Reparations would privilege black suffering over everyone else’s, says theologian

Lord Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology on the University of Oxford, has continued his crusade against reparations for Britain’s role in slavery and false historical narratives with an interview for fellow theologian Ian Paul’s Psephizo blog.

Lord Biggar spoke of how the decision for reparations for slavery and colonialism, which have rumbled on for many years, grew in frequency and volume following the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in America.

However, despite recognising slavery as “an appalling evil”, Lord Biggar identified that it was hardly the preserve of the British colonial empire, and even the European powers normally. Rather, slavery has been practised by every culture and civilisation across the globe.

According to some historians, the biggest slave economy ever created was actually that of the Comanche tribe of native Americans.

Lord Biggar also noted that Europeans, in addition to practising slavery, were also the victims of slavery, with their peoples at various times by Vikings, Romans and Islamic slavers.

Slavery has been practiced with various degrees of brutality, he continued: “Enslaved African boys were often delivered to the Arab world to function eunuchs. To that end, they’d their genitals forcibly removed with a razor and the resultant wound cauterized by boiling oil. Nine out of ten of them died in the method.” 

In many cases, ostensibly “free” people, resembling factory employees within the early industrial revolution, lived lives which might be just as harsh and brutal as that of a technically enslaved person.

This, he argues, “reminds us that inhumane treatment was widespread and in no way confined to Europe or to formal slaves”.

“And it reminds us that history incorporates an ocean of injustice, which is beyond human rectification. We will not be gods; we cannot raise the murdered dead. Our instinctive desire for justice is certainly one of the predominant fuels for belief in a God who can,” he said. 

Lord Biggar questioned the narrative recommend by reparations advocates that the descendants of slaves suffer a type of generational trauma, arguing that such claims have never been proven and further noting, that almost everyone on earth can look back to their ancestors and see a miserable life.

Reparations would privilege historical black suffering over the suffering of each other race on earth, he argued.

Lord Biggar further argued that Britain was almost unique in expending massive resources in ending the slave trade, pointing to research that means the country can have spent more on destroying slavery within the nineteenth century than it actually constructed from slavery within the 18th. 

The Church of England has committed £100 million towards black-led projects to atone for its alleged profiteering from slavery. Lord Bigger questioned the historical validity of such claims, mentioning that almost all historians doubt slavery played an enormous role in Britain’s (and the Church’s) later prosperity.

Despite this consensus, the Church continues to make use of as its source the views of a known Marxist historian, Eric Williams, he said. 

“Those who present the ‘centrality’ of slavery to industrial growth as a straightforward fact are either ignorant or disingenuous,” said Lord Biggar.

The Church’s decision to earmark funds towards reparations has also been criticised by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, who said the funds should go towards extraordinary parishes as the guts and soul of the Church.