The head of Britain’s Protestant Anglican Church traveled to Jamaica last week to both apologize for the horrors of the transAtlantic slave trade and suggest that a meager $130 million compensation fund it has set aside as remorse money should be managed by groups affiliated with the reparations movement of today.
The Most Reverend Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England, apologized profusely during a sermon in Jamaica over the weekend, saying that the role the church played in the slave trade was evil and regretful.
“We are deeply, deeply, deeply sorry. We sinned against your ancestors. I would give anything for it to be reversed, but it cannot, so what makes for a better future? When we come to worship God, when we come to serve Jesus Christ, we are all equal, even those who have sinned terribly. What we have done remains in the present, both for good and evil,” he told the gathering.
In recent months, the church had commissioned an audit of finances to paint a picture of how it had benefitted from the slave trade that killed millions of Africans headed to West Indian agricultural plantations. The audit had also suggested that slavery and the role the church played had amounted to a crime against humanity.
Welby told churchgoers celebrating 200 years of the Diocese in Jamaica and the neighboring Cayman Islands that the 100 million pounds sterling should go toward restoration, healing, and reconciliation among descendants of the slave trade. West African and Caribbean people should manage the fund, he said.
“It will be aimed at creating possibilities for people through investment, particularly in areas like education, which we also hope will produce income for the fund so the fund becomes self-sustained. We do what God gives us the resources to do and the rest is up to God. The more resources God gives us, the more we give,” said the archbishop.
However, an independent study that had been set up by the church found that the money was insufficient when compared to the wealth that had flowed from slavery and “the moral sin and crime of African chattel enslavement.”
The study had suggested that the church come up with at least 1 billion pounds or about $1.3 billion as a better contribution to any form of reparations. Church leadership has said that it had accepted the recommendation from the study that the amount is too small compared to the benefits the church had raked in.
The Reformed Church in England had also apologized for its role in slavery.
The latest indication of contriteness has followed in the wake of formal apologies for slavery from both the Dutch government and the king of the Netherlands. The Dutch had also said that the door was open for formal talks. This is as the umbrella Caribbean reparations commission and regional governments are trying to engage former European slave-trading nations in a formal summit to discuss the way forward. Demand letters for compensation and reparations have also been sent to European capitals and a British law firm has been engaged to fight the case if necessary.
Experts have estimated that the church benefited from up to $1 billion from slavery and should make a concerted effort to compensate today’s dependents properly who are still suffering from the effects of slavery and its aftermath.
Church assets from slavery go back to the turn of the 1700s; leaders back then invested money in the South Sea Company, which was engaged in transporting slaves from Africa to colonies in the region that were controlled by Spain.