In late autumn 2022, we introduced I Am Because You Are, a new Baptist video-based training course in equality and diversity.

The course is aimed at Baptist ministers but suitable also for church leadership teams. It has come about in response to a grass roots challenge made to the Baptist Union.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, a conversation among Baptist ministers took place about racial justice, but not only racial justice. The scope was broader, drawing in a variety of ways in which ministers had experienced, observed, and even perhaps colluded with discrimination in Baptist churches and structures.

An open letter was subsequently written to the leadership of Baptists Together, calling for equality, diversity and unconscious bias training to be made a compulsory part of both initial ministerial formation and Continuing Ministerial Development. After some deliberation, the Baptist Union Council agreed this at its March 2021 meeting,

I Am Because You Are is the first result of Council’s decision. It consists of six videos that ministers are expected to watch together in their networks and ministers’ meetings. Each video contains some explanatory material, a filmed interview or conversation, and some discussion questions. They explore what discrimination is, the meaning of equality and diversity in secular society world, and how this relates to the Bible and our own experience.

The title I Am Because You Are is a rough translation of the Zulu word, ubuntu. Ubuntu was often used by Desmond Tutu to explain how we are inter-connected. He said we are diminished when some among us are made to feel less than they truly are – that is, made in the image of God. Despite a total viewing time of almost two hours, the six videos can only hope to open up what is an increasingly vast topic. Engaging with I Am Because You Are through watching and discussing the videos is mandatory for almost all accredited ministers and nationally recognised pastors.  
 
In Episode 4 of I Am Because You Are, two Baptist College Principals, Clara Rushbrook and Steve Finamore, discuss a reading from John chapter 4. When Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman at a well, Clara notes:

“Jesus is going into Samaria. He’s going to somewhere ‘other’ precisely to encounter this woman, and he knows about her. And I don’t think he knows about her in a way of kind of shaming her, but he knows about her in a way that sees her.

“And it reminds me of the story of Hagar where she names God as the one who sees me and that is really powerful. This is an unnamed woman. But we’re beginning to see who she is, through this encounter.”
   
Steve adds a further reflection:

“[This story] is one of the ways that John is demonstrating that the words of his prologue – that ‘He came to his own people, and they received him not, but to those who did receive him, he gave the power to become the children of God,’ – is being fulfilled. And this is one of those biblical type scenes. A man meeting a woman at the well is something that happens in Genesis, it happens in Exodus. It is one of those standard story patterns. And they are usually about betrothal, about human love. But here this is about the love of God for a whole people.”