In the run-up to the General Election on 5th May, radical discrimination is one of the hottest issues that churches in the UK would seek politicians to address. To raise awareness of the existing racial injustice in the UK, the Methodist Church has published a new resource to facilitate the training in this aspect.

The new book, Workers for the Harvest, which is published by the Committee for Racial Justice of the Methodist Church, aims to complement and build on existing church anti-racism training documents.

The initiative in fact follows the success of the training manual first produced three years ago, which is called Strangers No More, according to Naboth Muchopa, Methodist Church Secretary for Racial Justice. In 2003, the Methodist Church changed its racial awareness training strategy to enable districts and circuits to conduct this training themselves.

This time, Workers for the Harvest will be a more advanced resource to allow facilitators to train those who will take racial awareness training into the churches and circuits.

Workers for the Harvest will be just the first of several documents that will be produced for this purpose. The strategy itself was detailed in the publication 'Building a Racially Inclusive Methodist Church', according to Naboth.

"Although the Methodist Church has been addressing racism and racial justice for many years," says Naboth, "there is still a need for training, and the new strategy will allow districts and circuits to fit this to their local needs. There are similar resources for the secular market, but we need resources that reflect church life. As people of faith, we have a unique way of presenting this, which stems from our belief that God created us all equal."

Earlier this week, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI), the official national ecumenical body, issued a statement to brief political leaders on the issue of radical justice.

CTBI calls upon all politicians to respect the humanity and dignity of immigrants and asylum seekers in the May 2005 general election campaign. The use of any words that may incite racial and religious hatred should be rejected because racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia will seriously hinder continuing efforts to achieve racial equality.

CTBI encourages all the churches to take part in raising the awareness of the issue among the congregations and to present their Christian views to their local election candidates.