Responding to a letter sent by 24 Conservative MPs and four Conservative peers, Dame Sarah Mullally, who wa inaugurated last week, said the church had a “calling to confront historic justice”.
Tory critics had said “it’s wrong to try and justify diverting £100m” at a time when “churches across the country are struggling to keep their doors open”.
However, Mullally said: “Project Spire does not diminish the church’s support of or investment in parish ministry or clergy … far from it, support for dioceses and parishes continues to increase.”
The issue reflects ideological divides in the wider Anglican community.
On the one hand, some feel the church has a moral obligation to redress past wrongs and that a church committed to racial justice goes to the essence of Christianity, reflecting the significant contribution of African, Asian and diaspora communities to the survival of the church.
On other hand are those who are concerned about the scale of the commitment, or are wary of the church appearing political, as well as right-leaning Anglicans who do not think it is necessary or justified.
What is Project Spire?
Project Spire is a reparative justice initiative by the C of E to address its past links to the trade and exploitation of enslaved African peoples.
It dates back to 2019, when Church Commissioners – the body that manages the church’s assets – decided to research the origins of a predecessor endowment fund dating back to 1704 called Queen Anne’s Bounty.
The research showed the fund had links, through investments and benefactions, with transatlantic slavery.
In response, Church Commissioners made a £100m funding commitment “to invest in a better future for all, working with and for communities affected by historic transatlantic slavery”.
How will the £100m be used?
The funding, Church Commissioners said, would be used to establish an “impact investment fund”.
In finance, impact investing typically involves deploying capital to enterprises in the hope of achieving positive social or environmental goals as well as a financial return.
Church Commissioners hope Project Spire’s fund – known as the Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice – “will grow over time, reinvesting returns to enable it to have a positive legacy that will exist in perpetuity, and with the potential for other institutions to participate, further enabling growth”.
The church said it hoped growth in the fund “will also enable grant funding for projects focused on improving opportunities for communities adversely impacted by historic slavery”.
Under Project Spire, the church has also committed to “further research into the Church Commissioners’ history, supporting dioceses, cathedrals and parishes to research and address their past links with slavery, and sharing best practice with other organisations researching their slavery legacies”.
What stage is the project at?
Last year, Marsha de Cordova, the second church estates commissioner and Labour MP for Battersea, told the Commons that Church Commissioners was engaged in informal discussions with the Charity Commission “to consider what regulatory approvals may be required to progress this project”.
What has been happening in the meantime?
As work has continued on the technicalities of the project, Anglicans, affected communities, politicians, historians and rightwing critics have been debating its merits.
Between January and October 2023, Church Commissioners and the independent Oversight Group set up to oversee Project Spire conducted focus groups in Jamaica, Barbados, Ghana and England and rolled out a global questionnaire.
The Oversight Group’s subsequent report to the Church Commissioners’ board, in spring 2024, found “there was deep concern that the full role of the Church Commissioners and the Church of England in African chattel enslavement and its legacies had not been sufficiently exposed, acknowledged and repaired” among respondents.
It added: “An overriding and consistent belief expressed by respondents was that £100m is not enough, relative either to the scale of the Church Commissioners’ endowment or to the scale of the moral sin and crime.”
The report added: “Impact investments into Black-led businesses can generate returns that would replenish and enable funding to be deployed to relevant causes in the African diaspora.”
On the other side of the argument, last year the conservative thinktank Policy Exchange accused Project Spire of being “historically uninformed” and a “departure by the Church Commissioners from their core duties” to English parishes, while a handful of historians and General Synod members made a public call to scrap it, followed by Tory MPs urging Mullally to ditch it in December.
What else is the church doing?
Separate from Project Spire, Church Commissioners are releasing £730,000 to fund community cohesion projects in the diocese of London, including support for migrants, “theologically informed” anti-racism resources and education on church buildings’ links to transatlantic slavery for three years.
This aims to further the goals laid out in 2021’s From Lament to Action report, which set out changes required to tackle “racial sin” and a lack of diversity in church hierarchy.