Lip-service by the Church to remove slaver from cathedral

PERSONALLY I find it incongruous to see that Bristol Cathedral is paying lip-service to the toppling of the statue and has removed or covered up anything to do with Edward Colston.

Let me explain: historical records show that Christianity played an important role in enslavement in Africa – not forgetting that the Arabcontrolled Trans-Saharan slave trade, which was underpinned by Islam – both religions helped to institutionalise slave trading.

To contextualise this, we need to recall that during explorations, European/white Christians who approached the continent via the north witnessed caravans loaded with Africans en-route to the Middle East. Travellers arriving much later in West Africa observed indigenous African slavery, which many assumed was inherent to the continent.

For many early European explorers, the Bible was not only regarded as infallible, it was also their primary reference book. Christians had no doubt that it was divinely sanctioned, and they used a number of Old and New Testament quotations to prove their case.

Numerous ‘people of faith’ used it to explain differences in ethnicity, culture, and slavery. Genesis 9: 24-27 appeared to suggest that the differences were a result of sin… In this passage, Africans were said to be the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, who was cursed by his father after looking at his naked form.

Moreover, in Genesis 10, the ‘Table of Nations’ describes the origins of the different races and reveals that one of the descendants of Ham is Cush-Cush (the Cushites were people associated with the Nile region of Africa).

In time, regardless of whether they were Catholics or Anglicans, the European view between sin, slavery, skin colour and beliefs would condemn ‘heathen’ Africans.

Interestingly enough, some scholars now suggest that Christianity had reached Northern Africa by the early second century and that those Christian communities were among the earliest in the world.

With the colonisation of the Americas and the need for labour, Europeans turned their attention towards Africa, it was even argued by ‘interested parties’ that the favourable trade winds from Africa to the Americas were evidence of a providential design!

Slavery in Britain became illegal in 1772; the colonial slave trade ended in 1807; slavery in the colonies was abolished in 1833 (and the church received compensation from parliament); but it wasn’t until 2006 that the Anglican Church said sorry for the role it played in this odious business.

So, despite having used the Bible to condone slavery, and offered an ‘official apology’ it has only taken from 2006 until now for the Anglicans to remove one slaver from one cathedral. Dr Serena Sinclair Bristol