I am beginning to discover that the exact recipe for jollof rice is a source of some considerable contention in my parish. So in seeking to describe it, I am probably wading into a west African cultural controversy that I don't fully understand. But here goes anyway. Fry onion and garlic and chillies until golden. Add finely chopped tomatoes, tomato paste and stock. Then add long grain rice and allow the rice, while cooking, to soak up the liquid. Serve with parsley and hard-boiled eggs. You can jazz it up with chicken and other ingredients, but that's basically it. Though "basically it" certainly won't do for any of the women of this parish. My churchwarden, Jayne, thinks she makes the best jollof rice. Others think they do. I remain diplomatic.
This is the real stuff of the Church of England. Indeed, it's not for nothing that old-fashioned church magazines were stuffed full of recipes. After all, the eucharist is a stylised meal heavily seasoned with wider cosmic significance. And what made Jesus's eating habits so theologically alert was that he refused to make his table "a map of economic discrimination, social hierarchy and political differentiation" as the New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan puts it. In a world where women waited on men and where the rich would never sit with the poor, this open commensality was revolutionary stuff and, Jesus insists, a model on earth of the heavenly banquet that is to come. An inclusive church is not an expression of secular liberalism but a fundamental gospel imperative.
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