THE Archbishop of Canterbury, during a visit to Jamaica last weekend, apologised for the Church of England’s links with the transatlantic slave trade, but said that there “stays in lots of hearts resistance to the concept of enslavement as our sin”.
On Sunday, the two hundredth anniversary of the diocese of Jamaica — renamed Jamaica & the Cayman Islands in 2001 — was celebrated with a eucharist within the National Arena in Kingston.
In his sermon, Archbishop Welby said that he was “deeply, deeply, deeply sorry. We sinned against your ancestors. I might give anything that it may very well be reversed, however it cannot.”
On the identical day, The Observer published research showing that the 18th-century British merchant and slave trader Edward Colston made a bequest to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG).
In May, The Observer uncovered documents showing that certainly one of Archbishop Welby’s predecessor’s, the Most Revd Thomas Secker, approved payments for “recent negroes” in 1758 and 1760 (New, 31 May).
In a panel discussion on Saturday morning, Archbishop Welby said that the Church Commissioners’ establishment of a £100-million impact investment fund to profit communities affected by the transatlantic slave trade (News, 10 January 2023) had prompted “fiery debate” inside the C of E.
“But it’s my firm belief that we’re called on to embark on this painful road to understanding, healing and repair,” he said.
He defended the concept of “corporate sin by an organization, an establishment, or a Church”, and said that those that had benefited must “make the case for transgenerational ethics” — an idea that applied to climate change just because it did to the slave trade.
The Primate of the West Indies, the Most Revd Howard Gregory, introduced the panel discussion, hosted by the University of the West Indies (UWI) and streamed online.
“We must acknowledge as Anglicans that the approaching of the Church of England to the Caribbean within the seventeenth century was a part of a transplantation of an imperialistic and colonising movement on the a part of Britain, intended the serve the interest of the plantocracy, while regarding the Black population, which then consisted of the enslaved, as mere private property unfit of evangelisation and the ministry of the Church,” he said.
Archbishop Welby said that he was “humbled” to be speaking alongside experts on reparatory justice, including two UWI professors and a former judge within the International Court of Justice, the Hon. Patrick Robinson.
Slavery was “the best of evils”, Archbishop Welby said. “For the Church of England to be involved institutionally is a reason for infinite shame for me personally.”
Meaningful apology required motion, and for the Church this meant “transparency about history”, he said; but “the talk in England stays very vigorous, with many individuals who challenge whether or to what degree the Church profited.”
Professor Richard Dale, formerly of the University of Southampton’s business school, has argued that Queen Anne’s Bounty — which was later joined with the Ecclesiastical Commissionrs to form the Church Commissioners — didn’t benefit from the slave trade, since it was invested in South Sea Company annuities, and these were a separate business operation from the transatlantic trade in chattel slaves (Comment, 22 March).
The Commissioners’ chief executive, Gareth Mostyn, has defended the research, criticised by Professor Dale, which underlies the choice to create the brand new investment fund (Comment, 14 June).
“One of most extraordinary comments I’ve heard made to me is: ‘But we didn’t make much money out of it,’” Archbishop Welby said on Saturday. This was, he suggested, akin to arguing that he was blameless if he tried to murder someone but failed.
The responsibility of creating restoration fell on “the descendants of the enslavers”, he said said, and “within the absence of binding legal decisions . . . reparatory justice is a broader and more flexible way of compelling the moral duty of bodies to think about their obligations.”
He contrasted reparatory justice of this type, which the Commissioners were pursuing, with “reparation” payments. There was no international court that might mandate such payments by English bodies.
“I prefer reparatory justice, which, to my mind, includes the concept of reparations, in order that, a technique or one other, those that have moral obligations withstand them, whether for legal reasons, or out of conscience,” the Archbishop said.
ON HIS visit, Archbishop Welby also met the Prime Minister of Jamaica, Andrew Holness, and the Governor-General, Patrick Allen. The conversations focused on education, Archbishop Welby said.
After a visit to the Church Teachers’ College, in Mandeville, the Archbishop said that “education is a present,” and commended the scholars for “dedicating their lives to delivering that gift”.
In a post on Instagram, he wrote: “They are training a future generation of educators — each a shining example of the school’s philosophy that focuses on individual value and excellence. I pray that your careers are long and enriching for you and your pupils.”
Archbishop Welby was accompanied by his wife, Caroline, who met clergy spouses in the course of the couple’s visit.
