The Church of England, an institution that is predicted to be extinct by 2062 by mathematician and R number analyst Dr John Hayward, is yet again doing its damned hardest to fulfil the prophecy.
Recently, the Church announced a £100 million slavery reparations fund to provide investment in black British communities it claims are still affected by the consequences of the transatlantic slave trade. The Church’s Commissioners, who manage the Church’s investment portfolio, have examined the Church’s historic investment record and believe they have discovered that by 1777, the Church had £406,942 invested (around £742 million in today’s money) in the South Sea Company which they estimate transported 34,000 slaves over a period of thirty years.
Yet according to historians Professor Richard Dale and Professor Robert Tombs, the Commission’s case is dubitable. It is true that the South Sea Company sold slaves to the Spanish empire. The governors of the Church of England’s investment fund, known as Queen Anne’s Bounty, were not interested, however, in the South Sea Company’s slave-trading activity. They bought government annuities administered by the Company and therefore, according to Professors Dale and Tombs, avoided investing in the slave trade.
If Dale and Tombs are right, and their case looks good, the Church Commissioners have made a significant error. Rather than listening to a range of expert historical opinions, they have reserved an enormous sum of money to make compensation for a moral crime that may have never happened. This decision has been made within the context of crumbling parish churches and a vicar recruitment crisis which affects as much the black members of the C of E as it does the rest. But there is nothing surprising about the Commissioners’ decision. It is yet another instance of progressive ideology overriding common sense.
However, there is pushback from the pews. Parishioners have started to withhold their donations from local churches in protest at the reparations fund. Church wardens, such as Luke Appleton from Paignton Parish Church in Exeter, have described how angry people are and how some have removed the C of E from their wills. At the General Synod, Appleton asked whether parish churches ought to be compensated if they have sustained financial loss because of protest at the fund.
The C of E’s leaders have responded by typically playing down concerns. Bishops have assured congregations that no local parish offerings are being used for the fund. The Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt Rev Stephen Lake, stated that instead, compensation would be paid from the Church’s central investment account. He has also claimed that information about a drop in giving by parishioners is anecdotal.
To counter what it regards as misleading reporting on the part of some media sources, the Church has written a myth-busting resource about the reparations fund and its source. For the C of E to produce such a document suggests, however, that Appleton and his parishioners’ concerns are perhaps more widespread than the prelates would like, or would wish C of E members, to think.
The assurance that no money from parishioners’ donations will be used as compensation completely misses the parishioners’ point. If the Church has £100 million to spare, it ought to be using that to mend churches and promote attendance rather than relying on parishioners’ generosity, most of whom are pensioners on limited incomes.
The General Synod discussed questions regarding reparations last week. What will be decided remains to be seen. It is unlikely that the Church’s leadership will drop its policy of reparations as bedwetting Anglo-guilt is embedded in its echelons.
But with nearly 300 parishes closing over the past five years, the C of E should reconsider. If it does not, could empty collection plates cause the bishops to pause and reflect? It is unlikely. The C of E is a paternalist hierarchy in which bishops and bureaucrats alone ‘know’ what is best for the rest.
In Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Church Going’ (1955), the narrator ruminates on what C of E churches might still be good for once they have all closed. He suggests that people might visit the ruins out of respect for they were once places where wisdom could be found. The way the C of E leaders are going, however, wisdom will not be their legacy, but a great Church’s decline and death, quickened by their conceit and quixotic moralism.
Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).
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Meanwhile my local Catholic Church seems to be thriving.
Funny really, I always thought that it was Catholics that were experts in guilt. Got that wrong didn’t I. Seems like the real experts in spurious puffed up breast beating guilt are the upper echelons of Anglicanism.
I should know, I speak as a Catholic agnostic who suffers profound guilt thinking about my white privilege as a working class (genuine, not fashionable faux prole) beneficiary of the glittering heritage of heavenly evolution from easy agrarian existence through considerate industrialisation to a relaxed state of Grace. All achieved without a slave in sight. A condition righteously illuminated by gaslighting supplied by the sages and luminaries of the Anglican Church.
As a well dragged up, and no, I don’t mean that in the sartorial sense, non practicing (ie perfect) working class Catholic boy I just have this funny feeling about the voluntary decline of the C of E. it’s best summed up in that old English word: schadenfreude.
The glittering raiment of the priest is empty.
Clear example of acting/posturing on incomplete information. If this was a genuine thing then £100M is poor recompense for £742M. Why not simply set up a new body ‘Slaves, Not Us!’ and cash in everything the CofE owns and hand it over for redistribution to the oppressed/disadvantaged by something that ended two centuries ago….oh I see. BTW the image is an RC Church, I never ever saw a Confessional Booth even in the most Anglo-Catholic churches (admittedly I wasn’t looking, perhaps CofE might now adopt this so that the congregation can be encouraged to confess their own contributions to slavery).