Welcome all – and that means all

The days of ‘no blacks, no irish’ signs are long gone, happily, but discrimination can spring up in surprising places.  For that reason, it is good to remember that, as the old song goes, God has ‘the whole world in his hands’, including a lot of people who are different to us.

The Windrush generation encountered racism in many forms, most famously in housing and employment.  Sadly, there were even churches where well-meaning vicars redirected new arrivals to ‘black churches’ down the road. Much has changed in the years since, not least in Newham’s churches, where people from a fantastic range of backgrounds and ethnicities worship together.  It would be a brave person, nonetheless, who said that discrimination has disappeared.

There was another group in the early 1960s who were treated badly because they were different. They were the teenagers who rode motorbikes and scooters and hung around in coffee bars. Many a pub had ‘no leathers’ signs on the door, and the tabloid press played up ‘Mods and Rockers’ as the latest threat to civilisation. Ordinary people saw them as dangerous, which is why a London vicar, Rev Bill Shergold, became somewhat famous for welcoming them to his church, to what became known as ‘The 59 Club’.

The club thrived in Hackney, where visitors included celebrities like Cliff Richard. It did so because it offered a welcome to young people who were used to being shunned. They were made welcome because ‘Father Bill’ believed that God loved them as much as he loved anyone, and that God welcomed them even when others didn’t.

The 59 Club continues to meet in Plaistow and in West London, although its members are no longer the rebels and outcasts that they were once seen to be. It’s worth asking, though, who are the outcasts of today?  Who are the people who we find it hardest to welcome and who encounter barriers and hostility? Because, just like Bill Shergold did in the 1960s, we need to remember that God loves them and values them as much as he loves us. And we need to act accordingly.