Revd Angela Sheard reflects on 'belonging' in the Church

A guest blog from Revd Angela Sheard, Anglican Tutor at The Queen's Foundation, who will be speaking at the AMEN Conference 2026 "Power, Solidarity and Belonging" in November.

What does it mean to truly belong, not only spiritually but emotionally within the life of the Church?

Although I grew up in London and have spent most of my life in cities, I currently live in a market town – where my husband is the local Methodist minister – and go to church in a nearby village. In both mine and my husband’s churches, there is a strong sense of place which is sustained by people who have lived there for multiple generations. This is felt both in terms the stories about the lives of the congregations as well as their parents and grandparents, and in the fabric of the church buildings themselves – built by those who lived here in centuries past, marked on the walls and in the graveyard by others down the generations. There are deep wells of tradition here which bind local communities together and help them to extend an warm welcome to visitors. They are proud of their church – of their place – and so they are keen to share it with others.

This close relationship between people and place is something that I struggle to relate to from within my own experience. As mentioned, I grew up in London – but neither of my parents did. My dad’s family come from various parts of the north west of England, and my mum’s family are from Sri Lanka. Within my own adult life I have moved many times, to study or to work – and so, I don’t really have a strong sense that I am ‘from’ any one place. Does that matter?

Many (but by no means all) UKME/GMH people have some personal experience of migration - either in their own story, or in those of their immediate family. In the UK today certain kinds of migration have become increasingly contested both politically and theologically, the latter in the form of so-called ‘Christian nationalism’. In Parish: An Anglican Theology of Place, Andrew Rumsey notes the tendency of parochialism both towards community cohesion and open engagement with outsiders (as I have alluded to above) and also towards “various shades of nostalgic xenophobia – and, under certain conditions, their more chilling progeny”. However, he cautions against assuming that social conservativism and attachment to place are signs of extremism or insularity: if this happens, he suggests that these assumptions will become “self-fulfilling prophecies, being the only lens people are offered to view these allegiances through.”[1]

In light of all this, I have often wondered how theologies of migration might inform an Anglican theology of place. Jesse Zink notes that place and dis-placement are closely linked throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. The first human beings were created within the Garden of Eden, a particular place; but were dis-placed from there upon eating from the tree of knowledge, good and evil. The Israelites wandered through the wilderness before establishing a new dwelling place over the Jordan; yet even once they are settled, the law is full of reminders of their migratory past. In contrast the New Testament seems to emphasize displacement, with salvation tied not to a particular place but to a spaceless and intellectual vision. As Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at the well, “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth”. In the wider context of the transitory Roman Empire, early Christians often described themselves as people without a place, and from such positionality (or rather, claimed a-positionality) we get the origins of the word ‘parish’ in the Greek word paroikia, meaning ‘sojourn’ or ‘exile’.[2]

In The Christian Imagination: Theology and the origins of race, Willie James Jennings seeks to make connections between place, race and Christian theology. He notes that “the story of race is also the story of place”, arguing that in Western contexts race has been used as a substitute for place-centered identity. He connects colonialism with a loss of the fundamental relationship between people and land, which is mediated by God in the Hebrew Scriptures, and therefore with a supercessionist Christian vision that has lost its spatial dimensions. Western Christianity, Jennings argues, is connected more with the commodification of space (and the alienation of people from one another and the earth) than with “emerging spaces of communion… spaces situated anywhere and everywhere the disciples of Jesus live together”.[3]

So, Rumsey, Zink and Jennings all frame differently the relationship of Christianity to place and dis-placement. I think that the two can exist creatively together and can both inform belonging for UKME/GMH people in the Church of England, both locally and nationally. On the one hand, the parish is a profound celebration of God’s working in people in a particular place down the generations. And yet, the parish is also paroikia: stay, sojourn, exile. The parish is a place that is both settled and migratory. It changes over time, as the land changes and as new people enter into relationship with the land.

So, the parish resonates deeply with stories, both of those who have been settled in that place for generations, and of those who have migrated into that place. Sometimes there is more overlap between these two groups than we might expect, as buried histories of migration or new historical connections to a particular place come to light. In our churches, mutual storytelling can be an important means of spiritual and emotional belonging for UKME/GMH people, as our stories of place and displacement are held and honoured alongside those of others.

All of this is comfortably held within the stories of our shared faith. The book of Deuteronomy instructs the Israelites to summarize their identity in this way, even when settled beyond the Jordan: ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien’ (26:5). Those of us who identify as UKME/GMH have an important gift to share with the wider Church of England: a reminder of the migrants who are the common faith ancestors of us all.  

[1] Rumsey A, Parish: An Anglican Theology of Place – ebook version, Chapter 4Link: https://tinyurl.com/5bsyrehv Accessed: 22/07/26

[2] Zink J, ‘Anglican Theology in the Midst of a Migration Crisis’ in Journal of Anglican Studies (2019;17(1):31-47) p37-38

[3] Jennings W, The Christian Imagination: theology and the origins of race (Yale University Press, ebook version), p174-175