Church’s race chief blasts slavery stance
Links to trade a source of great hurt, says report
THE Church of England has been blasted by its race watchdog over its failure to tear down monuments linked to slavery.
The report by the Archbishops’ Commission for Racial Justice says worshippers are still suffering racial injustice and hurt at the hands of the Church.
It singles out a recent judgment that forced Jesus College, Cambridge, to keep a plaque to 17th century Tobias Rustat who had made money from the slave trade.
Commission chairman Lord Boateng, who was the UK’s first black Cabinet minister appointed as chief secretary to the Treasury in Tony Blair’s government in 2002, said the issue of what to do with monuments linked to the slave trade is a ‘pressing matter’ that is a ‘source of great hurt to many’.
In the report, the former Labour minister wrote: ‘I must begin by sharing a sense of deep hurt and of pain that has been encountered in this process.
‘This includes the hurt of those who have experienced and are still experiencing racial injustice within and at the hands of the Church of England, its institutions, and practices.’
He added that ‘an examination of racism and the exposure of injustice is often one of denial and defensiveness or obscuration and delay. This must not go unchallenged’.
The report’s findings have been ‘ strongly welcomed’ by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who said: ‘ This report identifies the difficult and long path to eradicating the pain and injustice felt by so many.’
The report calls for reforms to the Consistory Court, the archaic ecclesiastical legal system that usually deals with exhumations and disputes over headstones but is now having to rule on slavery monuments.
The Commission says the hurt felt over the Rustat case cannot be dismissed.
■ A Cambridge college has renamed student halls known as ‘ The Colony’ to ‘ Castle Court’ over fears it could be seen as a nod to slavery. Campaigners claimed any references to Britain’s imperial past could put off ethnic minority applicants.