The Church has found itself guilty of entirely trumped-up charges
The Church of England is doubling down on its decision to give away a whopping £100million in reparations for slavery. It is claiming it has a ‘moral imperative as a Christian investor’ to do so. But is this so?
Christians are certainly obligated to uphold truth and justice – but you won’t find either of these in ‘Project Spire,’ the fund they want to establish for ‘healing, repair and justice.’
Firstly, the Church has found itself guilty of entirely trumped-up charges.
The Church commissioned research into links between slavery and Queen Anne’s Bounty, an endowment established in 1704 to support poor clergy that is now managed by the Church Commissioners.
The report, which was not peer reviewed or properly scrutinised, concluded unequivocally that the church had profited from its investments in the South Sea Company, which traded slaves. This, they claim, justifies giving away such a huge sum for reparations, at a time when parishes across the country are struggling to fix their roofs, heat their churches and keep their doors open.
The problem is - it’s not true. Historians have comprehensively rebutted the charges. The church invested in South Sea Annuities, which had no direct relation to slave trading. The very small amount of money that it did invest in South Sea Company shares were loss making. Professor Richard Dale, who is an expert on the South Sea Company, says the ‘Commissioners have misled Church leaders and Church leaders have misled the public at large. Because there is incontrovertible evidence that Queen Anne’s Bounty’s investments earned not one penny from the slave trade.’
Despite being confronted with the truth, church leaders are digging in their heels. A legal challenge has been launched to stop them, and 27 MPs and peers have already urged the church against creating the fund. They have informed the Archbishop of Canterbury that reparations are not a proper use of the endowment, which is supposed to be used to support parishes and churches. To get around this, the Church want to create an entirely new charity and funnel the £100m into it. As Conservative Katie Lam pointed out, while speaking to GBNews’ Jacob Rees Mogg earlier this year, if you can do that, what is the point in having the rules in the first place?
Seems dodgy, doesn’t it? Charity law, it seems, may allow them to do this if the trustees think there is a moral obligation to do so. But on the contrary, it is clear they do not. On the contrary, they have a moral obligation to do otherwise – not only because their justification a lie, but because their plans are also unjust.
The church plans spend the money, not on descendants of slaves, but on black 'social entrepreneurs, educators, healthcare givers, asset managers and historians'.
In other words, the beneficiaries of the fund will be decided according to race. But history is more complicated than that.
For starters, slave trading was big business in Africa. If you are ever in Lagos, Nigeria, you will find they have statue of Efunroye Tinubi, a famous female Yoruba slave trader. The Kings of Dahomey (today’s Benin) were prolific slave traders, who made a fortune. This is what their King Gezu said in the 1840s, when the British were trying to stop the slave trade:
‘Slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth… the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery.’
By the Church’s criteria, someone who is a direct descendent of slave traders could be eligible for that money, simply by virtue of their race.
At the same time, not all white British Anglicans profited from slavery. In fact, Anglicans played an important role in abolishing the slave trade. William Wilberforce is the most well-known, but he wasn’t alone. At a time when most of the country was Anglican, it was the British people who pushed for abolition. Brits of all classes, including those who did not yet have the vote, petitioned the government en masse, racking up hundreds of thousands of signatures. British families boycotted slave-grown West Indian Sugar to force the government’s hand. It was the British people who paid for the Royal Navy West Africa Squadron to abolish slavery worldwide. As Bijan Omrani has pointed out, at least 17,000 British sailors died in the process – a deathrate higher than officers on the Somme.
Britain’s abolition of slavery was a moral revolution, unique in the history of mankind. It was the men and women of this country, who themselves did not own slaves, who campaigned and paid for it. Many, if not most, of these men and women would have been members of the Church of England.
Project Spire will not make amends for the moral wrong of slavery, but it will inflict a new moral wrong.
Based on a lie, fuelled by ‘progressive’ ideology, the Church Commissioners and Church leadership are turning their backs on their real moral obligation to take care of the church, its clergy and minister to the British people.
The Church is in crisis. In the last decade the Church, 3,500 churches have closed in the UK. If the church were willing to devote that £100 million to the parishes it would do a world of good.
81 per cent of Anglicans want the church to support local parishes rather than use financial resources on reparations. In fact, more than 60 per cent said they would stop donating to the church if Project Spire goes ahead.
So, no, the church does not have a moral obligation to go ahead with this destructive folly. But it does have a moral obligation to churches up and down the country, that are precious to black and white Brits alike.
There is something particularly morally repugnant about those who dress up as justice their own vain desire to appear pious in the eyes of the world.
As Christ says in In Matthew 6:5 ‘when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing […] on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.’
