Bishop Rosemarie Mallett was born in Barbados and came to the United Kingdom as a child. She grew up in the UK and was educated at Sussex University and Warwick University. Before ordination, she was a research sociologist and academic, specialising in international development and ethno-cultural mental health. She has lived and worked in Senegal, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Barbados. She trained for ministry at the South East Institute of Theological Education (SEITE) and served her curacy at Christ Church, Brixton Road. She was ordained Priest in 2005.
Bishop Rosemarie served as Priest-in-Charge at St John the Evangelist, Angell Town, from 2007 and was appointed Vicar in 2013, as well as being made Director of Ordinands for the Kingston Episcopal Area. In 2015, she was additionally appointed Diocesan Director of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. She served on General Synod from 2011 to 2021.
Bishop Rosemarie is the Diocesan lead on Social and Racial Justice and authored the Diocese of Southwark’s Anti-Racism Charter which was unanimously approved by the Diocesan Synod in March 2021. She is a spokesperson on racial and social justice issues nationally and is Chair of the Oversight Group for the Church Commissioners' work on African chattel enslavement and Reparatory Justice. She is also the lead bishop representing the national church on the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland Trustee Board.
For more than 20 years, Bishop Rosemarie has served as Trustee and Director of several social action charities across London, all focusing on building community cohesion. She served as an Equalities Commissioner for five years in Lambeth and currently acts as adviser to a Croydon community action project which is focused on reducing serious youth violence. She also serves as Chair of the Southwark Diocesan Board of Education.
Racism
At different points in my journey, I have found there were places and spaces where my skin colour and ethnicity either excluded me or people used it as an excuse, through racism, to treat me differentially. I experienced racism from the first time I arrived in the United Kingdom as a young child and then throughout my life at various stages. At first, confusingly for me, it was from children with similar skin colour to me from the Asian sub-continent calling me racist names. At the age of 13, I was refused entry to a teenagers' disco at a social club because I was “coloured”. At 19, I was refused private student rental accommodation in Brighton because of my skin colour.
More recently, while I was out walking with my daughter, someone screamed racist epithets at us out of a car window. It comes upon you when you maybe least expect it and sometimes from people you least expect it from. This includes my experience as a member of the Church of England, and there were times during ordination training and subsequently where again I experienced racism because of ethnicity or skin colour. For example, ‘well-meaning’ people who think they are being encouraging, may say something like, ‘It's great to see a black person in that position’. But what they may come over as is ‘I didn’t expect someone like you to be able to apply for that or achieve that’. A lot of it is unconscious bias. Often such people are speaking from a more socially normative position where the acknowledged norm is themselves or people who look like them and you don’t fall within that acknowledged norm. So, when they are welcoming you into the acknowledged norm, they are still pointing out the relativity of your difference. That still says that you are not part of the norm.
Most recently, after the publication of the Church Commissioners Oversight Group recommendations, I have received overtly racist abuse. Surprisingly, quite a lot of the correspondence came from people within the church, which calls into question their understanding of God’s inclusive love. Some wrote, virtually handwringing, about slavery being ‘civilising’ for the descendants because of the achievements some such as me have made. Others questioned the ‘guilt’ the church should bear as it did not appear to have made much money from the investment. Still, others commented on the leading work on abolition and the repayment of reparations in the 19th century. They did not know of or acknowledge that the reparations were paid to plantation owners, including Church of England clergy and church organisations and they did not seem to know of the work of African abolitionists in the UK or the enslaved who fought against slavery in the Caribbean, many of whom were murdered for their advocacy and activism.
Subtly or sometimes more vehemently I have managed the journey. When I was younger, I responded with a great amount of anger. I remember at the age of 12 being quite oblivious to racialised expectations of people of colour, and my brothers who had faced the sharp end of racism as young black men in the Midlands having been attacked by skinheads said to me, ‘When it hits you, you will feel it.’ Monkey taunts from some classmates and the experience at age 13 of being rejected for being black, made me ask ‘What is it about my skin colour which makes me unacceptable?’ That is when I started to read and find out more about civil rights (at first in the USA) and this fuelled my passion for working for those who are on the outside, marginalised and excluded.
Vocation
From the time I was in my teenage years, my vocation to work for those who are marginalised was inspired by my growing understanding of the way that social injustice works in the wider society. In terms of ordination, I was drawn into thinking about a deeper involvement and engagement in the Church through spending time with some Roman Catholic nuns I met when living in Tanzania. They undertook inspirational work for Jesus on the ground, teaching, building cooperative organisations, and assisting with infrastructure projects. Their input made a difference in people’s daily lives. I looked at these women of faith and the work that they were doing to help build a country, to educate the young people of that country and then to build up the artists of that country. I didn’t know that the Church worked in that way. I was ploughing a relatively lonely furrow thinking I’ve got to do something about the world. When I realised that people who follow Jesus Christ could put their faith into actions that enhanced the daily lives of people and communities, I was hooked.
When I moved back to England and I started going to a church near where I lived in south London, it was still that incarnational vision of Jesus, living and working and dying for the building of God’s beloved community – a community that is inclusive of all. The Mary Knoll nuns had offered their whole lives for this service. That was something that I hadn’t thought about, but I did want to see how I could offer my life to such work too. This service continually inspires me now as it did then.
Faith
My faith is inspired by the discipline of wanting to always do something for God. Every morning, as I wake, I give thanks for the breath and strength that I have received, and then I ask God what He has in store for me today. Whether He was praying, teaching, healing, eating or at rest, wherever He was, Jesus used every moment to do something good for God.
When I was young and going through a really low point in life, someone gave me a book of the Psalms to meditate on. It is here that you find people at their lowest ebb, yet the scriptures uplift them and take them forward. The scripture I go back to time and time again is Psalm 27. It tells me that I will find my all in the Lord. The other scripture is the song of Mary, the Magnificat. It reminds me of those holy women I met in Tanzania who offered themselves fully in service to God. Mary’s story also signifies for me my story, many other women’s stories and the many people who are othered or marginalised due to their perceived social status. Mary’s story reminds us that we all can be God-bearers to the world, through our living and doing.
Advice to GMH young people considering ordained ministry
If you feel it from your heart that you are called to serve, don’t let anyone stop you from living out what you feel God is calling you to. There will doubtlessly be obstacles in your way. Sometimes it will be your self-doubt and other times it will be people telling you that you are not capable. Hold on to that belief that God has called you and just keep working through it. Some setbacks may have a racial overtone, overtly or covertly. Racism hasn’t gone away, either from individuals or institutions so do not let that be the thing that stops you.
When people say they didn’t expect that in the Church, remember the Church is just a body of ordinary folk seeking God’s guidance. They will bring their cultural biases with them into the church. The church like all institutions also bears the marks of the wider society. We are still on this side of heaven.
Unless and until we intentionally work to build into the Church and out into the wider culture a different understanding of what we are to be, as Martin Luther would say, as part of a beloved community, we are still going to face these challenges and these problems. We saw the outburst of that during the summer riots in 2024. But don’t ever stop yourself thinking, ‘What is God calling me to do?’. Keep following that as your golden thread.