slavery

Truth, history, the Church Commissioners, and reparative justice

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Professor Richard Dale writes: KICKING IN THE CATHEDRAL DOOR How the Church Commissioners relied on bogus history to denounce their predecessors and vilify their own Church It is over three years since the Church Commissioners published their controversial report on the Church’s links to the slave trade.  Since then critics have challenged the Commissioners’ historical … Continue Reading

The problems with Project Spire: presentations

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Is the Church Commissioners’ proposal for a ‘reparations’ fund (Project Spire) for ‘Justice, Healing, and Repair’ based on historical facts? Will it ‘repair’, or in fact divide us further? Is there a clear ethical argument, and have they followed clear and transparent processes in proposing this? The two videos here comprises four addresses given at … Continue Reading

Is there a case for slavery reparations?

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  Lord Nigel Biggar is Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford, and a well-known author on moral and ethical issues. He has just published Reparations: Slavery and the Tyranny of Imaginary Guilt (Swift, 2025), challenging the current narrative within and beyond the Church of England about the need for reparations … Continue Reading

Should the Church Commissioners pay slavery reparations? Further questions

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Project Spire is the name that has been given to the Church Commissioner’s decision to put aside £100m of their investments to be directed to working with and for communities affected by historic transatlantic slavery, with the intention that it creates a lasting legacy. The £100 million, which will be built up over the 9-year … Continue Reading

The Church of England’s Historic Links to the Transatlantic Slave Trade

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Robert Tombs and Lawrence Goldman write: The Church Commissioners have pledged £100 million over nine years in reparation for what are claimed to be their eighteenth-century predecessors’ involvement in and large financial gains from slavery and the slave trade. They argue that the Church, through Queen Anne’s Bounty (a corporation created by statute in 1703-4 for ‘the … Continue Reading

Should the Church generate a £1 billion fund for slavery reparations?

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PR car-crashes for the Church of England are like buses—there are none for ages, then three come along at once. Except for the Church of England, the ‘there are none for ages’ bit isn’t true. Following the constant stream of negative publicity about the sexuality debates, we then had two reports on safeguarding, Wilkinson and … Continue Reading

Was Mary (and therefore Jesus) a slave?

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Major David Cavanagh of the The Salvation Army offers this response to Mitzi J. Smith’s reading of doule in Luke 1:38. “Was the Virgin Mary actually a slave?” That is the question raised by Mitzi J. Smith, J. Davison Philips Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, and Professor of Gender Studies at the … Continue Reading

Was European colonialism a good thing or a bad thing?

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Following his very helpful review of Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: a moral reckoning, John Root offers reflection on five paradoxes of European colonialism and its legacy. In April 1964 I attended a selection conference for ordination in the Church of England. One of the selectors was a thoughtful, late middle-aged high churchman, who prior to his ordination … Continue Reading