Church told to raise £1bn to ‘address wrongs of slavery’
Existing £100m fund is too small and wealthy donors are needed to hit new target, says report
THE Church of England has been told to raise £1billion from wealthy donors for a fund set up to address its links to transatlantic slavery.
In January last year, the Church Commissioners, which handles more than £10billion of assets for the Church, announced the establishment of a £100million fund to “address past wrongs of slavery”.
The pledge came following the publication of a report which found that much of the institution’s wealth originates from the slave trade.
A report published today by an independent Oversight Group has concluded that the £100million fund will be too small and too slow to meet its aims, as it called for the target to be increased to £1billion.
However, the Church is being urged to raise the remaining £900million from wealthy donors, companies and investors. It is hoped that the extra funding, combined with the interest accrued by the fund, will allow the Church to reach its new target.
The group said that the Church Commissioners had “embraced a target of £1billion for a broader healing, repair and justice initiative with the fund at its centre” as the original £100million sum was “insufficient” to counter the “historic and enduring greed, cynicism and hate with penitence, hope and love”.
It added that its original nine-year timeframe had also been judged too long and, as a result, the Church Commissioners would disburse their £100 million over five years.
Following consultation with members of the global African diaspora, the report recommends that the new impact investment fund be called the Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice and that it will invest in members of disadvantaged black communities, aiming to “back their most brilliant social entrepreneurs, educators, healthcare givers, asset managers and historians”.
The recommendations call on the Church Commissioners to use this fund to invest in black-led businesses focusing on education – such as schools, or a community-run pharmacy chain to improve health outcomes – and access to land and food as well as provide grants to address these and other issues brought up for communities affected by the legacies of transatlantic slavery.
The Church’s endowment fund can be partly traced back to 1704 when Queen Anne’s Bounty was established to help support impoverished clergy. These funds were subsumed into the Church Commissioners’ endowment when it was created in 1948.
In 2022, the Church announced for the first time – “and with great dismay” – that the Bounty had invested significant amounts of its funds in the South Sea Company, which was founded in 1711 and shipped enslaved people from Africa across the Atlantic.
Asked how the Church was planning to raise the £900million, Geetha Tharmaratnam, vice-chairman of the independent Oversight Group, said: “The intention is that this is a fund that can be taken to peers of Church Commissioners, to pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, to impact investors, foundations, family offices, exactly the kind of investors who are looking to create positive change for the future.”
The Ven Dr Rosemarie Mallett, the Bishop of Croydon, and chairman of the oversight group, said she hopes the investment fund can be “a catalyst to encourage other institutions to investigate their past and make a better future for impacted communities”.
She said: “No amount of money can fully atone for or fully redress the centuries-long impact of African chattel enslavement, the effects of which are still felt around the world today.
“But implementing the recommendations will show the commitment of the Church Commissioners to supporting the process of healing, repair and justice for all of those across society impacted by the legacy of African chattel enslavement.”
‘No amount of money can fully redress the centurieslong impact of African chattel enslavement’