A new poll of Anglican churchgoers reveals that 81 per cent expect the Church to support local parishes rather than use financial resources on reparations, 64 per cent believe it is “not the role of the Church Commissioners, using funds in their care, to atone for previous injustice such as slavery”, and 61 per cent would switch their giving to alternative charities, if the Church proceeds with its policy.
The background story is this.
In November 2022 the Church Commissioners for England, a charity which administers a fund to support the Church of England, made a commitment to make reparation for its involvement in transatlantic slavery, via “Project Spire”, to the tune of £100m.
This commitment was made in response to historical research that appeared to show that the Queen Anne’s Bounty, an 18th century forerunner of the Commissioners’ endowment devoted to supplementing the income of poorer clergy, had “links” with African chattel enslavement, mainly through investments in the South Sea Company.
Without any further or wider deliberation, the Commissioners set up an “Oversight Group” to work out how reparation should be made. When the group presented its 41 recommendations, the Commissioners – who included both the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the present Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell – endorsed them fully.
Then the trouble began. After examining the historical evidence, the emeritus professor of international banking at Southampton University and author of a book on the South Sea Company, Richard Dale, concluded that the Commissioners had misinterpreted it.
Their statement that “a significant portion of the Bounty’s income during the 18th century was derived from sources that may be linked to transatlantic slavery, principally interest and dividends on South Sea Company annuities”, he judged “misleading on several fronts”.
As he explained, “First, no investor in the South Sea Company benefited financially from the slave trade, since it was consistently loss-making. Second, the Church Bounty did not even stand to benefit from the trade, because it declined to buy shares in the Company. Third, the investments that it did make, in South Sea annuities, represented, at one remove, claims on the Government which had no connection with the trade in slaves”.
Next, when I, a former holder of the Anglican world’s premier professorship in Christian ethics at Oxford University, went hunting for the Commissioners’ ethical justification of Project Spire, I discovered there was none.
The thorny ethical questions about what present generations are obliged to do about the not-uncommon sins of some of their ancestors two centuries ago had not even been raised, no matter answered.
The Commissioners and the Oversight Group had evidently functioned as echo-chambers, their members all assuming the same answers.
Yet surely any body of trustees is duty-bound to test its assumptions before embarking on a venture.
As the Charity Commission itself prescribes, “constructive debate and challenge are signs of healthy governance” and trustees should “critically and objectively review proposals and challenge assumptions in making decisions…. Trustees who simply defer to the opinions and decisions of others aren’t fulfilling their duties”.
The objective observer may wonder on what possible legal basis a charity that exists to support the work of the Church of England, especially its parishes, could engage in something so political, contentious, divisive, and ill considered.
A Freedom of Information request of the Charity Commission has revealed that, by May 2024, the Church Commissioners, had realised that they didn’t have the necessary legal power to proceed with Project Spire and would have to make an unprecedented application to the Charity Commission for special authority.
Furthermore, this couldn’t be done without first making a successful application to set up a new charity for the purpose. These controversial intentions were not explicitly admitted until May 2025.
This vexed project exemplifies the detachment of the Church’s elite from its people, as the poll shows.
Since its launch, it has been subjected to sustained, authoritative criticism: historical, ethical, and procedural. That there is such weighty dispute should be enough to demonstrate that the decision made three years ago, on the basis of incomplete evidence and understanding, was a mistake and to persuade the Church Commissioners to think again.
If they don’t, it is to be hoped that the Charity Commission will keep the Church Commissioners’ powers as they are.
The Church of England’s travails are bad enough already. The prospect of alienated Anglicans feeling compelled to seek judicial review is not a happy one.