not think that because we now have some black bishops, it’s all fixed. Racism still exists. You have to ask, why doesn’t this institution reflect the people that I’ve just travelled on the bus with?”
Hudson-Wilkin has been outspoken on these issues, which has not endeared her to some of the more conservative elements of the C of E. But, while she says the church’s principal job is to spread a message of compassion, forgiveness and peace, she staunchly defends the need to speak up on matters of injustice and inequality.
“Absolutely the church must have a political voice. Jesus had compassion and intervened on behalf of people; so the church must also speak out about political issues that have an impact on ordinary people,” she says. Acknowledging that not everyone agrees with the C of E’s interventions, she adds with a broad smile: “I don’t mind being criticised. We will not be quiet, and I will not be quiet.”
In a swift illustration of this, she launches into a short and unprompted speech about the war in Gaza. “What Hamas did [on 7 October 2023] was barbaric, let’s make no mistake about that. But I don’t understand why Israel has continued to destroy human life for over a year. War has never resolved anything, it just creates more pain. And when young people see their homes and families destroyed before their very eyes, I think, my God, we are creating an unsafe world and the cycle of violence will continue.
“Israel has the right to defend itself, I believe that firmly. But it does not have a right to refuse medicine and water and food to civilians. That’s not right. And we in the west did not speak clearly enough on that.”
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We turn to the seismic crisis engulfing the C of E in recent weeks, rooted in the abuse of children and vulnerable adults and the church’s failures in this area, including cover-ups, collusion and prioritising its own reputation over justice for victims. The church’s failures led to the unprecedented resignation of the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, last month, and calls for the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, to follow suit.
Hudson-Wilkin has first-hand experience of the impact of abuse. In her memoir, she discloses that she was raped and sexually abused from a young age. “Two of my older cousins’ boyfriends were involved, but it did not stop there: there was also abuse associated with the church by so-called religious men. I have never spoken about this before, probably due to a determination not to be defined by what happened to me. I was not going to become anyone’s victim.”
Her abuse is “part of a much larger story that tells of a world in which men exercise their dominance by subjugating those deemed to be the weaker sex,” she says. “My experience was not unusual – this is not just about me. Many girls and young women of my acquaintance were similarly exploited.”
She says: “My heart goes out to all those affected by abuse of any kind.” But, she adds, the C of E is putting in place measures to improve safety, deal with abusers and address the grievances of survivors. The vast majority of those measures have been introduced over the past decade while Welby has been archbishop of Canterbury, she says.
She warns against a “lynch mob effect” in the calls for the removal of senior leaders: “Calling for resignations doesn’t resolve the issues. We need proper processes to ensure that we never see collusion or cases of abuse not handled properly. I have confidence in the safeguarding measures that are in place at parish level, but there is also fear – people are afraid of not getting it right, of being blamed. We need to stop a lynch-mob environment. It’s in the media, on social media and in parts of the church where flames are being fanned.”
At almost 64 years old, Hudson-Wilkin has six years to go before reaching the C of E’s compulsory retirement age for bishops. “I used to think I’d go back to Jamaica, but the lives of my children and grandchildren are here, so this is where I will be,” she says.
It’s hard to imagine the C of E’s first black female bishop giving up her battles over justice and equality in favour of a quiet retirement. “I’ve carried the cross of rejection by those who do not accept me all my life,” she says. “But I know God is with me.”
