2023 Winner
REVEREND EVE PITTS
The Church of England’s first black, female vicar is a pioneering cleric and anti-racism campaigner.
Eve has spent decades supporting parishioners, challenging racism and calling out institutional prejudice in her own faith. She is passionate about visibility, sharing black history and educating those around her about the reality and legacy of slavery and racism.
She became the Church of England’s first black, female vicar in 1994, but in 1997, she was asked to resign by the Bishop of Birmingham after denouncing fellow clergy from her pulpit.
She says: “I didn’t lose much sleep over it. I very much believe that it was a case of shooting the messenger. It was upsetting, but I had a deep and firm belief that it was the right thing to do. When you are in an institution that is so powerful and you are experiencing racism, it is very difficult to stand up alone, and very lonely. Walking into a shop and seeing my face on all the broadsheets was not much fun.”
She continued to preach from a community centre before being assigned a new parish a year later. Now 72, she continues to advocate just as fiercely for her parishioners and wider community. She leads the Holy Trinity church in Birchfield, Birmingham, an inner-city ward where 90 per cent of the population come from an ethnic minority.
She says it is a privilege to serve ‘forgotten people’ and spends her time in takeaways, barbers and bookies, listening to their stories.
She is now petitioning the Archbishop of Canterbury to recognise August 1st – the date the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act came into force – as Ancestors’ Day, and has the blessing of the Bishop of Birmingham to visit every slave port in Britain to pay respects to the dead.