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Yesterday morning in St Paul’s Cathedral in London the latest bishop in the Church of England was consecrated. Rose Hudson-Wilkin is the 24th woman to be made a bishop, since the church decided this was possible in 2014. She is the first to be made a bishop who is both a woman and black. She said: "When I was first called into ministry women weren't even allowed to be ordained, so Bishop was not in my frame of reference”. Yesterday was therefore a moment of celebration for the church; but in today’s society it couldn’t just be that. It was also a moment of conviction, given that the number of black and minority ethnic clergy in the Church of England was measured in 2019 at 1.2%. Last week Archbishop Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, challenged the church to “wake up” about the lack of men and women from ethnic minority backgrounds in senior leadership. Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Iranian born woman made Bishop of Loughborough in 2017 said at the time that the Church must do “things that might make us feel quite uncomfortable” to increase ethnic-minority representation. In common with other world views and religious frameworks, Christian teaching emphasises the dignity of every person; and in theological terms, that’s rooted in the belief that all people are made in the image of God. If this principle is accepted, then it is a short movement from individual dignity to recognising solidarity and the ethic that is repeated in the New Testament to do to others what you would have them do to you. Prominent leaders from minority ethnic backgrounds are vital if equality is to be achieved in society and church; accompanied by reflection, especially by white people like me, on what the sociologist Robin DiAngelo has called ‘white fragility’. She has coined this phrase for what she says is the struggle often white people have, even if they say they want to, really to listen to the lived experience of black and minority ethnic contributors and to accept the need for change that flows from it. One of the creators of Black Liberation Theology, James Cone, died last year. He identified theology itself, rather than being a dry academic subject, as rather a potential force for liberation and change; a way of freeing all people from the confining imbalances of power still perpetuated in the modern world. Quoting Martin Luther King, James Cone wrote this: we must learn to live together as human beings, treating each other with dignity and respect, or we will perish together as fools. There is no other choice. I choose life.