The prophetic voice crying in the wilderness comes from Justin Welby, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who has unexpectedly issued a stinging jeremiad to condemn the idea that Britain should pay reparations for slavery.
“Group punishment is a moral evil,” he declared. “It mixes up the guilty and the innocent even when it is about contemporary times, let alone two centuries past.” Reparations “would be addressing one injustice by creating another”.
It is difficult to disagree with Welby’s forensic critique, grounded in Christian morality and a nuanced understanding of history’s complexity.
Yet, his intervention has left many churchgoers perplexed. When he was Archbishop, he himself was the motive force behind the Church’s own reparations scheme, Project Spire: an initiative for the Church Commissioners (the Church’s investment arm) to give £100m to a new fund that would invest in black-led enterprises in the UK and abroad to atone for the Church’s alleged involvement in the 18th-century slave trade.
The problem for the Church Commissioners, and the current Archbishop, Sarah Mullally (who started her tenure at Canterbury with a full-throated defence of Project Spire) is that Welby’s attack on reparations methodically destroys the justifications for the Project.
Take the question of who should get the £100m. Project Spire does not attempt to identify those specifically impacted by slavery. It falls back on a simple racial qualifier – black – regardless of whether they were descendants of slaves, or slave traders. Welby is clear-sighted on this issue: “You can’t define who should receive… There is no straight line between victims of those times and their descendants. Too much time has passed.”
What about the impact on those here? £100m spent on Project Spire means £100m less for the Church Commissioners to fund struggling English clergy, churches and parishes. Less money for these parishes makes it harder for them to look after the marginalised in our society, a number of whom, as Welby observes, are descendants of slaves.
Again, he highlights the moral problem: “Ordinary people from all backgrounds and ethnicities are suffering here at home today. Reparations would amount to a vast fine on the entire British people for a crime they did not commit.”
How also to take into account Britain’s long atonement for slavery? This is something that the current Church establishment seems deeply reluctant to do. The Church’s official reports on racial justice tend to underplay the huge efforts made by abolitionists such as Wilberforce, not to mention the sacrifices of the Royal Navy and missionaries to suppress the trade.
When Sarah Mullally visited West Africa in the summer, she spoke much about her shame over the trade, but was light-tipped about African slavers and the British efforts to combat them.
Welby’s words on this seem like a direct rebuke to Mullally for her reticence: “What about those sailors of the Royal Navy who died liberating the slaves, or the UK Parliamentarians who spent their lives campaigning for the abolition of slavery and its trade?”
And yet, Welby insists that he still supports Project Spire. He does so by sleight of hand. He claims Spire is “not reparations” but “essentially a variety of venture capital.” Yet, a rose by any other name… Reparations are payments made to heal historical harm, and this is exactly Spire’s intent. Even the Church Commissioners says it is for “healing” and “repair”.
Besides, what business is it of the Church Commissioners – a charity – to use their money, intended to help parishes, as “a variety of venture capital”?
The prophetic voice crying in the wilderness comes from Justin Welby, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who has unexpectedly issued a stinging jeremiad to condemn the idea that Britain should pay reparations for slavery.
“Group punishment is a moral evil,” he declared. “It mixes up the guilty and the innocent even when it is about contemporary times, let alone two centuries past.” Reparations “would be addressing one injustice by creating another”.
It is difficult to disagree with Welby’s forensic critique, grounded in Christian morality and a nuanced understanding of history’s complexity.
Yet, his intervention has left many churchgoers perplexed. When he was Archbishop, he himself was the motive force behind the Church’s own reparations scheme, Project Spire: an initiative for the Church Commissioners (the Church’s investment arm) to give £100m to a new fund that would invest in black-led enterprises in the UK and abroad to atone for the Church’s alleged involvement in the 18th-century slave trade.
The problem for the Church Commissioners, and the current Archbishop, Sarah Mullally (who started her tenure at Canterbury with a full-throated defence of Project Spire) is that Welby’s attack on reparations methodically destroys the justifications for the Project.
Take the question of who should get the £100m. Project Spire does not attempt to identify those specifically impacted by slavery. It falls back on a simple racial qualifier – black – regardless of whether they were descendants of slaves, or slave traders. Welby is clear-sighted on this issue: “You can’t define who should receive… There is no straight line between victims of those times and their descendants. Too much time has passed.”
What about the impact on those here? £100m spent on Project Spire means £100m less for the Church Commissioners to fund struggling English clergy, churches and parishes. Less money for these parishes makes it harder for them to look after the marginalised in our society, a number of whom, as Welby observes, are descendants of slaves.
Again, he highlights the moral problem: “Ordinary people from all backgrounds and ethnicities are suffering here at home today. Reparations would amount to a vast fine on the entire British people for a crime they did not commit.”
How also to take into account Britain’s long atonement for slavery? This is something that the current Church establishment seems deeply reluctant to do. The Church’s official reports on racial justice tend to underplay the huge efforts made by abolitionists such as Wilberforce, not to mention the sacrifices of the Royal Navy and missionaries to suppress the trade.
When Sarah Mullally visited West Africa in the summer, she spoke much about her shame over the trade, but was light-tipped about African slavers and the British efforts to combat them.
Welby’s words on this seem like a direct rebuke to Mullally for her reticence: “What about those sailors of the Royal Navy who died liberating the slaves, or the UK Parliamentarians who spent their lives campaigning for the abolition of slavery and its trade?”
And yet, Welby insists that he still supports Project Spire. He does so by sleight of hand. He claims Spire is “not reparations” but “essentially a variety of venture capital.” Yet, a rose by any other name… Reparations are payments made to heal historical harm, and this is exactly Spire’s intent. Even the Church Commissioners says it is for “healing” and “repair”.
Besides, what business is it of the Church Commissioners – a charity – to use their money, intended to help parishes, as “a variety of venture capital”?