Dr Robert Beckford

Beckford is unflinching in his criticism of the Church of England, which he describes as inherently racist. God may be colour-blind, but the church run in his name certainly isn't. "I'm not the first scholar to argue that traditions of white supremacy and superiority are still very much bound up in white Christian expression within Britain," he says. "And as far as I can see, there has been no radical attempt in my lifetime to overturn those traditions."

"It [the black church] needs to be much more socially engaged and it needs to fight more vigorously the battles black people face. You can't have black children failing in school and have no national campaign that's taken to the streets by black churches. I see that as being an act of complicity."

Dr. Robert Beckford. Robert is a leading theologian and educator from Birmingham who described himself as someone who was “raised in the Church”, before going to study theology as an undergraduate in New York, and strongly praises the US university system. He returned to the UK to complete his PhD in Birmingham. .British academic theologian and currently a reader in theology at Canterbury Christ Church University

“The Great African Scandal”, one of his twenty documentaries he has produced, which the hidden costs of rice, chocolate and gold, and why, 50 years after independence, a country so rich in natural resources is one of the poorest in the world.

 He states that his "white, middle-class" religious education teacher "turned me on in a big way to RE and sowed the seeds to think about religion and culture", while his Communist maths tutor introduced him to politics and the work of Malcolm X, who is still a hero.

Beckford was born to Jamaican parents in the English Midlands and was raised in the Pentecostal church

Who Wrote the Bible? (2004)